I'm actually happy to see some people be more critical of PT. I think PT is a good horror experience, and I like it well enough. But I also think the thing is way over praised for what it actually is. And so many people calling PT the "best horror game" or stuff like that makes me roll my eyes and wonder how many horror games they've actually played, like seriously? It's not that it's bad, it's good, it's pretty well done for what it is. I also understand PT hit the PS4 in an era where horror games were relatively rare for the PS4, so those who only play games on consoles maybe it was the scariest thing in a long time. But as a horror enthusiast who plays these things on multiple platforms and follows the indie horror scene, PT is just a prettier version of an idea that existed in indie horror games freeware space before it. Now PT is a well done version of those ideas, but I also think it can only go "so far" with the type of experience it is. It reminded me most of the 2011 Russian Horror Game, The Corridor, which features you in a series of looping hotel hallways with things getting progressively worse, and the early 2014 Moon Sliver, which had a story about conspiracy and has a very similar, "LOOK BEHIND YOU," scene that predates PT.
As a horror enthusiast, I played PT before it was known it was a Silent Hills teaser or who was behind it. Not knowing anything and playing it, the ARG-like wall you eventually reach is good in retrospective but I think there's a big pacing problem in that the game goes from relatively straight-forward progression to sudden super cryptic bullshit that completely kills the pacing of the game. I know why it's there, but seriously the cryptic ARG stuff just sorta' happens and I do think is a detriment to the experience. I think most played the game knowing it was a hidden teaser, so the cryptic wall "makes sense", but imagine you don't know what this PT thing is and suddenly all the pacing gets stuck and you're going to solve puzzles with little to no clue how to progress after playing it for a while. It completely kills what the game sets-up, and most are okay with this because they "knew" what to expect before playing it because most weren't interested in it before it was known what it was. With this, when it was discovered to be a Silent Hill game, I'm going to be honest I was not enthralled. PT is good as like a high-budget take on a type of indie horror game, but nothing in the teaser is anything like Silent Hill, it's much more like a Hollywood horror film, which makes a lot of sense with the people behind it. Even when I was playing it not knowing what it was, I was thinking it had inspiration from "Mama" (which Del Toro helped work on and realize), and Eraserhead, and the timing of the scares were very much like a Hollywood horror film, IE there was a bit too much cleanness to how it paced itself which made it really predictable, still well done, but the pacing and beats it goes by have a big rhythm to them. So both learning this was supposed to be a Silent Hill game teaser, and Kojima was behind it and making Norman Reedus the main character, I felt just showed very clearly this was going to be more Kojima and Del Toro's horror game rather than a thing that actually felt like Silent Hill, and that'd come with all the Kojima-isms like the game featuring all of Kojima's Hollywood Friends (which is bad for a series supposed to be about normal people), overtly long cutscenes, conspiracy plots (this part I was fine with), and probably put too much Hollywood-isms into it and focus too much on scares and move away from the atmospheric ambience and mystery that fuels so many of the Silent Hill games, a weird mystical-ism. Now I realize at this point PT was supposed to be "not representative of the final game," but that's what I thought at the time, and that statement could literally mean anything.
I realize part of PT has been "enchanted" with being the "horror game you can no longer play" and being a small part of a game you'll never see, those make good taglines, but I really think PT is overblown. It's good, but I really question how many horror games, let alone horror games from the last 10 years and beyond the typical "Amnesia/Outlast/Layers of Fear/whatever" stuff that people have played. There's some truly excellent horror games out there from the last 10 years, that to see PT of all things, a good game but I don't think there's actually that much to it, it's good at being simple but effective but it's not something I'd personally list even in my top 30 horror game experiences, makes me a little sad. I really do believe most people played it after knowing Kojima was involved and it was a Silent Hills teaser, and I think that plays a big role into how it was remembered for what it was. That and I realize again it was on PS4, where most of the indie horror scene of recent years has been on PC, so I know it must've been many people's first exposure to the type of experimental freeware horror game design that is very present on PC but absent most everywhere else, it's a good type of that game but being the first for many I think does empower it further.
