Released back in August 2014, Konami’s Silent Hills’ PT was supposed to be a sneak peek of an SH game that never came out.
But that didn’t stop fans from turning the “play test” into a legend in itself. In fact, PT was successful at advertising a game that never came out that it spawned games itself.
Atmospheric, terrifying, and challenging in what brief moments players do get to spend with it, PT was a glimpse of a future that many people still want to make happen even though Konami has long abandoned concepts like PT. That’s a shame, too, because PT promised so many things that horror games either have never done before or have done in a hokey way. PT looked legit and fans and non-SH gamers alike were excited about the possibilities.
Without delving into what modern Konami has become, let’s just say that PT was a promise that will remain unfulfilled. While there is a myriad of reasons behind the shift in Konami’s corporate strategy, the fact that PT was a Hideo Kojima production probably didn’t help the project once the proverbial S hit the fan between the legendary producer and his longtime publisher.
But, as with all things in video games, where devs and publishers fail to act, gamers fill in the gaps.
And, thanks to a few enterprising gamers, you can now experience it in virtual reality even if you may never actually get a full game.
First, the entire play demo was remade in Unreal Engine and, as part of this process, virtual reality was enabled. This isn’t the same PT as the one Konami made, but it is close enough. Created by itch.io programmer RadiusGordello, the remake started work all the way back in April of 2018 according to Gamespot.
Called Unreal PT, everything is just as fans of the other iteration would expect. Some things are smoothed out, such as the progression through the demo being less random, but most people will not be able to tell the difference between this version and the regular version that was available for download on the PlayStation Store.
No longer available for download due to reasons Konami still hasn’t really explained, a lot of indie creators and others have attempted their own versions of PT. There is the fan-crafted Allison Road as well as a remake of PT allegedly shut down by Konami last year according to Gamespot.
Hideo Kojima, for his part, has since moved on from his time at Konami and is currently working on the much-anticipated Death Stranding, a project that involves the Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus. Not much is known about this game but it has Kojima’s trademark quirkiness from what anyone can tell by early trailers.
If you’d like to run Unreal PT on your computer, Gamespot has the following minimum system requirements listed on their website: CPU: i3-7100U 7th Generation with Intel HD 620, GPU: Integrated, and at least 8GB DDR4 of RAM.
