The three answers to a creature
| Answer | How | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Sneak | Crouch, peek round corners, use closets, wardrobes, sheds and doorways. Enemies march their patrols, notice a closed door and lose a fast runner. Sixty seconds hidden is Isolating Experience. | Time — and the unkillable stalker pulls you out of a cupboard if it saw you go in. |
| Distract | Throw a bottle or brick where you are not, switch on a radio, or set off a car alarm by hitting a car. A direct hit stuns. | A throwable, and the creature walks back to its post afterwards. |
| Fight | Block, then swing. Pistol, shotgun and flare gun later; every shot brings the neighbours. | Weapon wear — a couple of kills per plank — scarce ammunition, and a Kill on the ending tally. |
The weapons, in the sources' words
| Weapon | Who | What the sources say |
|---|---|---|
| Plank | Simon; Zoe in Chapter 7 | Falls apart quickly. Swing and block; it and the pipe can kill anything. |
| Pipe | Simon | Falls apart a little more slowly. From the blocked door in the Alternate Medical Centre. |
| Pistol | Simon, Richard | Six rounds loaded one by one; a reload you could boil an egg by; wakes every creature in a wide radius; enemies move erratically, so shots need precision. Ammunition extremely rare in the first half. |
| Shotgun | Richard, then Simon | A meaty shotgun before Richard has even met an enemy; ammunition showered on you; a deliciously subversive power flip. |
| Flare Gun | Simon | Lights enemies up or draws them to where it lands; straight for a moment, then it veers. Stuns the large unkillable enemy in the final section. |
| Bottle | Everyone | Distract, or stun with a direct hit; the only throwable that counts for Lured Off Track. |
| Brick | Everyone | Distract, stun, a car alarm, or the 15-metre headshot for Long-Range Masonry. |
| Axe | New Game+: Simon and Zoe | One-hit kills and a guard, which makes Save It For The Patients easy; it speeds the second run up without removing the tension. |
| Pistol-3000 | New Game+ after the Sci-fi ending | Hurts the final boss fast enough to ignore the crowd. |
What the reviews say works
🥊 Combat, better than expected
Creative Bloq: the best combat the series has had in recent memory, the guns with the right kick and recoil. PlayStation Universe: snappy and easy to work out. GamingTrend: crisp and responsive. VGC: firearms that pack more punch than usual.
😱 Stealth that builds real fear
GamesRadar+ clung to the peek mechanic like a life raft. TheSixthAxis calls it perhaps the scariest Silent Hill. IGN: sound-sensitive beasts and sustained tension.
🚪 Doors and speed
Lock a door behind you and the chaser gives up; move fast and enemies lose you. The score's soft thunderclap tells you when to run.
💊 Healing to spare
On Story, an abundance of healing items and a revive from the IV bag; GamesRadar+ suspects the copious healing exists to soften the harshest sections.
What does not
🪨 The Weight sections
VGC: it seems to know roughly where you are, waits outside your locker and kills you again the instant the IV bag revives you. GamesRadar+: it patrols endlessly outside whatever room you are in. Rock Paper Shotgun spent the best part of an hour in a cupboard. Creative Bloq: it feels like cheating. GamingTrend: too long. Steam Deck HQ: unnaturally aware. Since launch Screen Burn has said a balancing patch for these sections is on its way; it has not said when or what changes, so this guide describes them as they shipped.
🤖 Patrols on parade
Rock Paper Shotgun: enemies march up and down as if on parade, and the stealth turns robotic. GamingTrend: the AI is a tad too sensitive to small movements.
😐 Too easy once learned
Push Square: block, swing, done — the stakes vanish and you stop needing stealth at all. PlayStation Universe: a bit too cut-and-dry.
🧟 Few enemy types
Creative Bloq counts about four. Push Square fewer than a handful. VGC and GamesRadar+ list limited variety as a con.
🗺️ The map does not pause
VGC wanted to read it from inside a locker; standing in the open to plan while the Weight is near felt cheap.
Every kill moves the ending
Three of the five endings are decided by Discoveries against Kills and nothing else; around twenty kills are forced on you, and the rest are your choice. Decide what you want before you start swinging.
The combat and stealth trophies
- Creative Process (bronze, missable): a kill with each of Plank, Pipe, Pistol, Shotgun, Flare Gun, Bottle and Brick in one run — the New Game+ weapons do not count.
- Missing The Point Entirely (bronze): 30 Widows, Richard's enemies in CEG Tower. Whether one run holds 30 is disputed (PowerPyx and EliteGuias: fewer; GameRant and KosGames: just over 30; a reader: 36 on Normal), and the count carries into New Game+.
- Pull! (bronze): a bottle thrown straight up and shot with the pistol. The spot: the bottle past the gate beside the Pharmacy — save inside, throw, step forward under it, shoot.
- Long-Range Masonry (bronze): a brick to the head from over 15 metres, on the corpse enemy near the Clara Woods phone booth after Richard's call — save at the booth and retry.
- Pinpoint Inaccuracy (bronze): a flare-gun headshot from over 10 metres, on the body hanging above the playground outside the CEG Locker building.
- Isolating Experience (bronze): sixty seconds in one hiding spot.
- Static Distractions (bronze): ten radio distractions, across playthroughs. Lured Off Track (bronze): twenty bottle distractions (the trophy text names bottles; KosGames says bricks count too). Alarmingly Effective (bronze): one car alarm — cars, not vans.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 22 September 2026 and re-checked on 2 October 2026 against the guides of PowerPyx, GameRant, KosGames and EliteGuias, the launch reviews at Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, GamesRadar+, IGN, PC Gamer, Push Square, PlayStation Universe, GamingTrend, TheSixthAxis, VGC, Creative Bloq and Steam Deck HQ, and Screen Burn's statement on The Weight as VGC and PlayStation Universe reported it. Whether there is a dodge, and whether weapons can be repaired, is still not described anywhere. Not from a playthrough: nobody here has played it, and what the sources do not describe is not on this page.