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96 of 105 found the following review helpful:
 Yet another reason not to leave your apartment.Jul 06, 2004
By John Benini
Silent Hill 4 is some scary scary stuff, but that is nothing that years of therapy cannot fix. That being said, you must now obtain this game. This review is of the Japanese Import of the came, but the US release will be identical in almost every aspect (All the in game dialog is in English, and the menus are multi-language).It must be mentioned that this game is a departure from the first three of the series, but everything it does different it gets right. The bosses have been removed, but don't worry there is still plenty to back you into a corner and make your cry for mommy. The removal of the bosses has added to the overall fluidity of the game. It seems less like the structured chapter based plot and more like a constant downward spiraling nightmare. The puzzles are a bit more straight forward (not nearly as cryptic as some of the earlier puzzles) and the enemies have become a bit more organic. The skinned dogs are still roaming around but new enemies such as the creepy yeti-babies and ghost/zombies will defiantly keep you on your toes and loosing sleep. I considered the more human of the monsters to be the scariest (Pyramid Head, The Nurses, Blood Soaked Alessa) and this game capitalizes on this. All of the aesthetic changes are well received like the new health bar and power gauge. The first being so you no longer have to guess at your health via limping or hemorrhaging and stop the game for a inventory check; the second is used for swinging weapons to charge from a moderate THUMP to a full blast body-hurling home-run style WHACK. Two of the biggest departures are the first person perspective mode and the limited inventory. Gone the way of the dodo is the Resident Evil rip-off inventory screen and introduced is the Resident Evil inspired limited inventory. This adds a whole new level to the game being that what items you carry now matter in the sense that you can no longer pick up any more if your inventory is full (and in some parts, what you carry affects the level). No need to worry being that the portal/hole system that traverses you from your room to different `worlds' allows you to go back to your room and store unneeded items in a stylish ottoman/chest placed next to your possessed television. Also to please your inner voyeur, the frist person view allows you to peek out your window to see into your neighbors' apartments and to spy on the single white female living next to you. Returning SH fans will find that this new addition has much to offer with it's tentacles embedded in plot from all previous Silent Hill titles bringing new light to old events (What was the outcome of James Sunderland's trip in SH 2, What really happened at the Wish House from SH3, etc.). New players stepping up to the challenge will not be disappointed with beautiful detailed graphics and a story line that drives you to dig deeper and deeper until it all makes sense. Konami once again has created an audio/visual attack on the sensed that is truly designed to scare the living crap out of you.
40 of 45 found the following review helpful:
 This is more like it.Sep 29, 2004
By A. Griffiths
"Adrian"
My first reaction to previews of Silent Hill 4 was that they had run out of ideas and this was going to be a lame attempt to make this instalment a bit different. Well, I think I was wrong. Silent Hill 4 has rewarded me with more fear and unease than I experienced in the second and third games, and I've really fallen for the new structure. In case anyone is not yet aware, this game takes place in an apartment, from which the main character, Henry, is unable to escape. Henry is thoroughly cut off from the outside world until the day he finds a strange hole in the wall, which leads to adventures in hideous, nightmarish locations. The main innovation here is that all action inside the apartment takes place in 1st person prespective, and although I was initially skeptical about this, it really works. After walking around in it, and returning to save in it between trips through the hole, I got to know where everything was and it really felt like MY apartment!
It becomes the restful respite from the horrors of the "other" worlds... and it's a secure feeling that the game designers obviously wanted to instill, as later in the game - skip this bit if you haven't played yet - the apartment itself starts to get invaded by supernatural manifestations, and you can no longer roam around it in safety. This overturning of the game's only "safe space" really worked on me, and I longed for a way to rid it of the evil prescences that were taking it over.
The adventures that take place through the hole are in the traditional SH style, 3rd person, running around looking for items and attacking weird creatures. Again, the designers have come up with some new monsters, and the two headed baby-faced creature is definitely the most memorable. The game also includes floating ghosts that can't be killed - they also attack you, so this is pretty frustrating at times. And watch out later for some very dangerous "Frankenstein" creations that roam around the hospital level - very dangerous. On that note - what is it with Japanese survival horror games and hospitals? That's all four SH games, plus Siren and Resident Evil that use hospitals as a location! The other levels are more creative, and include an orphanage and a particularly weird cylindrical prison standing in the midle of the sea. There's also an apartment block which is far better than the one in SH2.
Again we have multiple endings, and in this case, the conditions that have to be met to obtain them are much more satisfactory. So in all, I have no hesitations in recommending this game to Silent Hill fans, and it's a welcome relief, after the 2nd and 3rd SH games struck me as duplicating the first one too much. The character models and scenery are all superbly rendered as I expected. The graphics in SH games just continue to get better every time. Drawbacks? Well, just a few. As the game draws to a close, you have to revisit all the locations again in the same order and carry out slightly different tasks. This seemed a rather cheap way to pad out the playing time to me. Plus you can now carry only a certain amount of items, so lots of trips back to the apartment are needed to drop off unwanted items in one central storage box. And every clip of 10 bullets counts as one item! So carrying a gun means you are going to fill up all your slots with bullets. A bit mean, that one.
But as a result of this, I did nearly all my fighting with melee weapons, which, it has to be said, was much more fun anyway as these weapons are all random everyday items like golf clubs and spades. Oh yes I forgot to mention the new fighting system - you can land lots of little hits on an enemy, or you can launch one very strong attack by "charging up" your strength and then letting rip. You'll see how it works when playing. And every weapon has it's own attack style, all superbly realised. Watching Henry fling his steel pipe all the way around and almost topple over with the effort is almost worth playing for alone.
I can see reviews here that must have been written by people who haven't played the game...my advice would be to ignore them. Try it for yourself. Its definitely a frightnener. There are a lot of very painful deaths and other sickening sights on display here, so do not apply if you are squeamish. For the rest of us, though, it's a great ride.
15 of 16 found the following review helpful:
A new Silent Hill formula to keep you awake...Sep 10, 2004
By Josh Perkins
"antisugarcoated"
I love all Silent Hill games. I love everything about them, from the music, to the graphics, to the storylines intricately woven into each one. Now comes Silent Hill 4 The Room, which is a new story that revolves around the events in all the other games. Well, I shouldn't say that, but the other games have something to do with this one, in one way or another.
I have just beaten this game, and I was quite impressed. The story was good, the graphics were good. But wait, something is missing. Actually, make that three things are missning.
For anyone who have ever played any of the Silent Hill games, you should have noticed certain reoccuring items in 1 through 3.
One, the fog. Two, the radio. Three, the flashlight. None of which make an appearance in the new game. Sure, it is set in the town of Ashfield, near Silent Hill, but still, that only compensated for the missing fog. But what about the other two items? I mean, what's a Silent Hill game without your radio freaking out and your crappy flashlight barely giving you any visibility? I'll tell you what it is, it's a new survival horror game that is never really dark (light-wise).
In fact, it is quite possibly the brightest of all the games. I mean sure, the other games were bright when you were outside, but still. They also had some pitch black areas too. Almost throughout the entire game, everything is well lit. Which won't hurt the games score, but it's just something that i've grown to love in these games. And as for the radio, well, the only thing that comes close is the ghosts making your screen start to mess up and then there's a bit of static, but there's no explanation for it. Well, I guess it makes his head hurt whenever they are near, so it does make sense in that way. But still, even then, he's still lacking that small appliance from his person.
Which is something else, you have a limited amount of items you can carry on you at one time. You have a chest back in your room that you can drop things you don't need at the moment into, but if you accidentally pick up something you didn't really mean to pick up, you have no way of dropping it until you find a hole to get back to your room. So sometimes you'll have to waste a full clip of pistol ammo or use a nutrition drink to clear up a slot so you can pick up the key item you need to take with you. This is probably my only complaint, and it really isn't worth whining about. I do like the on-screen health bar and swing meter, which thankfully fade away after you're out of combat, as does the item selection menu. Because I would be really pissed of if I had to have some freaking crap cluttering up my screen and blocking the gorgeous graphics.
If I can I'd like to add a little here on the new main enemies, ghosts. These apparitions come through the walls and float around chasing you. If they get too close, without even getting their hands on you, you will recieve damage. The coolest one is that of a main (semi-main) character, who, when in ghost form, kind of resembles the little girl from The Ring, you know, the one that crawls out of the television. What I really found cool about this character is when you knock her down, she doesn't always get right back up, sometimes she'll use here arms to pull her around all crazy like on the floor toward you. Pretty creepy.
I know that I don't talk much about the story or the characters in my reviews, maybe that's because I like to sprawl out the rest of the stuff in the game that nobody else talks about. But if you want to know, you play as a man named Henry Townsend. And at the beginning of the game, you have already been trapped in your apartment for five days. The front door is covered in chains and locks and none of the windows open. While in your apartment, you can listen to the radio, if anything is on other than static, look through the peephole to the hallway outside and watch people walk by or have an arguement, look through the hole in your wall in the living room to see into the room next door where a very special girl spends time watching t.v. or painting her nails. But one day, you find a gaping hole in your bathroom wall and decide to ivestigate, upon doing so, you get a steel pipe (i'm glad they atleast left that in there, I sure do like beating things with my steel pipe), and the story begins to unfold. And on the story, while good, it wasn't what I expected. Sure it was twisted and insane, but it just didn't have that punch at the end. No real shocking twist. But oh well, if you liked or loved the other games, buy this one immediately. But I would just like to warn you, this game is totally different from the others. It's not so much Silent Hill 4, it's either The Room or Ashfield Heights.
All in all, a great game, just not a real Silent Hill game. Still spooky though. If it does one thing better than anything else, it's the sense of claustrophobia you get from spending so much time in your room, which you won't want to stay in for too long later in the game...one word: haunted.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
ExcellentSep 19, 2004
By Review Lover
"ReviewLover"
God forbid that Western gamers ought to ever be expected to try something original!
In the wake of all the bad and mediocre reviews I've seen here for this game, I'm finally beginning to understand why the US and Europe are responsible for a good two-thirds of the the mundane sequels that we, as gamers, see released on a week to week basis.
Annihoo, "Silent Hill 4: The Room" is indeed a sequel, but an original one. Konami have made many changes to the gameplay mechanics and general 'feel' of the game, while retaining the more well-loved features of the series to date.
Players control Henry Townsend, housebound for some five days (thanks to the enormous chains all over the inside of his apartment door), as he begins to uncover something of the evil behind his apartment, his neighbours, and a nearby town called Silent Hill.
Gameplay-wise we're looking at practically a whole new Silent Hill. The radio and flashlight are now missing, as are the menu screens. Players now make selections via the D-Pad and the circle button, all in realtime, and since Henry's inventory is no longer bottomless, a "Resident Evil"-esque Item Box system has been employed (albeit far more realistically). Levels, towns and Bosses are all gone by the board, replaced with a Quake-ike "Hub" system - you access various different realms via Henry's apartment - but the game does, in fact, feel a lot more organic for this. There's a real sense of progression and, thanks to the fact that ammo and health items are far, far scarcer than in previous games, there's a much deeper sense of "Survival Horror" about this one.
Controls are tighter, and Henry moves a lot faster than Harry, James or Heather before him. The actual mechanics of movement will be immediately familiar to anyone who's played a Silent Hill game before, and the new speedy controls come into their own when trying to avoid the un-killable ghosts and super-lithe dog-monsters.
In fact, the enemies that populate "The Room" are definitely the scariest-looking since SH 2. The Nurses now resemble something like Egyptian Dog-Gods, and those damn Monkeys from SH 1 are back with a vengeance (as well as a second head!).
Graphically this is the real King of the Silent Hills. Advancing on the already-amazing character models from SH 3, "The Room" is populated by a whole host of impressively-detailed and realistic protagonists, and the animation is very fluid (if not so much as SH 3). Landscapes are now more grim and repulsive than SH 2 (but thankfully, not the teen-goth-pretentiousness of the SH 3 worlds) and the vignettes are as imaginative as they are ambiguous. Remember the "What the hell is that??" feeling of SH 2, that was almost absent in SH 3? It's back, and the atmosphere benefits hugely from it.
The sound is by far and away the best sound in a Silent Hill game to date. From the haunting and melancholic opening tune ("Goodbye") to the human and animal sounds that populate the eerie worlds, there's a wealth of aural abomination waiting to be enjoyed. It adds huge amounts of atmosphere and, perhaps more importantly, scares, to the proceedings. Voice acting is excellent (Henry's shyness and ambiguity add greatly to our appreciation of him as the hero) and on a par with some of the better horror movies I've seen lately.
Story-wise, while it can't compare to the magnificent Silent Hill 2, "The Room" is certainly one of the stronger games of the series in this regard. You need to complete the first third of the game before any of the real characterisation comes into play, but when it does, you feel an immediate attachment to the cast, and the compelling natures of characters like Eileen and the Child pull you further into the plot.
Weighing in at a far longer play length than SH 3 (as well as a slightly steeper difficulty level), "The Room", with its four different endings and numerous chilling set pieces, will never compare to Silent Hill 2, but is a definite step in the right direction after the lacklustre and dull Silent Hill 3. It's a sort of cross between the Adventuring aspect of the original game, with the melancholic atmosphere of the second, and the super-cool graphics of the third game. The innovations and gameplay changes won't suit all fans, but I promise you, approach the game with an open mind, and you'll not be disappointed.
Very highly recommended.
By the by, the now-ubiquitous Hospital level is present, but isn't the same damn building, and, though very short, is also very affecting.
Well done to Konami for making some brave and fresh changes to one of its best-loved series of games.
18 of 22 found the following review helpful:
 Technical aspects good, everything else lackingAug 05, 2006
By CDM
I've been a Silent Hill fan since the original survival horror legend. I've played all the games in the series, and to tell the truth, this installment simply doesn't live up to the others. Rather than ranting like a lunatic and taking an extreme stance on this, I will say this: The game is mediocre at best, and I will do my best to construct an objective analysis of it.
There have been several noticeable, but largely inconsequential, changes made to the overall game. The combat system has been altered, but not so much as to make it revolutionary. The inventory system has downgraded by limiting the amount of items you may carry at any given time, much like Resident Evil. This adjustment is perhaps the most detrimental aspect of SH4 - what is the point in changing something that worked before if you won't improve it? Furthermore, the flashlight and radio, which we have all come to love (for the most part), have been removed, and the environments have brightened up considerably, as well as lost all the fog. This results in the characteristic traits of the series to vanish, along with its inherent ability to terrify. It is quite unfortunate that Konami felt the need to butcher the saga so.
As far as graphics are concerned (which I could really care less about), they are simply remarkable; having the detail of SH3 with a little more crisp features and realistic physics. As a side note, the noise effect that was in use ever since SH2 continues to go strong. The musical scores to accentuate the development of the so-so story (more on this later) are superbly done, taking the classical approach from SH2 and giving a solid backdrop to the cinematics. The sound effects, however, are seriously lacking in ingenuity. The noises the monsters make in particular are simply laughable, considering they are about as generic as the Bandersnatch roar in RE: Code Veronica... which is pretty bad. And I believe that we all have heard of those patients or whatnot in the hospital world that burp when struck. Unfortunately, that is very true.
The demons, themselves, are perhaps the most ludicrous creations ever to be conjured by the SH team. First off are the ghosts, a very common enemy and indeed the most irritating creature to come into existence. They cannot be killed by any means, the mere presence of them harms you (as Henry holds his head as if he's having a headache - which I can certainly sympathize with him there), and if you get too close, they stick their hand in you to rip out your heart or something. And they make a moaning noise that quickly gets on your nerves. In appearance, they are similar to RE's zombies, except they float through the air and appear to be even more inept than their walking cousins. Then there are the wasp-like things that pollute the air in practically every area you visit, and when they are struck down they release a cry identical to the Pendulum demons' screech from SH3. There are also homicidal wheelchairs (yes, wheelchairs), leeches that explode if you walk over them in a fashion that made me burst out laughing my first playthrough, burping amazon-things, and ape-like creatures that make stereotypical monkey noises as they attack. All of these beings help remove any and all potential to frighten the player. Perhaps the only "demon" that was even remotely scary was that two-headed baby-faced ostrich thing that walked on two hands, but that's about it.
While many people are hyped up about the visual effects of any given game (usually Xbox and Gamecube fans), there is one aspect that supercedes any other feature in a Silent Hill game, and perhaps all survival horror games: the story. The story that is put forth in SH4 is the most poorly assembled plotline in the entire series, combining sheer stupidity, pure impossibility and a sadly apparent longing to somehow connect it to the other iterations. It is basically summarized as this: Henry Townshend wakes up in his apartment one day to find numerous chains and padlocks sealing his front door shut for no apparent reason, and several days later a hole randomly opens up in his bathroom wall. Considering he has nothing else to do other than watch his neighbor shave her armpits, he decides to crawl through the hole to find some way to escape, and enters a "nightmare world". Yeah, right. None of the areas you visit are not even remotely disturbing or creepy, and puts all nightmare realms from before to shame. Also, the plot surrounding Walter Sullivan is a severe disappointment and contradictory to the tale read in SH2. So instead of killing just two people like the magazine article said before, he really killed 8 people before commiting suicide? I apologize for pointing out this glaring incongruity, but it exists nonetheless and must be stated to give you an idea of how terrible the story is. I will not spoil any more details, but suffice to say, although the build-up has some intrigue to it, the final product is far less than satisfying, and that is tragic coming from a Silent Hill game.
Also, throughout the entire game, you NEVER enter the town of Silent Hill. At all. Which begs the question: why even make it a Silent Hill game if you never visit the town the game is named after? Instead you go through a number of "worlds" where you battle ghosts and collect messages. There is a serious lack of puzzles in this game as well - another aspect removed. Instead, most of the "puzzles" you find are just fetch quests, in effect forcing you to use about as many neurons as when you bang your head against a wall.
The surrealism that was so strongly enforced in the previous games are lost to this. The radio show from a seemingly broken elevator loudspeaker, the bathroom stall opening up with blood all over just after someone knocked from the other side, and a corpse falling out of a locker - those kinds of mysterious and unsettling occurences found in SH4's successors are long gone, leaving the fright to come from... wait... fright? WHAT fright? Anyway, there are a couple of exceptions, but if you choose to purchase it then I'll let you find them. But for the most part, the distinguished trademark bending of reality is sadly no more. This, coupled with the pathetic excuses for demons, has produced a game that utterly fails to scare, rendering its whole purpose as a survival horror moot. And that is tragic as well for a Silent Hill game.
To be fair, the room is a nice addition, and it is interesting to see how it alters subtly as the game progresses. There are a few activities there that could be considered marginally entertaining, and after a while you may feel some sort of connection to it, so when... "things" happen to it later it will affect you in a certain way. But Konami forces you to go back to your room repeatedly, to your "storage box", to hold unneeded objects and save your progress. In the worlds you go through, there are holes all over for you to return to your home. Also, like I previously stated: unraveling the plot could hold your attention for a little while, even if the payoff isn't as satisfying. The combat is enjoyable to a certain degree (unless you're fighting ghosts).
Another shortcoming of SH4 is the fact that there are two parts to the game: one part you venture through a number or worlds to unravel the secred behind THE ROOM (DUM DUM DUMMMMM!!!), and the second half you go through the exact same worlds again, except with your roommate following you around all over. Wow. That's a rather cheap way to extend the length of the game, don't you think? What's worse is that a number of the realms I really did not enjoy whatsoever, and having to go through them once more with a lady who mindlessly attacks the monsters I face even though they can kill her easily and she's right in the way of my swinging. As another side note, the weapon selection was comprised of about twenty melee weapons and two guns, and what's worse is that a magazine for the pistol takes up one precious slot in your inventory, effectively rendering firearms absolutely worthless.
In conclusion, don't bother with this game. Unless you've never played any other SH games, are obsessed with graphics rather than how enjoyable a game is to play, or are delusional, this isn't all that great of a survival horror installment.
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