In Silent Hill 4 (SH4) you take the role of Henry Townsend, a regular rugged-looking bachelor who has just moved into his new apartment in Ansfield not long ago. He loved his new place and probably loves the stinking toilet. Things started well for him but it has taken a turn for the worse when he started getting nightmares; ghostly figures crawling out of walls, and somehow his apartment door got chained up in hap-hazard manner and he realized that he is trapped in his own apartment. He doesn't know why or how this happened and there was a message carved on the door, in red, saying: Don't go out! – Walters. In Henry's room he has kept a picture of a Silent Hill church which somehow gives the idea that this game has a link to the previous games in the series but that is up to you guys to find out. Henry is totally trapped in the apartment in the sense that he cannot open any of the windows of his apartment. He can look out of the windows but no manner of banging on the windows or screaming would help. It is as if the outside world is in another dimension and he existed in another. Phone lines are out as well and a girl called for help. An old parchment with cryptic meanings could prove to be a clue to all these madness … and this is where you take over to uncover the mystery behind this unexplainable phenomenon. SH4 is very much puzzle-oriented. In-game graphics are impressive and combats at normal mode are tough. You get all the regular monsters in most standard zombie games like the dogs and multi-leg crawlers which if you ask me is kind of repetitive ... Some of the monsters could be very scary, for example there were floating ghosts that would crawl out of walls, then there was this escalator part where you keep on getting hit by monsters to prevent you from going up( These monsters are half buried into the walls from the waist downwards) In SH4 you have a 1st person view when you are navigating through various items in front of you in your room. You interact with items via an eye-shaped cursor and you have a 3rd person view once you get into the maze and either run like nobody else's business or fend off numerous blood thirsty monsters. Controls again prove to be the downfall of this game, most of the times you will be hit by monsters because your attacks are irritatingly slow compared to them and I don't know why the designers have added a "stamina" bar/indicator for your character Henry. Once you make the third consecutive hit using your golf-club/steel bar, Henry will swing in 180 degree fashion (In exhaustion) and you are wide open for attacks from the monsters during that latent period. You have to press R2 button to pose and then only hit your target by pressing X button (you can also reconfigure your controls in the options menu) and this gets very annoying when you are up against zombie dogs which are fast and they jump at you. You can strafe right but strafe left at some points of the game is non-functional (Maybe it is a bug in the game, I am not sure though) In this game you are basically running Merry-go-round in a very huge maze and after some time it really gets to your nerves. Environmental effects are good, you can see blood-stained walls, corrugated ceilings, massive sewage pipes all in great graphical detail. It is awfully quiet and scary in the subways and you keep wondering what is waiting for you around each corner or turn that you take. You meet up with some Non-player characters such as the girl Cynthia who will tell you that everything you see is a dream and she promises a "treat" if you help her escape. There was this part when you wait outside the toilet for Cynthia to finish vomiting which send goose bumps all over you. For some reason she was in the toilet for too long and never came back out. Suddenly the toilet door slowly eased open. Your pulse rate could have easily elevated 10 times more than the normal. The background music is scary; sound effects are crisp and good. When the floating ghosts come near you, your game pad will vibrate and together with the ghastly breathing sounds of the ghost you could have easily wet your pants. Pros: Excellent graphics, great environmental details, scary BGM and sound effects, intense horror of being chased, good story line and plot. English and Japanese languages available Cons: bad combat controls, bad camera angles (Henry's buttocks blocking your view) repetitive maze-like environment. Monsters and zombies similar to most standard horror games in the market.
Waking up inside your bedroom, you've just witnessed hell unfold in your own apartment. Confused and dazzled, you make your way to the front door and find its chained up with a message that reads "Don't Go out Walter!". ... Read Full Review
This is actually quite hard game for me to review as it is quite an odd chapter in the Silent Hill series in that while staying true to the series in some respects, it is quite a departure in others, which upon initial r... Read Full Review
