Xbox

Silent Hill 4: The Room

Le scénario instaure malaise et surprises macabres même si la fin du jeu est assez décevante. Certains joueurs aimeront le surplus d'action, d'autres non, et si je fais partie de la seconde catégorie, je confirme que cet aspect ne nuit pas vraiment à l'éclosion d'une histoire intéressante qui, bien que moins développée que celle de Silent Hill 2, demeure envoutante. La construction du jeu est perfectible mais apporte une durée de vie un peu plus conséquente et la maniabilité a été revue et ne souffre pas de gros défauts. The Room clôt donc la série d'une bien belle façon et si vous entendez quelques esprits malins hurler contre la perle noire de Konami, ne reculez pas, prenez votre courage à deux mains, préparez-vous à façonner la réalité à votre convenance et rentrez de plain-pied dans une obscurité si... reposante.

When it comes to delivering genuine scares and a masterful story--although an often confusing one at that-- Konami’s Silent Hill series will chill you to the bone. It will play with you psychologically until you can no longer distinguish what is real and what is a dream or a demented figment of the character’s imagination. It will make you believe that the character has discovered a place that might seem normal at one point and then, at a moment’s notice, become a demented alternate universe where light is swallowed by darkness and horrible things scramble across the streets. Horrible things like living mannequins or vicious mutated dogs that look as though their skin were turned inside out.

Silent Hill 4: The Room is one of those games that's become difficult to review. While all the classic touches that have become so familiar and so great in the series have returned, they have simultaneously become cliché. You expect to be scared, and you will be scared, but the freakishness, the undertones of distress and uncomfortable wreathing of characters that merge lamps and mannequins, replaced now by raging wheelchairs and insignificant ape-things, just don't scare or unnerve me like previous games in the series did. On the other hand, I still enjoyed it enough, despite its weaknesses.

I've just finished playing through the final release of Konami's new survival-horror title 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.

I was surprised how Silent Hill 4 has moved away from the "flashlight in the dark" approach. Most stages are well lit, and as a result the gameplay feels less edgy and more like Resident Evil. The graphics are top notch, with a stylish, washed-out look which reminded me of the movie Seven. The creature animation is uncanny, but for some reason your man walks like he has a huge pole up his butt! What's that all about? The sound effects are more understated than Silent Hill 3, but still effectively chilling. Silent Hill 4 isn't as terrifying as it could have been, but at least it takes the series in a new direction.

You wake up from a nightmare. The ceiling fan spins lazily over your bed; slowly, the world comes into focus. Confused at first, you gradually piece bits of it together. You've been trapped in your apartment for five days now. Through the sealed windows you can watch the distant street outside, commuters driving to work or descending into the subway. Occasionally, you glimpse your neighbors as they walk by their windows in the adjacent building. Despite the bleak vision, your apartment seems mostly normal. Dishes are piled by the sink, a kettle waits for you to make some coffee. The chairs look comfy enough and there's even a TV in the corner.

I haven't quite made up my mind about Silent Hill 4: The Room yet. If you read my recent preview, I was enthusiastic as hell about it. The gameplay was updated, the game was genuinely scary, there were interesting puzzles to solve that were centered around the game's new dynamic, and it still felt like Silent Hill. There were only a few levels in the early build, but they were enough to get me really excited. The full version arrived a couple of days ago, and I tore into it. However, the more I played SH4, the more I came to feel as if something was missing.

Tinkering with a well loved formula is a tricky business. Ever tucked into a 'New and Improved!!' chocolate bar and longed for the familiar taste that you've loved for years? You might still like it, and you might even still buy it, but you can't for the life of you work out why the manufacturer would break something that didn't need fixing in the first place. That's essentially the problem with Silent Hill: The Room; Konami felt that what we really needed was a more action oriented, less puzzle driven survival horror adventure. The trouble with that approach is that upping the combat while taking away the puzzling turns it into a completely different game that - while on the surface - still looks like a Silent Hill game radically shifts the emphasis in the largely undesirable direction of awkward hackandslash.