P.T. Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 10/31/2024)

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P.T.

Developer: 7780s

Publisher: Konami

Genre(s): Graphic Adventure, Horror

Platforms: PS4

Release Date: August 12, 2014

It is time to pay my respects to Silent Hills, which is probably the most infamous example of a canceled game in the history of the medium. Like a musical prodigy or another sort of precocious wunderkind who has met an early demise, the world collectively weeps for the full potential of their extraordinary talents that could’ve blessed humanity. Alas, death is a fickle matter in the end, and not even the exceptionally gifted are shielded from its unpredictability. Even though what was built as the spiritual successor to Konami’s iconic survival horror series Silent Hill was unfortunately cut down before it fully sprouted, the profound lamentations of those most crestfallen by its cancellation have preserved its legacy. The sole remnant of its existence is “P.T.,” an acronym that simply spells out “playable trailer.” In the gaming biz, an interactive sampler of what is to come is called a “demo,” available for download on consoles that the finished game will be released. I realize that reviewing a demo is a tad cheap and invalidates a proper analysis. However, I can’t ignore what a sizable handful of gamers have dubbed as “the scariest game of all time.”

I should issue a disclaimer that I have not played P.T. and will never play P.T. This isn’t a confession to tarnish my credibility, but the availability of P.T. has all but vanished completely. In 2014, I was an eighteen-year-old preoccupied with my first semester of college and all of the frivolous activities involved with that age that I still plead the fifth on. I missed my opportunity to download P.T. (on a console I didn’t own at the time), and I’m not seeking out a used PS4 or Xbox One that houses the demo. I hope you forgive me for watching someone else play through P.T. on YouTube. After all, doesn’t the “trailer” portion of the title suggest that it can be viewed from an impersonal perspective as well? I think that I can be excused for half-assing this review as I’ll be able to assess P.T. 's quality and its potential via this method just fine.

Immediately, I was quite impressed with the presentation of P.T. The visuals are crisper than a glass of water fresh from a spring. Still, all that the hyperrealistic graphics do is pronounce all of the horrors that lurk in the dark, which is also contrasted appropriately enough with the player’s line of sight while maintaining a potent spookiness. Many people criticize the scare factor of setting something horror-oriented in the modern domicile of the character (probably thanks to the oversaturation of that Paranormal Activity crap), but what’s more unsettling than having the mundane and comfortable shaken up and plunged into the realm of terror? As the player moves back and forth through the corridors of this home, the lighting will grow more eerily dim to signify that the intensity of the horror factor is growing. The piece de resistance of the scary scene is the phantoms that emerge from the darkness, popping out at the player with their grizzly visages and moving about in a horrifically inhuman fashion. Encountering these ghoulish apparitions may verge into the realm of cheap jumpscares. Still, the game effectively supports these flashes of terror by maintaining the tension with odd little instances of bugs crawling down the walls and the sound of a baby crying from an unknown origin. All the while, all the context given to the player is the murder of a family by the patriarchal figure, letting the player conclude that the frightening figures that roam about the house were his victims in a state of purgatorial unrest. The demo ends with a phone call telling the player that they’re “the chosen one” to something without context. Norman Reedus shows himself outside the scene on the streets, and the camera angle and fame status lead us to believe that he would’ve been the face of this project if it had been continued. I’m sure he’s paying the bills just fine without a full release.

Okay, I’ll concede that I’m a little disappointed. I can fully ascertain why so many gamers continue to visit the grave of this aborted fetus of a game every so often and laud it for the appetizer that it was. Still, an appetizer is obviously not a full meal as it still leaves gamers with those unsatiated hunger pangs. However, in their state of grief, it seems like the greater gaming community is coping with the loss of Silent Hills by treating its demo as a full game. Given the effective and nightmarish pacing that made the original Silent Hill the title of “scariest game of all time,” I can certainly see how they could argue its legitimacy as a complete experience. Not every game needs to match the epic length of Red Dead Redemption, after all. I’m not fully subscribing to the mental gymnastics needed to label P.T. as a fully-fledged project, but it sure is one hell of a ride for how brief it is.