Silent Hill 4: The Room
PlayStation 2
Nostalgia Factor:
I used to be a pretty big fan of the Silent Hill series. I gobbled up the first two games in the series when they first came out, but for some reason I never got around to buying the third. I did, however, end up purchasing Silent Hill 4: The Room. The year was 2004. I spent a lot of time playing this game with my ex-girlfriend Jessica. Both her and I were obsessed with this title for a pretty long time. Looking back on my time playing the game, the main thing that jumps out at is me how different this game was than other titles in the Silent Hill series. Mainly: the first person segments. The other thing I can remember is being pretty scared by this game as well. There are some cool haunting effects that take place inside the room that had both me and Jessica on the edge of our seats.
Other than that, I couldn’t remember much else about the game except that I really liked it. Assuming I played this game into 2005, that means that about 14 years have passed since I last gave it a whirl. Would it still hold up in 2019? Some of it, yes…. but for the most part no.
Story:
In Silent Hill 4: The Room, you take control of a man named Henry Townshend. Henry wakes up one day to find himself locked inside his own apartment. There are chains barring his front door, his phone doesn’t work, the windows won’t open. No one can hear any noises Henry makes. He can, however, still observe the outside world. Everything seems to be moving along as normal outside his windows. When he looks out his front door peephole, he can see people in the hallway and hear the conversations they are having. After a few days of this weirdness going on, a large mysterious hole appears in the wall in Henry’s bathroom. Since Henry really has nothing better to do with his time, he crawls inside of it to check things out.
Throughout the game, this hole takes Henry to several different sites, where at each one he witnesses a different murder. These sites include a subway station, an orphanage, a prison, a hospital, and an apartment complex. In between each of these trips, Henry returns home to his room, where it is starting to fall into disarray as it becomes more and more haunted. Someone also begins slipping notes under the front door. I am not gonna lie, I found the notes to be pretty cryptic and confusing. To me, they looked like gibberish and explained nothing at all as to what was going on in the game. Looking online, however, the notes apparently explain that there is some kind of ritual going on where 21 people need to be sacrificed, and Henry has been witnessing these murders.
During a foray into the “hole world”, Henry comes across a woman named Eileen, who coincidentally (or not?) is his next-door neighbor. Apparently she was intended to be one of the victims for the ritual, but he saves her from death. The whole rest of the game, Eileen acts as a companion character who joins you on your journey. Long story short, Henry stops the killer and puts an end to the craziness. Game over. There is a lot more going on here that I didn’t bother recapping, but to be honest I didn’t really understand most of what was happening in the game. The game doesn’t do a great job at explaining what is going on. You either have to be really astute to pick up on these clues, or you have to look online (like I did) for easy answers.
Gameplay:
This is definitely the most unique of the Silent Hill games that I have played. Henry’s room acts as the game’s hub world. While in the room, you control things from a first person perspective. There is a save point and a chest where you can store items. Obviously, the portals that take you out of your room are located inside your apartment. There isn’t much else to do here, other than things that advance the story, such as reading notes, looking out your peephole, and spying on your neighbor Eileen. The deeper into the game you progress, the more haunted your room becomes. For example, you may notice a big ugly stain on the wall that looks like it is made out of faces. Get too close to the wall, and you start to lose health. You want to combat these hauntings by placing candles near them. You want to keep your apartment as pristine as possible so that you can get one of the game’s good endings.
When not in your apartment, The Room plays out like a regular Silent Hill game. Same control scheme, same map scheme, same combat. One thing that is different about this game is that it tends to be more focused on fighting. In previous Silent Hill games, I always found it better to run from enemies and save my ammo and health items. In this game, I found it much more beneficial to just kill everything in sight so they would leave me alone. Part of this could be because of the close quarters situations you find yourself in in this game. Other Silent Hill games had more open spaces that you could use to your advantage to shake your opposition. This one does not.
I do have a few bones to pick regarding this game’s design. I don’t like the fact that so many of the stages are repeats. I didn’t mind visiting the subway, the orphanage, and the other murder sites the first time through. I was having a good time. But halfway through the game when Eileen joins you, you have to work your way through these stages a SECOND time. Not only is this very annoying and repetitive, but Eileen drives me nuts too. I am not alone in my hate for escort missions in video games, and the whole second half of Silent Hill 4 acts like one big escort mission. Eileen can’t die, which is cool, but the more damage she takes, the more erratic her behavior becomes. You also get the bad ending if she takes too much damage. I don’t know how many times I have played through this game in my lifetime, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one of the good endings. I place the blame fully on Eileen. She has to be the DUMBEST companion I’ve ever had in a video game. Her decision making drives me up the wall!
Another thing I can’t stand: the freaking ghost enemies. These things follow you around from room to room, doing constant damage to your character. This would be okay if you could kill them, which you cannot. It is a waste of ammo and health to even bother attacking them. All you can do is knock them down for, like, two seconds before they get up and start coming after you again. And that is not an exaggeration. Two seconds. The only way to rid yourself of these ghosts is to pin them to the ground using these special swords you find throughout the game as you play. But during my whole playthrough I encountered two of these swords and about 15 ghosts, so that was a wash. These ghosts were CONSTANTLY following me around and it was driving me freaking nuts! It really began to ruin my enjoyment of the game, especially in the second half of the game when you are trying to fend off these ghosts while protecting Eileen. Ugh.
Graphics:
For 2004, this game looked amazing. Now it just looks simply okay. It doesn’t look ugly by today’s standards, like a lot of PS2 games tend to do nowadays, but it doesn’t look great either. If you have played any of the other earlier games in the Silent Hill series, you know pretty much know what to expect here.
I do have to say that the interior of Henry’s apartment is pretty well-designed. It looks nice and realistic, like someone could actually live there. It is pretty boring and sterile looking, but Henry is a pretty boring guy himself so I guess it is appropriate. Also, many of the game's haunting effects while in said apartment look pretty cool. And creepy. Can't get any better than cool and creepy, am I right?
Sound:
The Room’s audio quality is pretty darn good! The whole game is very atmospheric and tense. Even when nothing is going on, you can feel the tension in the air. Small audio cues add to the tension, especially when you are inside Henry’s apartment. Early in the game you hear a thunk from the other room, and when you go to investigate you see that the ceiling fan has collapsed onto the living room coffee table. Sometimes static will blare from the radio or the TV and scare the crap out of you. When you stand next to the portal in the bathroom, you can hear all kinds of screams and tortured sounds coming from inside the portal. This is all really cool stuff. I played the whole thing with headphones on so I could soak it all in.
Outside of the game’s cutscenes, there isn’t much music here to speak of. What music there is is fine but nothing spectacular. Voice acting is pretty stiff and bland, but that’s to be expected from the Silent Hill series. I don’t know if this is done on purpose to help contribute to the confusing, otherworldly quality of these games, but it is noticeably bad here.
Overall:
Based on all the fond memories I have of this game, I would have thought I’d like it a lot more than I actually did. Going purely on memory and nostalgia, I would have said (before replaying this) that this was the best game in the Silent Hill series. Now, however, I would have to rank it dead last among the games in the series I’ve played. Not to say that this is a bad game, it’s just a bit tedious. I don’t like replaying all the old levels. I don’t like having to escort Eileen around. I don’t like the ghosts. I don’t like that this is more action-oriented than previous Silent Hill games. It is very dark in this game, which is fine, but I often found myself missing key items that I needed to solve puzzles. You don’t know how annoying it is walking around the same area of the game for 45 minutes only to discover that the item you need is lying on the ground in plain sight. Dark is fine, but when you can’t see things that you need in order to progress the game, that points to a serious flaw in game design.
It seems like I am only being negative in this review, but there is a lot to like about the game. The whole concept of the Room with your character being locked in his own apartment. The hauntings. The sound effects. The overall atmosphere. This is one of the more unsettling games in the Silent Hill series, and I truly do love and appreciate that.
If only it had been more fun to play.
I have to admit. I am torn between the warm and fuzzy nostalgic feelings I have for this game and the fact that I didn't really have a fun time on my most recent playthrough. Part of me really wants to give it a C-, however a different part of me says "remember the fun times!!" that I used to have playing this game with my ex. The late nights, the jump scares, the getting stuck and helping each other out, that feeling of satisfaction when we'd solve a particularly difficult puzzle. I'd be lying if I said this game didn't mean something to me.
But like I said: if only it had been more fun to play in present times. I can't honestly say I look forward to ever playing this game again, and that is one of the criteria I use when I give a game its final score. How likely I am to ever play it again. Playing this game again seems relatively unlikely. So I am sticking with that final score. C- it is!
Final Score:
C-
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