PRE-GAME
Henry Townshend woke up one morning to find that he was locked in
his apartment. Not only
that, but it was locked from the inside.
Now a bizarre hole has opened in his bathroom that takes him
to a different “world”. There he meets the victims of a murderer
from Silent Hill, who is obsessed with awakening his mother.
Now Henry must save his neighbor and himself from becoming
the next set of victims.
EYE-SPY
THE
HOOK: Silent Hill 4:
The Room is definitely a different kind of horror game, and being a
fan of the series I had to give it a try.
Survival horror fans will get a kick out of it as well.
HOW IT LOOKS AND FEELS: While Silent Hill 4 is stunning to look at, the controls can
be somewhat awkward, especially if you are used to the previous
Silent Hill series games. While
in Henry’s “room” (actually his apartment) the game is in the
first-person, you move around as you would normally and examine
items that an “eye” icon appears over with the X button.
In the room, the only way to save the game is via a book on
Henry’s coffee table. A chest by the TV holds all of Henry’s extra weapons and
equipment that he can’t carry due to the fact that in this Silent
Hill you can only carry 10 items or less. Gone is the infinite
amount you could carry around in the previous games.
The item chest can be a pain and is a straight rip-off from
the Resident Evil series, but hey, what are you gonna do?
Once in the outside world (via the hole in the
bathroom) Henry is now in Silent Hill’s traditional
third-person. One of the key differences with The Room is that
Henry’s attacks can now vary in power, when you tap the X button a
gauge will appear in the upper left hand of the screen along with a
life meter. Depending
on how long you hold the X button determines how hard Henry thwacks
his undead enemies. Interesting,
but it just doesn’t seem to fit.
HOW
IT SOUNDS: With all the
moaning and groaning in a game like this the sound is downright
awesome, you’ll feel like you’re there.
Every sound is perfectly pitched to scare the heck out of
you. The soundtrack too
is excellent; Akira Yamaoka once again proves that he rocks.
EXTRAS: Beating
the game unlocks new weapons on top of that you can get four
different endings. You
can also unlock some rather revealing costumes for the two ladies of
the game as well if you beat it more than three times.
CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE:
As always the Silent Hill cut scenes are fantastic.
They use the in-game models and don’t detract in any way
from the feeling of watching (and playing) a great horror movie.
BEST PLAYER:
You’re screwed here as you can only play as Henry.
CHEAT CODE YOU NEED:
All Weapon Mode, you get this if you can complete One Weapon
Mode with a 10 star rank. Just
beating the game once does unlock the chainsaw in the Forest World.
CHEAT CODE YOU WANT:
Infinite health - seriously!
Just getting through this game without getting pummeled to
death is a feat in itself.
OH
MAN! MOMENT: Trying to get Eileen through the latter part of the
game without her being cursed is an exercise in pointlessness, but
if you can do it you get a special ending.
Yay you.
GLITCH ITCH:
Occasionally in the Subway World, a Demon Dog would get stuck
in the wall with only his head appearing on the other side barking
away.
FAN SERVICE:
If you’ve played any of the other games than you will enjoy
the multiple references to the previous games.
The unlockable costumes for Eileen and Cynthia are a fanboys
dream come true with cleavage and butt-cheeks galore.
END
GAME:
Overall
I wasn’t too impressed with Silent Hill 4. Revisiting the same
worlds over and over gets tiresome and the repetitiveness of beating
the crap out of the same enemies got to me.
But if you can get past this you will learn quite a bit
about the history of Silent Hill and its most notorious of
murderers, Walter Sullivan.
The problem with the game is that the
protagonist is never fully fleshed out. We never find out what
type of person he is, what his job is or anything else for that
matter. Why is Henry of
all people chosen to be “The Receiver of Wisdom?”
Is it just because he happens to live in Apt. 302 or is their
more to it? There is
virtually no back story to any of the characters except for the
nemesis of the story, Walter Sullivan, and the poor guy comes off as
more pathetic than anything else.
The rest of the characters are largely forgettable and add
little to the mix other than being victims.
However, despite all this, Silent Hill 4 can be
a lot of fun to sit and play in the wee hours of the night.
You can get creeped out pretty easily when one of the ghosts
pops up out of nowhere and begins floating your way.
As usual there are unexplainable and just downright weird
things going on whenever Henry is traipsing around a level, such as
a giant Eileen head in a random room in the Hospital World that will
make you pee your pants if you weren’t expecting it.
The
Room is also a short game. It only took me 10 hours to beat it my
first time through and that was going through all the trouble of
collecting all of the notes and de-ghosting Henry’s apartment. If
you don't bother with that, it should be easy to clear in 5 hours.
All
in all, I appreciated the extra trouble Team Silent went to to
explain some of Silent Hill’s back story, unfortunately for the
game though it feels like filler until Silent Hill 5 comes around on
the Play station 3. Yep,
we get to wait a while for the next Silent Hill. Hopefully it will
make up for this less than stellar installment in the series.
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