Silent Hill 4: The Room

Konami Tokyo's psychological horror title has received mixed feedback to date. Here's what we thought.

	Version PS2, Xbox	Developer KCET	Publisher Konami	Genre Psycho horror

By Alex Wollenschlaeger

Henry Townshend should consider moving. His apartment, room 302 at Ashfield Heights, while not exactly horrible to behold, is in dire need of a few improvements. There's the spot on the wall where the plastering has come off, revealing a convenient peephole into the apartment of his neighbour Eileen Galvin. Then there are the windows throughout the house that refuse to open. Ah, and lets not forget the minor inconvenience of being impossibly trapped inside his own home by the multiply chained and bolted door.

Konami's Silent Hill 4: The Room began life without the franchise portion of its title. Originally conceived as a stand-alone game, the idea was folded into the publisher's successful and suspenseful franchise during development. It's a finely crafted feat of illusion with very few seams visible that edges its way into the series, providing both an entertaining jaunt in its own right and resolution of plot-threads from earlier instalments.

The story is centred on the eponymous room, which it seems has been the locale for some weird stuff in the not too distant past. Henry's normal life is upended when he realizes that he can no longer leave his apartment. The foreboding blood-written scrawl on the door from someone named Walter warns him of the perils that lie outside. And a hole has appeared in the bathroom wall, leading who knows where. Left without recourse, Henry is forced through the hole into a nightmare world filled with the rust and revulsion that have come to epitomize the series.

The premise is good, in a Lewis Carroll kind of way, and the unwinding story gets more and more interesting as you progress. Provided you're paying attention to the story, you'll be enthralled by each new note stuck under your door from the unreachable outside world that drags the plot kicking and screaming to and fro. A slow start is salvaged by the growing awareness of the importance of seemingly pointless information dredged up early in the game. The entertaining story unfurls via both in-game items and real-time and CG cinemas liberally sprinkled throughout the ten-or-so hours it will take you to finish the game.

Equally impressive is the lurking tension that lingers throughout each stage like a heavy, brooding fog. While the visual presentation seems to have, at best, stood still relative to the previous entry, the sound production brings up a strong rear ensuring that you're constantly on edge, wondering whether to call it quits or brave another area before you head off to bed. The trademark rust-encrusted metalwork and hauntingly unnatural life-forms that have come to visually epitomize the series are present and accounted for, and the juxtaposed eerily-suppressed ambient soundtrack ensures that you'll be just at the tip of your seat.

The overall design is chapter based, so you'll always feel like you're progressing. Each level takes the form of a different dream-like sequence that confuses reality with imagination. You're never quite sure exactly what's real and what isn't, but it's handled well enough that you don't feel frustrated to the point of quitting. That said, there's not all that much freedom in how you complete mission objectives, and certain plot elements are concealed a little too well.

Monster design has taken a hit, with the short roll call made up for by the overall quality of the monsters. Expect to tire of beating the same dog-beasts over and over though. New in this entry are the ghosts present in certain areas. Seemingly random enemies at first, their true bearing becomes clearer as you progress. They are also one of the annoyances in gameplay, thanks to their invincibility. While maintaining tension is all well and good, doing so while simultaneously annoying the would-be explorer is not the best way to approach gameplay.

Sadly, for all that's right with the game, few but the truly motivated will stick around to see the plot reach one of its four conclusions, as controlling Henry is an exercise in frustration. Whether walking or running, character control is adequate at best, but it's the fighting system that moves like treacle that really causes outrage. The paucity of firearms means resorting to all manner of makeshift clubs, whether that comes in the form of a piece of iron or an actual golf iron. The weapons have character, but using them is a sloth-like affair. Death at the hands of the sludgy animation is not a rarity, and a gameplay-altering plot-twist midway through the game makes surviving a challenge in its own right.

When it comes to camera management, form should take a backseat to function, but this is a mantra eschewed by the designers at KCET. The admittedly interesting views achievable only through scripted camera angles are welcome, but I could have done without the side-effect of perishing unnecessarily because I couldn't see the big, hulking monster bearing down on me as I entered a new area.

Silent Hill 4 also suffers the ignominy of failing the Miyamoto Test. If you're not careful with your inventory management, you will find yourself at an impasse and having to restart the game right from the beginning after a certain point. Game design like this, while evocative of the tension desired in the genre, is plainly unfair. It's an unwelcome fallback on the worst that previous generations of software offered.

The multiple endings provide decent enough incentive to give the game another whirl, a feature made more palatable by the relatively short time required to get through the main story. There's little in the way of diversion, with everything reined in quite tightly. Whether you'll have the desire to go through the game again depends on how tolerant you are of the gameplay mechanics. But, at least the first time through, Silent Hill 4: The Room is a worthwhile experience. If only those controls had been a little better.