Hollowbody Review – Nostalgia Trip

Hollowbody Review

We’re at the point in video game history when games and technology aren’t measured in years but span decades. Hollowbody, a new survival horror game from indie studio Headware Games, is inspired by 2001’s Silent Hill 2. Which was, in case you’re bad at math like me, nearly a quarter of a century ago. An entire gaming generation probably has been born and matured without touching a PS2 controller. That’s important to note when playing Hollowbody. This is a game that depends on either affectionate familiarity with the original Silent Hill 2 or a high tolerance for purposely antiquated, retro mechanics. Absent these, the experience just feels confusing.

Shadow Lands

Silent Hill 2 depended on jump scares, claustrophobic spaces, scarcity of ammo and weapons, and discomforting lighting to ratchet up tension. Hollowbody learned these lessons well. If nothing else, Hollowbody demonstrates that you can sell setting and atmosphere without Unreal Engine 5’s bleeding edge effects.

Hollowbody takes place in a cyberpunk future replete with Blade Runner-esque flying cars, but nearly all the action is set in a derelict English town. Years before, a bioterrorism attack and the resulting government response turned the town into a Chernobyl-like exclusion zone. You play primarily as Mica, whose friend Sasha went missing during the event. Mica crash lands in the town. The narrative settles in on her need to survive, escape, and uncover what happened to Sasha in the process.

As Mica explores, she finds leftover documents, audio logs, and receives mysterious radio calls. Most of them aren’t terribly interesting or genuinely informative, aside from giving clues to puzzles. It’s all environmental storytelling 101, and Hollowbody doesn’t add anything to the mechanic. Like its Silent Hill inspiration, Hollowbody has an array of puzzles that range from extremely simple to very obtuse. But they all without exception feel exactly like what they are: video game puzzles that artificially complicate exploration and progress.

Here There Be Monsters…Eventually

Go back and play a PS2-era game, and you’ll be reminded yet again of how far games have evolved. Awkward movement, limited camera, and janky combat were common. By design, Hollowbody lovingly embraces the technical limitations of the early 2000s. While there are a few places where the game auto-saves, the tried-and-true telephone booth save point makes an appearance. Enemy monsters are fast, but never attack in anything but small groups. Ammo needs to be hoarded, so the game’s small selection of melee weapons takes center stage. Inventory items are selected by scrolling through them one at a time, a la Silent Hill. You get the idea. What’s old is new.

I honestly didn’t have high expectations for combat in Hollowbody, so I wasn’t much disappointed. It certainly isn’t impactful. Melee combat is clunky and slow and ranged combat is necessarily limited to special occasions. But if your mission statement is to recreate the feel of a 23-year-old game, this is what you get.

Of course, limited graphics and processing technology in the early 2000s meant that level design was often very simple. Especially in a horror game, low poly count textures could be disguised by moody lighting and darkened corridors. As Mica explores the ruined town, she noses her way through a lot of essentially empty rooms and public squares. On one hand, this ramps up the tension as we wait for the next jump scare. On the other, it means stretches of nothing much interesting. But when it comes to Hollowbody, the developer has wisely curtailed the game’s length to a handful of hours. Maybe what the game does best is act as a “greatest hits” of sorts for a long-ago generation of horror games.

Conflicted

There are two ways of looking at Hollowbody. As an homage to a bygone gaming era, a conceptual love letter to an influential time, it succeeds pretty well. Without the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, Hollowbody is a pretty unsatisfying experience. If you grew up playing Silent Hill 2 on the PS2, Hollowbody will certainly resonate with your memories. For everyone else, there are simply too many more recent and more accomplished games in the horror genre to spend your time with.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***