Silent Hill 4: The Room

Like it or not, the "survival-horror" genre has reached, and passed, its zenith some time ago. Say, three or four years ago. Potential players that might have stayed with the genre apparently were lost on Resident Evil: Code Veronica's controls, its evil twin story, or didn't care too much about the "huge" change from pre-rendered backgrounds to polygonal ones (though many hardcore fans did). And player and critic reactions to Silent Hill 2's claustrophobic fogginess and Silent Hill 3's quick action were all over the charts: Either you loved or hated them. Personally, I love survival horror games, and I especially love the Silent Hill series. I adore a good scare, and nobody does it better, with that beneath-your-skin sense of freakishness, that subtle eeriness of silence and the unknown, than Konami's Silent Hill team. I love the sense of atmosphere, the surreal sense of wandering around lost in limbo, the logic puzzles, the NPC grotesques, the obscurity of Pyramid Head, and perhaps the most freaky instance ever, a radio talk show host speaking over a broken radio who seemed to address his show directly to me (SH2). So I've wondered why I've hesitated to play this latest one. After finishing it this weekend, I discovered why. Despite another interesting story (this, of course, is debatable depending on what level of fan you are), and all of the key mark characteristics of the series, Silent Hill 4: The Room is neither brilliant nor terrible. Instead, it falls into that weird ether world of limbo, a game that's good in parts and weak in others, leaving you with a feeling of only mild satisfaction. It's like waking up with a great hunger to a plate of luke-warm eggs.

The Room The story proves to be the most significant -- yet strangely insignificant -- aspect of this new arrival. Henry Townsend is a pretty average, straight white guy who one days wakes to his apartment room, which is industrially secured by multiple chains and locks from the inside. He cannot get out through the windows, and so he's stuck, left in wonder and confusion. Several days later, a small hole appears in his bathroom. It turns out to be a portal to another dimension, and it's Henry's only way out. The room, you soon learn, is a safe-house for regaining health and for saving your progress. It's also the biggest new aspect in the architecture of the game. See, Henry is caught up in what basically results in a Silent Hill twilight zone, a plane he must examine and explore in order to escape. The room is where it all begins. As Henry, you'll explore Ashfield, a town a few miles away from Silent Hill, as well as subway, forest, water tower levels, and the apartment itself. However, you'll always return to the room. It decays as you progress, and since the portals from the other world always lead to the room itself, you find that part of its intrigue is seeing how it transforms, what new things happen in it, and what other new clues there are to find. For instance, you can peek out the front door peep hole and you can yell all you want, but the neighbors, landlord, and your friendly next-door neighbor Eileen cannot see or hear you. You're trapped. You can peek into Eileen's room, too. You'll never see her nude, but you will watch everyday details of her life, such as the shaving of armpits, sweeping, getting ready to attend a party, and watching TV. The room is a growing, organic creature of its own sort that requires your attention to complete the game. It creates a decent amount of claustrophobia, but not the kind that I'd hoped for. And yet, it's almost always fun to see what's going to happen next.

On the other hand, the room has issues. It's a small but annoying detour that's worth complaining about, at least a little. Each time you need to save or store items (the storage system has changed) you're required to return to it. Adventure games are meant to be slower than action games, no doubt, but the amount of travel you do just to get back to the room, including load screens and minor repeating cutscenes, is tedious. This save system is purposely designed to force you to travel back and forth to the room. Still, Konami wants you to use the central hub a lot, and it's definitely succeeded in doing so, but there are at least two issues resulting from this design change. A) The previous Silent Hill games' save systems weren't broken by any means, so why force a change? And perhaps more importantly, the storage system, which I always really enjoyed, is now like Resident Evil's (and in my opinion, less favorable) system. The items you carry are limited, and when you're full, it's back to the room again. Again, it's not a major problem. In fact, it's hardly a problem at all, but it's not a great improvement either, and why change something so mildly unless you're really going to improve it?