Game: Silent Hill 4: The Room Publisher: Konami Developer: KCET Systems: PS2, Xbox, PC N.A. Release Date: September 07, 2004 (PS2, XBox) September 09, 2004 (PC) Score: 8.4 (Out of 10)

Silent Hill 4: The Room Review

K onami’s SILENT HILL series is unique amongst horror games in that it has always been about more than hoarding ammunition and killing brainless beasts. While games like Capcom’s RESIDENT EVIL and it’s bevy of imitators have always focused on the finer points of collecting keys and separating the undead from their craniums, SILENT HILL has always gone for a deeper scare. Rather than trying to get gamers to soil themselves when monsters smash suddenly through windows, they try to turn those gamers into habitual bed-wetters by creating a sense of pervasive fear that turns every shadow and every noise into something seemingly unholy. Some gamers are turned off by this slower kind of gameplay, which draws heavily on symbolism and surrealism to tell its stories, turning the monsters into a Rorschach of the protagonist’s subconscious and the levels into a decent into the pathways of a twisted psyche. Where many games halt your forward progress by throwing a locked door in your path and making you search out the key, SILENT HILL does so by removing doors that you knew were just there, or creating new ones in areas you just explored. You progress by discovering some deeper truth about your character or the greater plot, uncovering a piece of the games’ deep and convoluted back story, or by making a psychological breakthrough into your character’s psyche. Each game in the series tells a relatively unconnected tale of personal horror, but there are common threads connecting them all; subtle clues and snippets of old stories that diligent players can gradually piece together to try to ferret out SILENT HILL’S ancient mysteries. This kind of gameplay is a little too deep for the kind of player who would rather get his jollies disintegrating a zombie’s head with a close-range shotgun blast (an incredibly satisfying feeling, I must admit). But those who have been fans since the early days of SILENT HILL’s original Playstation roots, it has always been about uncovering the mysteries behind what is fueling the horrors this time in the misty little tourist town. While the most recent game in the franchise, SILENT HILL 4: THE ROOM, will not disappoint these fans or anyone who appreciates a deep, supernatural mystery, those who just want to kill freaky monsters or who are easily frustrated may want to sit this nightmare out. THE ROOM is pure SILENT HILL, only more so.

This story focuses on Henry Townsend, who lives in apartment 302 of South Ashfield Heights, in the town of South Ashfield. His apartment is full of photographs he has taken of the nearby lakeside town of Silent Hill, a town he is very fond of. That, of course, is about to change. Henry awakes one day to find himself trapped inside his apartment and unable to contact the outside world in any way. The door has been locked with heavy chains from the inside, and the words “Don’t Go Out- Walter” has been scrawled on it in red. His windows, which look out on the street and other parts of the apartment complex, will not open, will not break, and no one can seem to see or hear him through them, no matter how hard he pounds on them and how loud he yells. The phone usually doesn’t work, and when it does, it only emits disturbing and otherworldly noises. The television doesn’t even work, and the radio works only sporadically. In short, Henry is entirely cut off from the world outside. He can observe it through his windows, but he can’t interact with it in any way. Furthermore, he is being plagued by horrible nightmares and headaches and only has a bottle of wine and a container of chocolate milk in the fridge. This goes on for five days, when suddenly he hears a noise coming from the bathroom. When he goes to investigate, he finds a large whole in the wall, which should lead into another apartment, but instead goes much deeper than it should. Not faced with a lot of options, Henry climbs through, only to find himself in a dark and twisted parody of the subway station across the street. Here there are horrible monsters, ghosts that can’t be killed, and damsels in distress. And, of course, disturbing and psyche destroying images and events that make Raccoon City look like the Magic Kingdom. After one of these horrible events, Henry comes to and finds himself back in the apartment, still trapped inside. But the apartment is getting more oppressive, the hole in the bathroom is getting bigger, and it seems his neighbors are being drawn into the horrors. Each time Henry climbs into the hole, he ends up in a different, but still horrible and twisted, environment, spiraling ever closer to an unholy mystery whose roots are buried in Silent Hill.

Though at first the game seems unconnected to the storylines of the earlier games in the series, veteran SILENT HILL players will soon realize that the game centers on characters, events, and environs alluded to in the other games. Some of these are subtle asides to events that happened earlier in the series, but some of them are major events central to SILENT HILL 4 that were mentioned in an offhand way in notes or articles in the previous games. While it is thrilling for hardcore fans of the series to start to unravel this convoluted chain of events and see the series coalescing as a whole, it is subtle enough that casual Silent Hill fans and those new to the series should be able to jump right in and not even know that they are missing something. As always, the story is intricately crafted, twisted, and disturbing. It successfully balances between telling you precisely what is going on and making you dig through the surreal images and cryptic messages to uncover the game’s deeper mysteries. This game, like the other SILENT HILL games before it, can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. If you want to just plow through, find out who the big bad guy is, and try to kill them, you can do that and not feel totally lost (unless you are the type who skips cutscenes and doesn’t read messages, in which case, you’re screwed). Or you can analyze every image and record you come across and try to uncover the deeper psychological truths and unravel the game’s heavy symbolism. One thing you can’t accuse this game of is being shallow.

The game is a mixture of new and classic elements from the series, but fans may be shocked by what didn’t make the cut. Gone are the flashlight and the radio, two elements that were the series hallmarks. In previous games the levels were so dark and/or mist enshrouded that the only illumination was a small pool of radiance created by your pocket flashlight. Since you couldn’t see monsters in the dark, you were given a broken radio, which created feedback when monsters came near, and grew louder the closer they got. It created a very creepy effect in that you knew they were coming, but not from where, until they finally shuffled or oozed into the beam of your flashlight. It created a pervasive feeling of really being lost and alone in a primordial darkness, surrounded by nearly invisible abominations bent on devouring your flesh. Now the areas have dim but sufficient ambient lighting created by fires, streetlights, flickering fluorescents, and so on, and you can see and hear enemies from much further away. The heavy fog of earlier games is also more or less gone, and is used only for a few enemy-free areas. This makes the game’s great graphics a lot easier to appreciate at the cost of some of the series’ most effective scare tactics. It also allows them to do some neat things with soft lighting, subtle shading effects, and some really gorgeous light halos. So you have to take the good with the bad.

Another big change is having a “hub” area in the game from which to launch your “missions”. They don’t use this terminology, and it is actually very effective, but it boils down to the same thing. Rather than running from area to area through the streets or by subway, or boat, or whatever, you simply wake up in your bedroom at the end of every level, and then jump into the portal to take you to the next one. However, the way that they do this is one of the most successful new features in the game. When in you apartment, everything is from the first-person perspective, and since you are “safe” there, you do not use weapons. Instead the game uses the more personal view to create a feeling of isolation and claustrophobia by having you wander around viewing the world outside your room but unable to interact with it. You will be able to look out the windows, through your door’s peephole, or eventually through a small hole in your wall into the room of the cutie that lives next door. You will be able to hear some of your neighbors’ conversations, watch them go about their daily lives, and try in vain to get their attention as they stand right outside and wonder what the heck is going on in apartment 302. On the upside, the room is a “safe” area: just being there will heal you, there are no enemies, and it is the only place in the game where you can save your progress. However, as the game goes on, your safe place slowly begins to change, taking on some of the aspects of the twisted version of reality on the outside of the wall. The walls will begin to decay, the familiar pictures and objects will take on a sinister quality, and strange images and noises will begin to invade. What is worse, the apartment will eventually become more and more haunted, as windows will rattle, appliances will bleed, faces will appear in the walls, and much worse. You can try to fight off this unholy invasion with special holy items, attempting to keep the supernatural entropy in check. This whole process, watching your haven turn on you and become a personal hell, is one of the most interesting and frightening parts of the game.

When outside of the apartment, the game is from the traditional third-person perspective, but is not entirely free of changes. First of all, unlike the other Silent Hill games, you can actually see your Health Meter at the top of the screen, which is an odd aesthetic choice that takes you out of the fiction. In previous games, you could tell how hurt your character was by their visual deterioration on screen, and by the throbbing of their overburdened hearts in the controller. To see exactly how badly you were hurt, you had to go to a submenu to see a visual representation of their health. The bar at the top of the screen makes it just a tad less realistic and visceral experience, which makes the next change even harder to swallow. Previously, since there was no central hub, or a magical item box like in RESIDENT EVIL, you were able to carry every item you found, no matter how bulky the item was or how many of them you had, realism be damned. In this game, Henry can only carry ten items at a time, and in order to get more, you have to return to the room and deposit un-needed items into a box. What is worse, items of the same kind don’t stack, which means you need a separate slot for each spare box of bullets, and if you have three health drinks, each one takes a separate slot. This means a LOT of going back and dropping stuff off so that you will have room for the key item that you need to proceed. And you can’t drop things once you pick them up, except in the item box. So basically, in an attempt to be more realistic, they changed the inventory system to make it more like RESIDENT EVIL was seven years ago, then added a health meter and made it LESS realistic.

Another thing that has always been unique about SILENT HILL is its use of makeshift hand-held weapons, such as the infamous “board with a nail in it” from SILENT HILL 2, rather than giving you grenade launchers and assault rifles (SILENT HILL 3’s short-lived submachine gun aside). They must have decided they were on to something with this, because SILENT HILL 4’s arsenal is made up almost entirely of melee weapons. In fact, there are only three guns in the entire game: two kind of pistols in the regular game and a secret weapon for the game’s secondary character, making this one of the first action games in history not to have a shotgun! Instead your inventory will become heavy with rusty axes, baseball bats, golf clubs, the classic lead pipe, a broken bottle, a box cutter, and even a shovel, amongst many others. Furthermore, each of these weapons has a special attack that can be charged up so that Henry can crush his foes with a mighty swing or brutal crushing blow (the meter for this is at the top of the screen, right next to the bloody health meter). While the makeshift weapons has always been one of my favorite things about the SILENT HILL series, with the new limited inventory system you will find that you will soon pick a favorite weapon and keep it in your inventory, rather than be able to carry around and experiment with a new weapon that does roughly the same damage as the one you already have. Honestly, who would have even tried to use the cumbersome Great Knife or the Maul from previous games, if they took up the space of a faster and trustier weapon?

The things that you will be smacking with said weapons are as disturbing and creepily gorgeous looking as ever. There are blistered and boil-ridden hounds with three-foot long tongues, two-headed squalling baby monsters, twisted and lumpy gorilla men, monstrosities that emerge from the very walls, and many others. But while many of these are simply aesthetic variations on monsters you’ve faced in previous SILENT HILL games, the game’s unstoppable ghosts are the game’s real challenge. Ghosts are tied directly into the game’s storyline, and each one isunique and has a name, a history, and unique patterns of pursuit and attack. Even being in the same area as a ghost drains Henry’s health, and if they actual strike you, the result is devastating. They can pass through walls, in an animation that looks both terrifying and incredibly painful, as their essence is forced through solid wood and rock. Though you can hit them, and even knock them down, they only stay down for a heartbeat, and when they get up, they will be pissed. The only way take them out permanently is by knocking them down and shoving an artifact called the Sword of Obedience through their chests, pinning them to the ground. There they will stay, unable to move or hurt anyone and making the most pitiful of noises, until the Sword is removed. Unfortunately, there are only five Swords in the entire game, and more than a dozen ghosts, so you will have to be choosy with which ghosts permanently earn a Sword to the breadbox. Still, as creepy and exhilarating as it is to try to dodge these ghosts, there are certainly going to be those who will be frustrated and annoyed by these persistent spooks, especially when trying to protect the game’s secondary character through the second half of the game.

For spoiler reasons, I won’t say who that character is, but protecting them is the main storyline of the game’s back end. They will follow you wherever you go, but are a little slower due to some injuries they sustained earlier in the game. And the more they get hit, the worse these injuries become and the slower they move. While the character can never be killed, they can become “cursed”, as their injuries weaken them and open them up to the dark forces at work in the game. When things get really bad, they will even attack you, and exhibit ghost-like behavior! Needless to say, keeping them safe is in your best interest, and luckily, they are not just walking baggage. If you give them a weapon, which are different from Henry’s and can only be used by this character, due to the nature of their injuries, they will do their best to help Henry fight, and run to make sure foes that Henry drops stay down. If they are not equipped with a weapon, they will run away from all enemies, and do a pretty good job of it too. There are two problems with this system. First of all, if you are trying to hurry through an area with enemies you can’t fight, like ghosts, and one of them gets between you and the secondary character, they will turn and run away… and away from you and the exit you were running for, forcing you to go back for them. If you have them in “fight” mode, they will run straight at the ghosts and attack them, even though they can’t be defeated. Secondly, there is a nasty enemy that pursues you through most of the last part of the game, and their attacks can really beat the hell out of your charge. It is from this foe that both of you will probably sustain the most damage, and there is no way to permanently heal your companion. And this is for the entire second half of the game.

One final gameplay element that will surely irk veterans of the series is the lack of the complex logic based puzzles that were a highlight of previous SILENT HILL games. Where before you could set the difficulty of these puzzles to determine how much of an Einstein you needed to be to advance, in SILENT HILL 4 they are entirely gone, and that is a huge downer. The puzzles in this game are mostly of the fetch-quest variety, and few of them take much of your melon to complete. One of them adds insult to injury, as you must carry a torch through enemy infested areas with your companion in tow, so that you can see into some wells and retrieve some key items… a task that would have been much easier if you had the flashlight from the previous games. While the logic-based riddles from the previous games weren’t very realistic (why did someone lock a key in an incinerator with a number based on an Ornithology puzzle, or hang corpses that you had to tug on in a certain order?) they were very clever and thought provoking, and added a cerebral layer to the series that is sorely missed.

But as long time fans know, story is the most important part of the SILENT HILL experience, and in this aspect, SILENT HILL 4 doesn’t disappoint. It is creepy and intricate, highly disturbing, and everything that a game is this series should be. Unfortunately, it is also the one aspect of the game that I can’t talk too much about, for fear of ruining the experience. Like an M. Night Shyamalan film, these games usually have some astounding twists, and if someone ruins them for you, they have diminished the entire game. Suffice to say that those who have been following the game’s intricate stories will not be disappointed, and those who are new to the series are in for a really unsettling treat.

With all the time I’ve already spent talking about this game, it barely needs to be said, but the game’s graphics, sound, story, and gameplay are all astoundingly good. The music, by series’ composer Akira Yamaoka is as haunting and memorable as you would expect, though I still prefer the purely orchestral pieces from before he decided to add lyrics to the themes (which started with SILENT HILL 3). That having been said, the game’s main lullaby theme is nearly as eerie and evocative as the themes of the first two games, and that is saying a lot. The voice acting is solid, and though sometimes the characters don’t seem like they are terribly surprised or disturbed by the twisted events around them, there are some characters and moments that really shine. The graphics are fantastic, and comparable between the PS2, XBOX, and PC versions of the game. Since the game was made in 2004, it isn’t going to stand up against new generation games like GEARS OF WAR or DEAD RISING (though the game is backward compatible between the Xbox and 360 and the PS2 and PS3 systems, and so can still be played on Next Gen systems), but for the time in which it was made, it is damn pretty. The XBOX and PC versions are a little crisper, but that hardly matters since the game still uses the grainy effect filter from previous entries in the series. There are some great particle and liquid effects similar to the “liquid shadow” effect from SILENT HILL 3, and a subtle but neat effect when you step out of a portal that duplicates the “visual noise” of 8mm film. The game runs smoothly on all three versions of the game, but the controls feel very strange on the PC, as most third-person action games do. Otherwise, the game is identical between the three versions, so no one is getting left out in terms of content.

All in all, SILENT HILL veterans and horror fans in general should find a LOT to like in SILENT HILL 4: THE ROOM, despite some strange design choices. Everything that made the series great is still intact, and most of the new elements are clever, well implemented, and effective. But most importantly, the SILENT HILL series still tells the best horror story around, and should keep you from turning the lights off in YOUR room for weeks to come.