PlayStation 2

Silent Hill 4: The Room

Most survival-horror games offer pretty much the same sort of thing. You get to drudge through a few areas where enemies like to pop up and scare you, gradually collecting keys to unlock new areas and continue on your trek; toss in the occasional puzzle and boss fight and you’ve got yourself a game that stands with the likes of Resident Evil. All that’s left to consider is a clunky control scheme, a lack of ammunition when you need it most, a cantankerous save system, and a clunky inventory, and you’ve got yourself a pure, 100% survival-horror game. Right?

Silent Hill 4: The Room falls into that sometimes-dangerous category of "high-concept." Unfailingly, when trying to bring up an example of its genius, I feel like I’m trying to convince someone who thinks that Meg Ryan’s romantic comedies are the pinnacle of modern cinema that they really should watch Pi. It’s hard, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Toujours aussi violent, plus beau, ce quatrième épisode est aussi plus jouable. Les combats contre les monstres sont mieux animés et donc beaucoup moins ridicules que dans Silent Hill 2. Avec ces quelques nouveautés, Silent Hill 4 continue donc dans le bon sens et est un excellent jeu. Seul défaut, une impression de déjà-vu, à cause de graphismes qui n’ont pas beaucoup évolué, contrairement à ceux des Resident Evil. D’un côté, n’oublions pas que la série de Konami se déroule toujours au même endroit, et qu’il faut donc garder une certaine unité graphique. Maintenant, c’est une question de points de vue. Moi qui considérais le 3ème épisode comme le meilleur de la série, je trouve que Silent Hill 4 atteint facilement son intérêt. Les fans sauront apprécier le jeu à sa juste valeur.

"Silent Hill 4" é claramente um jogo para antigos fãs, e está longe de ser a melhor edição para começar a conhecê-la. Quem se apaixonou pelas tramas diabólicas terá bons motivos para se aventurar nesse quarto amaldiçoado. Mas os demais provavelmente vão preferir algum game mais palatável.

As great as the Silent Hill series is, it's the kind of thing that works best in smaller doses, and Silent Hill 4: The Room coming out just one year after 3 led to suspicion that the game would either not be as interesting as previous installments, or that the creepy atmosphere of the game would lose its effectiveness through overexposure. The fears are partly true (which we'll get to eventually) but there's a surprising amount of new approaches and major revisions to the series here.

Horror games just don?t get much better than this?at least when you?re talking art direction, sound design, storyline, and all the aesthetic, literary stuff that goes into stimulating the part of the brain that releases piss into pants. Silent Hill 4: The Room continues that fine tradition of psycho sickness, but one annoying combat issue sticks out like a throbbing, scabrous, maggot-filled tumor.

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.

I've just finished playing through the final release of Konami's fourth survival-horror title for the PlayStation 2, and boy am I glad it's over. That's not a slam against the game, but rather a comment to my broken spirit, bloodshot eyes, and heightened anxiety levels. Like all good horror games, Silent Hill 4: The Room does a brilliant job of making you feel bad about a number of things; your actions in the game, your relationships with key characters, and your eagerness to batter hellspawn to death using gold clubs.

Silent Hill is a town where pure evil permeates the air and the soil and eventually consumes the people. It's a soothing vacation spot that masks demon-worshipping cults and dark purpose. Each of the previous titles in the Silent Hill series of horror games has either outright taken place in the titular small town or has gradually been pulled there through some terrible inertia. Silent Hill 4: The Room breaks this trend, because it takes place in the neighboring city of South Ashfield and centers mainly on an ill-fated apartment building, a cursed apartment, and the man who lives in it. That's not the only series tenet the game breaks. Silent Hill 4 pairs third-person and new first-person gameplay with an emphasis on combat and item management. The resultant hybrid has some flaws, but The Room retains the dark, disturbing soul that is the unsettling center of the Silent Hill experience.

Silent Hill 4: The Room är absolut inget dåligt skräckspel. Terrorn är trots allt stundtals närvarande och jag känner obehag (i positiv mening) inför att spela det. Men i jämförelse med de tidigare spelen i serien, som alla på sitt eget sätt var små mästerverk, är fyran en besvikelse.

Short games aren't inherently bad, and neither are retreads. But I think it's safe to say that when a game is both a retread and short, there's definitely something wrong with it. Silent Hill 4 is such a game. It banks so confidently on the player getting sucked into its story that it permits it to preclude even the most base of game design laws, which state simply that repetition hampers one's enjoyment of a game. It inundates the player with piddling gameplay devices incomprehensible to even the most seasoned door-checking, elevator-riding Silent Hill stiffs. And worst of all, it's only as original as the sum of its parts -- a collection of fleeting bites off of past horror and suspense flicks, which under no circumstances should ever, ever come before wholesome, enjoyable gameplay.