Welcome to Silent Hill..err..I mean Ashfield
Interesting enough, this is the first game in the series that doesn’t actually venture into Silent Hill. Instead the story focuses around the neighbouring city of Ashfield and as the games title subtly hints, takes place inside an apartment named room 302. You play as Henry Townshend, an everyday, ordinary man, aged someone in his mid-twenties. Unfortunately for poor Henry the apartment he has been living in for the past two years is cursed, and recently he has been having strange, unexplainable, recurring nightmares. Things only get weirder when Henry finds his front door locked, chained from the inside, his windows bolted shut, and all electronic devices in his house busted, except for his radio. Henry virtually becomes a prisoner in his own apartment, until something strange happens within his very bathroom. A bizarre tunnel has somehow appeared in the centre of his bathroom wall, which leads to alternative worlds of darkness. Henry of course has no other option, so takes the lunge through the tunnel, which then leads to a new kind of nightmare.
Spacious Living
The first thing you will notice with Silent Hill 4: The Room is how the game is divided into both first person perspective scenes while Henry is in the confines of his apartment and third person perspective scenes while Henry is visiting the alternative world. Controlling Henry around your apartment is a pretty straightforward affair, using one analog stick to look around and the other one to move. While in Henry’s apartment you can do a fair bit of exploring, and nose around his meagre possessions. If something worth noticing comes across your screen, an eye icon will appear and by pushing “X” players will examine the object with greater detail.
His apartment consists of one bedroom, a lounge room, a bathroom, a laundry, and a kitchen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun looking about. There are photos about the place, a radio to occasionally listen to, and windows to gaze out of if you wish to see people doing their daily business while you’re trapped in a personal nightmare.
Item Chest cliché anyone?
Then there are the sequences which take place in the alternative nightmarish world. By entering the tunnel found in Henry’s bathroom you are taken to many strange places where creatures lurk in the shadows. These scenes are played in traditional Silent Hill third person perspective and if you have played any of the previous games, you should feel right at home here. Similarly to the other games, combat is done by going into an aggressive stance, which is achieved by holding down the right trigger. Once in this pose, you can swing or fire to your hearts content. Replacing the block ability in Silent Hill 3, is the dodge manoeuvre, which can be triggered while in the combat stance and allows you to quickly move out of harms way against creature’s attacks. Selecting weapons and items have also been streamlined in Silent Hill 4 over its predecessors, and no longer does the action pause if you need to switch weapons or use an item. Instead a categorized menu appears at the bottom of the screen and lets you change weapons or use items on the fly. You can however, only carry a limited amount items with you at any given time, so the handy dandy item chest which will store all those unneeded items, found in Henry’s apartment lounge room, becomes a necessity.
Combat is predominately the same from other titles in the series. Unlike games in the Resident Evil series, Silent Hill 4 thankfully lets you move about while you are in the combat pose, thus giving the player more freedom, as well as the flexibility to use the dodge manoeuvre. (unless you count Resident Evil 3) A new feature has been added to combat in the form of a charge meter. Certain melee weapons can be charged up, (by holding down the button) for extra powerful attacks, which will knock most enemies back in one hit. Most weapons in the game are in melee format, with very few firearms found in the game. This isn’t too much of a problem however as most melee weapons are enjoyable to use and have their own strength, attack speed, combo strings and charge attacks to make each weapon feel unique. While in Henry’s apartment and in first-person perspective you cannot attack with any weapon.
Home sweet home
The first-person apartment scenes and the third-person alternative world scenes co-exist with each other flawlessly throughout the game. In the beginning the apartment will act as a safe zone, a place to escape the nasty alternative world. In fact, at the start of the game you will be looking for exits out of the alternative world (in the form of tunnels) as much as possible, as while Henry is back at his apartment, his life will slowly recover, and you can save your game and take a moments breather without the fear of being ripped to shreds.
As the plot thickens Henry’s once safe apartment becomes a hell zone in its own rite. As the story progresses the apartment degenerates and becomes a haunting ground for spirits. Furthermore the once healing effect found in your apartment is gone, and you may want to reconsider leaving the alternative world to come back home, as a series of spiritual attacks can occur at any time through in the once secured environment. Fortunately there are ways to combat these spirit attacks while you’re in this first person perspective (seeing how you can’t use weapons), and include such things as lighting holy candles to purge rooms clean for short periods of time.
Backtracking to the item chest, now there’s a cliché!
The game is not without its faults. While item selections may have been streamlined, your item inventory is still inefficient, as things like pistol ammo and health drinks cannot be stored together and take up an individual inventory space each, which results in a lot of aggravated back tracking between the apartment and the alternative world. Another thing must be said about a certain type of enemy named victims, which are more or less floating ghosts. These enemies can come out of nowhere and will emit an evil aura which will damage Henry, if they are close by. This wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that you lack the means to kill these types of enemies early on in the game, which results in you running from them most of time and not allowing you to explore an area properly without having an invincible foe pursue you.
If you hate escort missions in video games with a passion, maybe you should stay away from Silent Hill 4, as a great part of the game will have another character tagging along behind you. Although this character can use weaponry, it is always a pain to look after someone, especially for long periods of time.
The graphics in Silent Hill 4 is what you would come to expect from a survival horror game. Distorted, gritty and washed out are all good words in describing the environment in the game, not to mention the blood stains splattered about the place. During you travels in the game you will visit many places such as a subway, a forest, a prison and even a hospital, and all these locations are dark and moody, which sets up the perfect atmosphere to creep you out. The sound is also well established, which furthers enhances the eeriness of the game. Most sound effects are spot on, and the music will definitely help contribute to the scares in the game.
Distorted, gritty and washed out...yep must be a Silent Hill game
Silent Hill 4 comprises of some appealing puzzles, which help stretch the overall lifespan of the game. While the game itself isn’t terribly long and can be finished within twelve hours, there are four endings in total (depending on how you play the game) and quite a few unlockable game modes which will have you coming back and giving the game another go.
Silent…but deadly!
Silent Hill 4: The Room will be one game that will surely scare you in some capacity. Its well implemented concepts of both first person and third person perspectives and its centralisation between an apartment and an alternative world offer a rare kind of gameplay experience. If you are looking for a good survival horror game, or simply an intriguing plot surrounded in mystery and you can handle a few disturbing images, Silent Hill 4: The Room will be a winner.
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