Silent Hill 4: The Room
While an older title, released back in ’04. I felt I had to review this, as it is one of my favorite games on the story alone.
Environments and exploration I feel is presented good in this game. You travel through environments; room 302, Henry’s apartment, Ashfield’s subway, a forest on the outskirts of Silent Hill, a prison that is in the middle of Taluca Lake, South Ashfield Heights apartment complex, the disjointed alley ways of Ashfield. The connection to all these locations is that Walter has been there before as a child. The worlds are entirely linear, though there is some exploration but nothing like Silent Hill 1-3 had, with an open town ripe for exploring corner drug stores or gas station for extra ammo or health potions.
Combat has been improved a little with various types of swings, most seem rather weak, but if you press attack enough or hold down on it, you will have a charge attack that is quite viscous, which allows the player to be temporarily invulnerable. I am not sure if that was suppose to happen from a design aspect, but it does make some fights easier when surrounded on all sides. I must say I used melee far more than guns in this game, far more than the other Silent Hill games before it, since there is a limited inventory. Oh, and ghosts suck, they don’t die, Henry has headaches when near them which will harm him.
Puzzles this time around are much more like fetch quests rather than intricate Shakespeare or hangman puzzles. Is this good? I wouldn’t say it is, but I don’t really want to be stumped on a puzzle for hours on end either, so I’ve learned just to accept it, saves me time for the most part.
End notes. I remember buying the game for $50 at launch, and being really excited. I really hated the changes from previous Silent Hills initially, yet it seems the story is undying as I seem to come back for more. While I haven’t beaten this game some 14 times like Silent Hill 2, I have done it 7 times, this review making it the 8th. And that, I think speaks louder than any of my words. A powerful narrative about some psycho who wants to create heaven in Henry’s apartment. Really, my only suggestion is play it on easy for the story, I wouldn’t want someone to get stuck and really have to use the “survival” aspect of survival horror, since you can run out of health items and not be able to heal in your “safe zone” the apartment. Harder difficulties will add tension and fear, but mostly just frustration because of ghosts.
Here is a youtube to show off the first 5 minutes of the game, if only to give a presentable atmosphere. I’ll amend the post with a snipit of each world, I think.
Ryan
