Silent Hill 4: The Room

Konami?s masterful horror series returns, but there?s a ghost in the attic.

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.

Regarding Henry

First off, the story of The Room (never mind that it?s actually an apartment with several rooms) is the most coherent, mature, compelling mystery the Silent Hill talespinners have put together yet?a claustrophobic serial-killer story stitched together from pieces of Rear Window, Being John Malkovich, and Poltergeist. It tells the story of Henry Townsend, a man who wakes up to find himself trapped in his own apartment, where a mysterious person named ?Walter? has chained up the door and left a cryptic note. Eventually, a hole appears in Henry?s bathroom that leads to a series of dreamy alternate universes where he witnesses all sorts of horrible things before returning back home to his personal prison.

There?s plenty of freakish, filthy nonsense for those who like their inexplicable madness served raw, but there?s also a remarkable aura of focus here that wasn?t quite present in previous Silent Hill games. All told, the story?s better than the original Silent Hill or SH3, and on par with the indomitable SH2, which had more filler, but also more powerful ?moments.?

The artists at Konami have outdone themselves technically, crafting perfectly-lit environments (no more flashlight, believe it or not) and excellent, pock-marked ?digital actors.? Little touches?weird notes slid under doors, strange people observed out windows, and a different weird thing to ponder in almost every single room?help cultivate a superior environment for horror. Silent Hill vets may worry that they?ve run out of ideas, with lots of familiar-looking (but not identical) monsters and environments?haven?t we seen demon dogs, subways, hospitals, and hotels in Silent Hill before??but for every old horror, there?s a new giant, wriggling umbilical cord pulsating not too far away.

The game plays much more like a ?quest? than previous games did. The first-person sequences in your room have a graphic adventure appeal. The ?dream worlds? are the more traditional Silent Hill fare, with lots of broken doors, scary hallways, and placards, keys, and coins to collect; but several smart puzzles that unite the ?real world? with the horrible ?dream worlds? keep it from feeling like the same old thing.

The Other Edge of the Sword

Combat is where things start to get a little shaky. While you could never claim that any of the other Silent Hill games ?controlled well,? their fighting system has always been pretty reliable?club things to death with a stick, smash the wriggling corpse with your foot, then move on with your life. While there?s a good deal of that in SH4 (complete with a new switch-weapons-on-the-fly system and a welcome ?power hit? meter), there?s also lot of ?something else? that borders on genius but winds up simply being horrifically frustrating.

The problem: lots of creepy (duh) humanoid corpses called ?ghosts? that emerge from walls coated in black ooze, float around, and stick their hand in your chest to give your heart a good squeezin?. They can?t be killed?you beat them down, and they just get right back up again, over and over and over?unless you have what?s called the ?Sword of Obedience,? a mystical bladed relic that you shove into a downed ghost to keep it down (they get back up if you pull it back out) so you can explore a room. It?s a potentially ingenious system that gets messy in the execution. The sword doesn?t always work when you think it should; there are way more ghosts than swords; and the balance is so out of whack that you spend most of your time running instead of fighting, simply because the damaging ?pain aura? they emit while you?re fighting unprotected (which is often) would quickly bleed you dry. While the running wouldn?t be that much of an issue in and of itself, eventually a secondary character joins you that seriously slows you down, especially when she gets stuck in slap-fights with enemies you?re trying desperate to dodge.

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While it may seem like a niggling issue, all the running away and frustrating ghost-management really does drag an otherwise genius-level game down. Play it on Easy, despite your hardcore instincts, and you?ll have more fun. Silent Hill remains high art?but it still hasn?t quite figured out how to be high game.

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