Silent Hill 4: The Room Review

Platform Reviewed: PS2

Silent Hill 4: Overview

If you’re a youngster, you probably shouldn’t even be reading this review, let alone playing the game. Konami’s breakaway hit, Silent Hill 4 is just as creepy (if not creepier) than ever before. The previous Silent Hill games all took place in the town Silent Hill, or somehow pulled you into it. This is a step away, however, as you play an unlucky bastard of a hero, Henry Townshend, that lives in a town just outside Silent Hill, South Ashfield. He wasn’t doing too horribly badly in life until he woke up to find himself chained up inside of his apartment… hence the name The Room. Since the front door is bolted up, Henry looks for other means to escape, finding only a man-sized hole that he inevitably climbs through, starting your journey into the once again haunted vision of the Silent Hill series.

Silent Hill 4: Gameplay

As with the other Silent Hill games, the controls seem purposely funky. By that I mean, as opposed to the smooth and easy controls you find in most horror games, it seems they purposely make you play a character who is as befuddled as you might find yourself to be in a similar situation. For the most part, your character is not a “bad-ass.” You are a scared, freaked out little boy of a man, trying to survive this horrible episode. This game is best played in the dark, at night, and if you have some friends who enjoy that kind of thing, invite them over because you may find yourself needing the moral support. Silent Hill seems to have done what the Matrix did for movies back in the day, stirring up a harem of wild theories as to what the hell is going on. If you played the other games and your only real gripe was that even after beating the game, you had no clue as to what was happening, this game does seem to divulge the most story to date for the average player. They definitely don’t get too detailed, but with a Silent Hill movie in pre-production, they definitely had to make things a little more coherent for those of us who don’t do acid and delve entirely too deep into the world of Silent Hill. To those of you who haven’t played this game before, you may assume that it’s kind of like Resident Evil. WRONG! As I said, you are not the “bad ass.” You spend the most of the game running from the ghosts and ghouls, not fighting them. For example, you have a sword that you can thrust into a ghost’s body, stabbing it into the ground. This will hold the ghost there so that you can explore the room while it is writhing in pain. However; you only get three of these swords throughout the whole game, so you constantly have to free the ghosts when your duty is done. There was another aspect of the game that I thought was very interesting: When you start the game, your apartment is a safe place for you to go and recover life, although it does start to show signs of being a haven to the damned. As your apartment becomes more corrupted by the dark forces, it changes and the apartment starts to *take* life from you, giving the game this excellent arch that works you into the game and then keeps you running for your life until the end comes in one form or another.

Silent Hill 4: The Doctor’s Orders

Moms and Dads, beware. Silent Hill 4 is one of those games that the church warns you about… Well, okay, it’s one of the games that they probably should warn you about. When I went to pick this game up from the local video game store, I had played the previous games and thought I knew what line of grotesque awaited me, but as I brought the game to the counter a grown adult took it from my hand and froze for a moment, obviously paralyzed with the recollection of some vicious incident. When I asked him if he had played this one, he turned pale and warned me: “Yeah…” He seemed nervous just talking about it. “I played all of the other ones, but this one….” At first I thought he was joking and I laughed. He looked at me like I was already dead. “No, man. This one is seriously disturbing.” The way he said the words seriously disturbing honestly made me hesitant for a second, but then my sheer morbid curiosity kicked into play. I bought the game, continuing my transaction in silence, but when I got home that night and popped it in, I saw what he meant. Silent Hill 4: The Room is eerily disturbing on a level that few other video games have toyed with, but this game makes even a liberal enthusiast video game lover like me wonder where the line is that should never be crossed.

Anyhow, it is a very excellent play and will most definitely affect you in ways that video games have never managed in the past. If you have what it takes to get to the other side though, you will be better for it.