Silent Hill 4: The Room was a very different approach to the series. Originally released for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and PC in 2004. The game at the time got a mixed response, but it has built up something of a cult following over the years. I for one, feel that it is a great entry to the series and is certainly very, very creepy.
How to Download Silent Hill 4: The Room
You can download the game from GOG. To start, click on the Download button below this review.
The Game Review
The first thing you have to talk about is the setting. Rather than the character starting in Silent Hill or being drawn to it. Silent Hill 4: The Room is set in a nearby city called Ashfield. You play as Henry, a man who has awoken to find himself locked in his strange apartment and there is a hole in his bathroom wall.
This hole is actually a portal that allows Henry to travel to many strange places. These range from a forest, a hospital, and a weird prison-like place too. As you would expect from a Silent Hill game, these places are creepy as hell and there is a ton of imagination here and it fits in with the world of Silent Hill very, very well.
These “worlds” are not the only place you will be spending your time in. You also spend a great deal of time in your apartment and this place will change as the game progresses. The story is great and it is very psychological with many horror elements from movies like The Ring that have clearly served as an inspiration. There is even a ghostly serial killer to deal with and the strange history of your apartment.
The story sounds like it could be all over the place, but it works and it works very well. The game does have different endings for you to discover so there is a lot of replay value here. In terms of the story, the setting, and so on, the game 100 percent fits what you would want from a Silent Hill movie.
I love the way that Silent Hill 4: The Room looks. Each area you traverse has its own theme and they are creepy. The creatures that you come across in the game are as gross, strange, and scary as you would imagine. I will say that the game does show its age a bit, but things still look decent enough.
The gameplay on offer here is solid. When you are in your apartment, you play the game in the first-person. This is pretty cool and as you explore your apartment, you will notice that it changes in many different ways as the game progresses and in many ways, the apartment is like a character all of its own!
When you go through the portal in your bathroom, the game is a more traditional 3rd person game like the other Silent Hill games. You will be exploring each location, moving the story along as you would expect, but this game is far more combat-focused than the last three games.
There are far more enemies in this game and the locations are a bit more claustrophobic so you are forced into combat a lot more. You have various melee weapons and a few guns as well that you can use. You do have to finish enemies off with a stomp and then we have the ghosts… screw the ghosts as they are the most frustrating enemies in the game.
There is a great deal of item management here. You cannot discard an item and annoyingly you cannot stack an item. So, if you have a healing item and find another one, it will not stack and take up an extra slot. I get that this is to make the game a bit tenser, but I must admit I found it more frustrating than anything else.
I have always felt that Silent Hill 4: The Room gets a bad rap. While it moved the series in its own direction, it is a direction that I really like. It has a very creepy and fun story and the gameplay, even though frustrating in places is still good from the start until the very end.
