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Silent Hill 4: The Room PS2 Konami  I have been a devotee of the Silent Hill series ever since the captivating opening sequence of the first game. The cinematic sequence - at once an introductory set-up and a teasing glimpse into the gameplay that lies ahead - set a bar that, disappointingly, the following games never quite managed to match. The first game gave us Harry Mason, whose daughter Cheryl has disappeared into the township of Silent Hill, and his desperate effort to find her. The second game, the worthiest sequel of the three, enlarged on the mysteries of Silent Hill, with completely new characters and plot creating a tense and haunting psychodrama. The third game, capable but not inspiring, finished off a story carried over from the first game. Now, with 'Silent Hill 4: The Room', Konami have gone back to the formula of the second game, giving us a new plot and new characters with only tangential connections to its predecessors. Sadly, however, despite some excellent ideas, it is not nearly as successful as its original. Henry Townshend, a resident of a tenement block in South Ashfield Heights (yes, the next town over from Silent Hill), wakes one morning from uneasy dreams to find his door mysteriously locked and chained from within. Unable to attract the attention of his neighbours, he has no choice but to investigate the mysterious hole that has opened up in his bathroom wall. It's a great set-up, but the rest of the game never quite lives up to it. There are some disconcerting moments (look for the giant freaky thing in one of the hospital rooms - it wouldn't be a Silent Hill game without the hospital level) and the gameplay rises to a tense crescendo, but it never quite haunted my dreams the way the first two games did. Again, the game has several different endings, but the makers seem to have reverted back to the functional pick-up-this-item-and-save-this-character method of determing the outcome, instead of the more nuanced 'Silent Hill 2' cumulative method. The quality of the cut-scenes is impressive, as usual. My biggest criticism is the incredibly linear nature of the game: the player is forced from one part to the next with no options. The large, interactive environments of the first and second games seem to be a thing well and truly of the past. It's possible that free play was a trade-off for a more claustrophobic feeling, but if so it is a poor exchange; the game is the worse for it. This game undoubtedly suffers from comparisons to the others in the series. If I came to it fresh, I would probaby find it a good deal more engaging. Or maybe it was just nostalgia for the others that made me keep playing this one. I would like to see the game plots shift away from the Silent Hill devil-cult and more towards the possibility, suggested in the second game, that the town is a haunted place that attracts the guily, troubled and evil, and turns their darkest nightmares and fantasies into the corporeal. Perhaps I've spent too much time thinking about this, but it's easy to let your mind run at a tangent during the endless backtracking and repetition that 'The Room' forces upon you.  |
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