Silent Hill 4: The Room

Oh, how I love the "Silent Hill" franchise. Or at very least, I love aspects of it... specific chapters and select media spin-offs. I've enjoyed most of the games, got a kick out of the first feature-film despite its flaws and have picked up and very much appreciated some of the products and merchandise the series spawned over time. But, much like any fan of "Silent Hill" will likely tell you, there was a definitive turning point for the overall media franchise that signaled an unfortunate trend. A bit of a specific entry that signified great change- that being 2004's "Silent Hill 4: The Room."

It's a very unique and peculiar game in an equally unique and peculiar series. For some fans, "The Room" signals the first "bad" entry in the "Silent Hill" mythos, and symbolizes an inherent loss in quality that no subsequent game was able able to redeem itself from. For other fans, "The Room" symbolizes the last "good" entry in the series, as it was the final game worked on by the original "Team Silent", whom created the series. And for others still, it's merely a slightly wonky but adequate continuation that signaled a turn towards generally far more flawed, but still mildly enjoyable future games. And I suppose I'm in that camp. I really, genuinely admire "The Room" for what it is, but I can't help but feel that starting with this particular chapter, the series has never subsequently delivered a masterpiece along the lines of the excellent first three games. It very much started a trend in lower-quality releases... but I still love "The Room" for at least trying something new with the series, and for delivering the same horrific and highly atmospheric dread that previous games specialized in.

We follow protagonist Henry Townshend, who awakens one day in his apartment in South Ashfield to discover that his door has been chained and padlocked shut... from the inside. Stuck for days on end with his neighbors seemingly unable to hear his knocks and cries for release, Henry worries he might be losing his mind. Until one day, he finds a mysterious hole in his bathroom wall, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere. He enters, intent on escaping his imprisonment... But the hole only leads to new and nightmarish worlds that he must explore over and over again. As the story progresses, Henry learns the dark secret about what's causing his misfortune, and also grows closer to his beautiful neighbor Eileen, who eventually joins him in his quest...

In terms of concept, I actually do find "Silent Hill 4" to be among the more effective entries in the franchise. Its set-up is quality and promises great terror and intrigue. What would you do if you suddenly couldn't leave your home, and you didn't understand why? It's a great hook to get the player instantly invested, and it keeps you questioning and theorizing throughout the entirety of the game. And the concept of your apartment becoming sort-of a hub world that you must return to constantly really does add a constant sense of paranoia and claustrophobia that lends much tension. In addition, though Henry is a bit more of a blank slate than other series protagonists, I actually didn't mind- it lets your put yourself in his shoes a lot easier, and ask yourself what you'd do in his situation. The other characters are generally likable and compelling, and even though you do spend several hours of game-play accompanying her in "escort missions", Eileen is actually one of my favorite supporting characters across all of "Silent Hill."

And the atmosphere? My god, I actually think "The Room" outdoes the previous two entries in this regard. While the game lacks iconic monsters and perhaps doesn't go as crazy with the visuals as "Silent Hill 2" or "Silent Hill 3"... I actually found this one to be more effective due to its inherent simplicity. It seems to be playing up on the sort-of things that everyone finds terrifying- the unnatural contortion and modification of the human form, the startling "uncanny valley" appearance of things like children's dolls, the idea that after death one might be trapped in a spectral form that's cursed to wander forever aimlessly... it's really chilling and deceptively simple stuff that just hits you to the core.

That all being said, there are some major issues, which is why I think this game is one of the more maligned and divisive across the "Silent Hill" saga. And they all come down to the basic game-play- it's a very uneven affair. The basic controls and whatnot are only mildly tweaked from previous entries... but its the structure of the game and some of the new mechanics that are introduced that really threw me off. For example (and without spoiling anything), certain enemies must be defeated in key specific ways, but it's near impossible to accomplish this without reading a dedicated walk-through. Certain worlds must be completed multiple times, which really feels like unnecessary padding. The game's repeated escort missions suffer for the same reasons that most escort missions fail. And yeah... constantly having to go back to your apartment does get old real quick. It's a very repetitious game with very repetitious game-play, and it throws people off.

Still, I loved this game despite these faults, and I do think its unfairly dismissed all too often. It's an ambitious affair, and it makes quite a few interesting choices. And I'd rather play a bit of an ambitious mess than just another standard retread. I give "Silent Hill 4: The Room" a very good 8 out of 10.

This is the 4th game of the franchaise with number and the last one that deserves the name Silent Hill. These games have 4 ingredients to be: Epic, Terrifying, Psychological, and Sad. The 4 titles have this ingredients, but each one stands out with one of these:

Silent Hill 1 - Epic Silent Hill 2 - Sad Silent Hill 3 - Terrifying Silent Hill 4 - Psychological

I'm a huge fan if the Silent Hill series and whilst I fully understand and appreciate why so many fans rate this sequel lower than the others (because it isn't actually based in Silent Hill), I believe it's merits far outweigh their complaints.

Typically with any Silent Hill game it features strange and psychotic creatures, puzzles and battles. The controls are perfectly simple. The story-line is smooth, the characters are intriguing and the voice acting is great. But of course the graphics and the sound effects - just superb! I would not class this as one for novice game-players. It's a notch up in terms of complexity.

Synonymously, the atmosphere is overwhelmingly dark, creepy and VERY unsettling.

There are plenty of scares and frights in this one, and very often you get the feeling the whole game is TOTALLY messing with your head -- Which it is!! Enjoy it with the lights out and the sound turned UP...

Whilst every game in the SH series has been picked over and impolitely prodded every which way already, I feel I have to write my own review/nitpick of this particular title somewhere.

This game, despite being a departure from the previous trilogy, is still very much a SH title. Awkward melee combat, creepy atmosphere of the kind RE could only dream of, squeezy females to admire (hey, blame the developers for putting them in), it's all SH. With one exception, these bloody 'ghosts'. Whilst the voodoo behind it is intriguing, having a melee-based combat engine (I've been through most of the game and not used a fire arm once) with enemies you cannot kill seems a bad mistake. There are also several other issues I have with changes to the SH format, not because I hate change itself, but because they're just changes for the sake of fiddling. Almost of the changes are for the worse.

Rather than trying to paragraph it, here's a few lists of what I really liked and what I despised about this game.

Here's what I liked about the game:

* The story was good, it was interesting, I'm impressed.

* The twin-headed enemy is one of the best survival horror monsters ever, what a fantastic design.

* The first half of the game (apart from the annoying gameplay changes) was as superb as ever.

* Some aspects of the room, it was an interesting plot device and things like the notes under the door, the peep-hole and the hauntings really ramped up the atmosphere.

Here are all the problems I have with the game:

* Copying and pasting vast swathes of your own software in a vain attempt to get content for nothing sucks big style. I don't care what excuse/reason anyone comes up with, it's lazy, ignorant and someone needs beating with the ugly stick over it. If they weren't interested in creating a full game then they shouldn't have started it.

* Lack of enemy types. Again, how many survival horror games do you need to make before you bother to at least add a good dozen enemies? The ghosts really don't count, 'leeches' ... how many seconds did it take for you to think of that? Dog monsters! Oh please.

* Dog monsters. They're not part of the SH universe, what cobblers, their only association is that the SH dev. team(s) insists on clagging one into each game. I think we didn't have one for SH2, but then that's another reason to like SH2 :D Dog monsters in survival horror games have been done to death. Let's act like we're making new games, not rehashing our own success, K?

* Puzzles - where? Were they copied and pasted over by accident? Lining up a few blood-splotched rooms to jump down is neither interesting nor difficult.

* Ghosts - why? Why on earth are invincible monsters here? I really don't care if it was supposed to be another game before you clagged SH stickers on top, these do not work, the bug involving Eileen constantly slapping them shows how little the impact of these monsters has been thought over. I got stuck on more than a few occasions in tight corridors by these things. I beat you down, now stay down for 2 seconds or just get the hell out of my way, I don't want to lose precious energy just because of flawed enemies.

* Hauntings - nice idea, why do I have to sacrifice my precious energy(again) in order to deal with them/save? I've scrimped and saved my restorative items, risked being sent to Game Oversville by not using them when I'm half-dead, now you're going to crucify Harry when he isn't even in the game environment? Silly, annoying and pointless.

* Limited inventory space - if you're going to change something, at least change it because you've found something which works. How does limiting the amount of bullets I can carry, limiting the health packs I can pick up, limiting the golf clubs I can pick up HELP me to enjoy the game? Does someone on the development team think trogging back and forth to stick items in the chest is fun? Take some time off, you need it.

* Save system - as above, why? Does the thought of needless time wasting make you people happy? Take another week off.

* Prescence of ghosts sapping energy - yes, I know about the St. Christophers, but why punish us just for accessing that part of the game? This really wasn't needed or well thought-out.

So, as you might have guessed, I'm not much of a fan of SH4. What really annoys me is that it was, at its core, a solid game. If the dev. team/Konami had bothered to make sure the basic game mechanics worked, this could have been an absolute corker. I can only despair when one of the best franchises in video games is rolled out of the showroom without wheels - if SH5 isn't a major improvement then Konami can keep the rest -.-

Silent Hill 4: The Room is the most unusual entry in a most unusual video game franchise. While earlier installments in the series have focused on stories designed to evoke spine- chilling horror, this fourth chapter in the saga causes much deeper feelings of anxiety and unease. I remember being more traditionally scared playing Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, but the underlying, more psychological sensation of existential dread I felt playing this game was something altogether new.

The Silent Hill games have shown a narrative progression by which the nature of the town is expanded upon in each game. In the first two games, your character went to Silent Hill and had his horrific adventure. In the third, Silent Hill itself "came to" the main character of Heather, who merely wanted to have a nice day at the mall. In Silent Hill 4, the town has now invaded your last refuge of security, your home.

You play Henry Townshend, who lives alone in a small apartment in the bustling town of South Ashfield, half a day's drive from Silent Hill. After suffering from inexplicable nightmares, Harry awakens to find that his apartment door has been chained and padlocked shut from the INSIDE. He can't open his windows, and no one, even people standing directly outside his front door, can hear him when he pounds on the door and cries for help.

The game expertly evokes the desperate confusion and lurking fear you would feel if you simply couldn't get out of your house. The strangeness of Henry's situation is underscored by the fact that, tantalizingly, he can see the real world right outside his window, with cars and pedestrians zipping by on a street only fifty yards away. Neighbors in the apartment building opposite his can be seen going about their business (one guy, amusingly, is playing air guitar). The banality of day to day life takes on a whole new meaning when one person is suddenly set apart from it by horrific circumstances he can't understand or control. The next time you're taking a walk down the block, imagine if something terrifyingly Silent Hill-ish was happening to someone in the very house you're walking past, and you're safe outside with no way of knowing. The whole character of the neighborhood will change. That's the kind of thing the Silent Hill series does so well: conveying the deep terror that can result when what is normal and commonplace suddenly and without warning goes all WRONG.

The action begins when Henry discovers that a large hole has emerged in his bathroom wall. As it's the only way out, he must crawl through it, and doing so, finds himself in the decaying, blood-spattered environments of Silent Hill with which the series' fans have become so familiar. But this game offers alarming differences. Some of the creatures that menace you -- like the ghosts that look more like floating paralyzed corpses -- can't be killed, and others -- like the two-headed babies that walk on adult arms -- are so bizarre they beggar imagination. You're also limited in what you can carry, and the only place you can save your game is in your apartment, a safe haven you can return to through holes in walls spread throughout the levels. But even that safe haven isn't safe for long.

In earlier games, the horror, while nightmarish, was still rooted in a sense of realism that, in turn, created realistic horror. You'd walk down dark corridors or misty deserted streets armed with a flashlight and your weapon. But here, the environments are more outrageously surreal, as if you're literally wandering through a bad dream. Spiral staircases seem to float in thin air. A enormous woman's face peers at you from a hospital wall. Living tendrils of no discernible biology dangle upwards from the floor to bar your way. Wheelchairs zoom down corridors by themselves, as if it were a freeway for paraplegic ghosts. It's as if the game designers just decided to let Salvador Dali loose with 3D rendering software and instructions that he was to exercise no restraint at all in coming up with ways to freak people out.

Sometimes it gets a little TOO weird. At times I found myself less frightened by this game than morbidly intrigued; I was actually interested in getting to certain rooms just to see what kind of crazy thing I'd encounter next. In that sense, I'd have to say the earlier games work a little better as pure, edge of your seat, bloodcurdling horror. But Silent Hill 4 still does a bang-up job of generating an entirely different kind of fear, one that doesn't so much leap out at you from the dark as crawl deep into the back of your mind and lurk there.

I leave you with two pieces of advice. One: if you're new to the series, don't start here, start with 2 and 3. Two: don't take the doll.