Silent Hill 4: The Room is a scary game that won't disappoint the fans.
User Rating: 8.1 | Silent Hill 4: The Room XBOX
Silent Hill 4: The Room is a scary game that won't disappoint the fans. Silent Hill 4: The Room Genre - Survival Horror Developer - Konami What it's about: You play as Henry Townshend who lives in apartment number 302 in Ashfield Heights. Recently he has been having nightmares, and ever since those nightmares began his room locked him in from the outside world. There are chains bolted to his door, his power doesn't work, his phone cord is cut, and no matter what he does it seems that nobody on the outside can hear him pound on the door or windows for help. One day he hears a noise coming from his bathroom, and when he checks it out he finds that a whole has appeared suddenly. Desperate to get out, Henry crawls into the hole. Unfortunately that wasn't the way out. That was only one step closer to Hell. Story 8/10 - The Silent Hill series has always had very intriguing stories, and this one is no different. Silent Hill 4 focuses the most attention on the Silent Hill cult than any other past games did. You will learn what the orphanage did to the children, and also how far they went to brainwash their minds with a religion that of only the Devil would appreciate. The games main villain is not your typical Silent Hill monster (Pyramid Head: Silent Hill 2), but just a murderer named Walter Sullivan. The game focuses around Walter and how he killed ten people in ten days before killing himself in his jail cell (with a spoon: OUCH). Now it seems Walter may have returned to finish what he started. If your a fan of the series, you may know that Walter Sullivan was only briefly mentioned in Silent Hill 2 when you read one of the news articles you find in the trash can. This is a rather interesting thing to notice. The games story unfolds little by little as you travel back and forth between the hellish worlds of Silent Hill, and your room 302. Like most survival horror games, if you want to understand the full story you have to collect a lot of information laying around areas. Whether it be a diary or a memo, they always have something to say that’s relevant to the storyline. Gameplay 7.5/10 - Silent Hill 4 tries to take a new approach at gameplay style. In some areas it seems to pay off, in others, not so much. You will spot the first gameplay problem right at the beginning of the game when you must control Henry in first person view. The default controls for it are quite bad, even if your used to the genre. Your apartment room always puts you in control of Henry in first person view, so you either have to get used to the controls, or change them to better ones (like I did). Once you get out of the apartment and into the actual world of Silent Hill via bathroom wall hole, the game is played in third person like it should be. Unlike other Silent Hill games, in this game the battle system is a little better, and you get a life bar to keep track of your health without having to check your menu every moment you get whacked by a demon. You are now able to build up your attack strength with melee weapons by holding the attack button down and then releasing it for a powerful attack. This was a neat idea that allows you to link combos together on monsters if you want to, but don't be expecting anything like Devil May Cry. You will find a lot of weapons in this game, but not too many guns. There’s a reason for this, and it's the biggest problem with the gameplay by far. Unlike other Silent Hill games, you can now only hold up to ten items. This would be okay if they allowed bullets to stack on top of one another, but they don't. In other words if you have a pistol and fifty bullets for it then it will take up five spaces of your item slots if you want to bring them with you, and with the other junk you have to carry and pick up such as keys, health drinks, and a melee weapon five spaces is really too much to fill. If you could drop items and come back for them (ala Resident Evil Zero), then it wouldn't be too bad either, but yet again, nope. Instead of dropping items off anywhere in a world you will have to find a hole to travel in back to your apartment room to store the items in a storage chest similar to the ones you find in Resident Evil. During the first half of the game this isn't a problem, but later in the game it becomes a big chore to do every fifteen-thirty minutes or so. Because of this problem I found myself never using the pistol, that’s right, I beat the game using a melee weapon because ammo takes up all my item slots. The monsters in the game are all new, but some may look familiar if you played other games in the series. The newest and most talked about addition is the "Ghost" or "Spirit" monster. These monsters are very creepy at first, but eventually get annoying as they can not be killed. You will find yourself avoiding them for the first half of the game before you can obtain the item needed to stop them in their tracks, but even then their not dead by definition. The monster A.I. isn't too hot either. It may appear the monsters have gotten smarter, but they are only reacting to you when you have your weapon raised to them. I was able to kill monsters many times without them even fighting back, or trying to attack me first. Demon dogs have ran past me in order to attack a wall on several occasions, and other monsters would whack the air thinking it was me. I literally went on a hunt killing all the monsters I could due to their sometimes retarded A.I. This isn't saying the monsters won't scare the hell out of you from time to time, but it's only saying that once your used to it, none of the monsters will pose much of a threat regardless of what weapon you use.Since the entire item system has changed your no longer able to mix items together. This takes away those traditional Silent Hill riddles where mixing two key items made an item needed to progress through the game. Silent Hill 4 is practically void of any riddles at all. Simple things like imputing key numbers into something are the only kind of riddles you will find, including one semi-hard one where you must rotate three floors of a building to line up with certain rooms. Silent Hill 4 is an impressive and fun game to play, and offers some unlockables and good scares. As long as you get around it's rough edges you'll enjoy this game just as much as any other in the series. The game lasts for around ten hours, so it's one of the longest in the series. Graphics 9.5/10 - Silent Hill 3 was one of the most impressive visual games of last year, and this game is no different. The character models are all well done and animated. The textures used in each area looks great. There is even a part in the game where the walls look like moving bloody flesh. The monsters are done well and animated well. Each one is scarier than the last and it's all thanks to the graphics. Lighting and frame rate is all great, and collision detection is very rare. Silent Hill 4 is an all around great looking game. Controls 8/10 - No controls in any survival horror game can be considered great. The controls for the genre get bashed all the time, but the controls are that way for a reason. For fans of the series it should be nice to know the controls are basically the same as before except now you have the ability to build up your attack power by holding down a button. The worst thing with the controls for me was the first person mode while walking around in Henry's room. I felt like I was really controlling a tank. Although the fact that the controls could be adjusted to handle better in first person mode was nice. If your a fan of the series or genre then the controls should be easy to get the hang of. Sound 8.5/10 - Silent Hill 4 is anything but silent. This game relies a lot on sound to scare the hell out of you, and guess what? It works. Most of the time the sounds that the monsters give off will freak you out more than the monsters themselves. There isn't much music in the game at all except distorted creepy music mixed with background noises. That is how the sound tricks you by making you think the background noises are the monsters when in fact the noises come from nowhere at all. The voice acting isn't exactly great, but it's not hilariously bad so it doesn't effect the vibe of the game. With Dolby digital surround sound built into this game as well, it's sure to scare the hell out of you at nights alone in your house with the lights out and windows closed. Reply Value: 8/10 - Although it may be true playing a Survival Horror game for a second time through isn't as scary as the first time, but when your offered cool unlockables just for the hell of it it may be fun to play again. Silent Hill 4 has multiple endings, costumes, and weapons for you to get by beating the game on a certain difficulty or by doing a certain task during the game. There are also plenty of easter eggs in Silent Hill 4 that link together with other Silent Hill games, and by replaying the game again searching and observing more things, you may uncover more about the story that you never knew. It's an interesting game with an interesting story so replying it again if you missed some things should be fun. Overall Score 8.2/10 - Silent Hill 4: The Room is a scary game that won't disappoint the fans. The background ambient surround sound and creepy locations set the mood perfectly for the game. If your a fan of the series then it would be wise to pick this game up, and any fan of the genre should enjoy this game as well. Silent Hill 4 is a horror game that truely delivers. The Sweet - Hitting monsters down on the ground while on a set of stairs and watching them tumble down the stairs one step at a time. - Collecting all the golf clubs in the game. The Good - The new battle system and health bar are a really nice addition. Being able to charge up melee attack power was a nice idea to make the game more enjoyable. You can even pull off combos, but don't expect anything spectacular like we see in most action games. Being able to see your health without clicking the menu every five seconds is also nice. The Bad - Monster A.I. is sometimes dumb. - The default controls in first person mode suck. The Ugly - Items don't stack and in order to swap items out for other items you have to go all the way back to your apartment by using a hole gateway. At first this isn't a problem, but later in the game it tends to get ugly. - Although charging up for the powerful melee strikes adds to the interesting gameplay it also adds to an ugly problem. During a fully built up attack Henry is invulnerable to attacks from monsters, so in other words if you timed your attacks right and use a fast weapon you can beat monsters down while they attack you. This causes some ugly collision detection and makes the game somewhat unbelievable. You May Also Enjoy - The Suffering, Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, Fatal Frame, The Thing 
