The Extremely Horrifying Game, Silent Hill 4
June 24th 2008 19:37
Silent Hill 4: The Room is another part to the pervious Silent Hill series, but this time the developers of the series have decided to horrify it much and fun to play. This time the game is not played in the town of Silent Hill but instead in the city of South Ashfield, where Henry Townshend lives.
Henry has been living a good life in South Ashfield, but from one night the chain of terrible nightmares begins in which he experiences severe headaches, and sees that his apartment has become cursed, the phone is dead, no body can hear him not even his neighbours, the windows and the door of his apartment are shut and sealed by a mysterious force. The only way out of his single bedroom apartment is a man sized hole in his bathroom wall. In fact, the hole is not what it appears to be, because it serves as a gateway that opens the mysteries of his apartment 302 and of course, the identity of Walter, whose name is written on his apartment’s door.
Silent Hill 4 has two game play modes for the first time in its series. You start the game in the first-person mode when Henry wakes up in his apartment and will take control in the first-person mode but you will find yourself in the third-person mode whenever you take Henry through the mysterious hole in his bathroom wall. Both the modes are fun to play, and I can assure that you will not get bored switching through these modes through out the game. When in the first-person mode, I mean, in your apartment 302 you basically search for the clues to solve the mystery of your cursed apartment. You can interact with almost everything which is going on with in your apartment; can even look outside the window of your apartment to see the beautiful sunny day in South Ashfield. Every small detail of the apartment, even the corners and sides as I said, you can interact with almost every thing in your apartment. You have to be careful in exploring your apartment because you will have no idea what to do next if you miss a tiny detail.
The third-person mode has its own quality in the game, in this mode, you have to fight enemy with different weapons you pick up, and also get to visit places like the hospital, forest and the subway. Whenever you are in the third-person mode that means you take Henry through the hole and it seems that whenever he comes out of the hole the place changes and it seems that Henry is dreaming, but the events that take place in this dream have an effect on Henry’s apartment and he can also die in this dream. The only irritating thing is that you always have a space limit to carry items, and all the items that you pick up are important in the progress of the game, so that means when you are out of space to carry an item you have to find the portal to go back to the room and then store some items to make space. The only place where you can save your progress is your room.
Silent Hill 4 is not easy to complete because you will face a lot of creatures that will try to stop you from progressing through the game. While fighting these creatures it is difficult to evade them especially when they are more than one, you have to struggle to fight for your life and it is possible that you will die a lot in the beginning of the game, until you learn the tactics to beat the creatures. Unlike the previous Silent hill games this one takes the fighting more seriously and gives you a good combination of puzzle solving and combat, but don’t necessarily think that the combat is difficult because the A.I. is superb, only because your fighting abilities are limited, you don’t have much choice in fire arms and neither do you have a lot of melee weapons, and the ones you have are also not much of a help. To make things more irritating you have to crush the enemy with the last blow to kill it, this will get on your nerves as the game progresses and when you face more than one enemy. The good thing about the combat is that Henry will aim at the enemies automatically so you only have to press one button to hit the enemy.
Silent Hill 4 will take 10 hours to finish on the normal difficulty. There are four different kinds of endings to the game this is something the developers have done brilliantly. All the four endings are worth playing game four times. These endings depend on the combination of what condition your apartment is in by the end of the game and how the character you had to escort about has fared. When you finish the game once, you get an additional weapon and new character outfit, there are not many extras that you can look forward too at the end, but at least you get four different endings that will make you play the game more than once.
The PlayStation 2 version of the game is not as sharp as the XBOX version. The PlayStation 2 has slightly dull graphics than the XBOX, but that is the only difference, apart from that both consoles have the same frame rate and play almost identical. The graphics none the less are still very detailed on the PS2 version and because of these detailed graphics Silent Hill series have always been popular. This time too the game lives up to its mark in graphics. The environments have been designed beautifully, but the characters have been detailed only facially, there movements are some what slow and the animation is not too great, but this is some thing that can be easily forgettable, because no doubt Silent Hill 4 lives up to its mark of horror graphics.
Another great thing about the game is the sound. You will hear creatures calls, even there foot steps will be heard clearly and most importantly when you give them the final blow they will all have different death rattles. Voice acting of the game is not celebrity cast but still it does the job for the game, but the only thing that I didn’t like was that Henry didn’t have any emotional response to any thing, because his voice never changes whether his apartment is cursed or not. There is not much of a music you will hear in the game only the main theme will be heard through out the game, but you will hear it with long gaps in the game. The theme is just right as you would expect in a game like Silent Hill, and because of the sound effects in the environment like water dripping from the ceiling makes the game more horrifying.
If I were ask to rate Silent Hill 4: The Room then I would rate it as a very good game in the series despite the fact that I would wanted a little more from the game, but still the game is very horrifying, with excellent horror style story and some exceptionally good sound effects and graphics. The game is no doubt worth taking a look at.
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Comment by $MJBaEsT$
have u ever even seen the movie probably way more scarier than the game and even if the games gives u jumps or goosebumps you would even beat the game in les time than the movie, (if you're a 2 yr. old.)
so what i am trying to say is tht i think the game is good but ya know...
thnx!~~~~~~~$MJBaEsT$
Comment by Anonymous