Silent Hill 4: The Room
- August 11, 2004 00:00 AM PST
Insanity, madness, death, disease, ruin, horror, psychosis, demons, spirits, sorrow, dementia, lamentation�and FUN!
A hole to Hell appears in some poor bastard�s bathroom, and we just can�t wait to crawl in. That�s the kind of power Silent Hill holds over our fragile little minds.
What�s He Building in There?
In case you�ve chosen to forget, the next chapter in everyone�s �favorite� sadomasochistic horror/acid trip tells the tale of the pitiable Henry Townsend, trapped in his apartment after some wacko (apparently named Walter, judging by the weird �Don�t go out!� note scrawled on the door) throws a bunch of creepy chains over his apartment door.
We recently got a chance to run around the PS2 build of the game (also coming to the Xbox), and all the Silent Hill staples were there: gross, gorgeous, and grainy graphics (which don�t translate well in screenshots), tons of broken doors, and�like it or not�the same sort of key-code-and-medallion puzzles that fill the earliest pages of the survival/horror rulebook. The game features the usual gaggle of tumor-ridden ground-beef monsters: mummified dogs with long, lolling tongues; floating, rotting old men who crawl out of walls covered in sticky tar; giant ape torsos with two terrifying porcelain baby masks.
He Has No Friends but He Gets a Lot of Mail
While Henry still fights with the same slow, methodical style of unfortunate forbears like Heather and James, he does have a few new tricks up his sleeve. Secondary characters (including a beat-up lady who hits monsters with her handbag) now follow him around, and a new HUD in the upper-left corner of the screen shows his health (no more color-coded guesswork). A small circular �rage� meter lets Henry unleash a particularly powerful melee attack once it�s charged. Henry also has a useful side and back step, and the directional pad cycles through weapons and new spirit wards (ghost-scaring candles, protective medallions). Portals scattered throughout the game lead back to Henry�s apartment in the �real world� where Henry can take a first-person graphic-adventure breather looking for clues to puzzles back in the dangerous hole places.
I Swear to God I Heard Someone Moaning Low
While we can�t tell quite yet whether Silent Hill 4 will gel into a work of cohesive, mad genius like Silent Hill 2, the mechanical improvements seem wise, and there�s still insane artistry crawling under the skin. Fetid food for the warped gamer�s mind.
