This game starts so amazingly. The Room is such an awesome concept, and seeing it change as you go is so cool. I loved coming back to it and seeing how things changed. The main gameplay is pretty cool too as you explore the areas full of creepy characters as the great story unfolds.

But then the second half hits, and yeah, it’s a real slog. Backtracking through areas you’ve already been to, and the whole time you have to execute a slow escort mission. It’s a massive shame, because if the second half was as good as the first, I would LOVE this game - but it just drags it down significantly for me. I went from being excited at what’s coming next, to just wanting it to wrap up.

Creatively, Silent Hill 4 is a mixed bag. I really love Eileen and some of the other characters, but I don’t care at all for Henry. The lack of puzzles is really disappointing, but the few that are there that use the room are brilliantly clever. The character design is cool, but the enemy and sound design is a huge step down. The room is dripping in atmosphere, but the level gameplay wasn’t scary at all.

Silent Hill 4 has some of the most genius ideas I’ve seen in gaming, but unfortunately doesn’t execute them in as good as a game as those ideas deserve to be in.

What a strange entry in the series. The first half of this game is fantastic, focusing on the best parts of the franchise, the dungeons, but the 2nd half is such a drop off in quality. Eileen is awful as an AI and there are so many times where she just got kinda stuck or would let enemies hit her for no reason. Revising a lot of the same locations was also a tiny bit tiring and it overstayed it's welcome by a lot by the end. Didn't hate this though, this was still a great survival horror game overall, I just wish it could keep the momentum it had the whole way through.

A pretty decent entry in the silent hill franchise, I just watched my boyfriend play it as I don't enjoy playing horror games - i much prefer just enjoying them from the back seat. The game looks and feels a bit janky at times. Some sections were a bit of a pain to complete. I really enjoyed the characters as they were quite interesting. The mechanics the game implemented could have been better, for example when some hauntings happened, the mechanic bugged on us several time so we ended up wasting some resources and still have the haunting remain.
The games does have some pretty fire songs in it tho. Still very much a game worth playing, horror games from this era just hit different. Silent hill 3 is still my favorite.

Nothing is scarier than the water prison level for 10-year-old me in the 2000s (and also twin fucking victims)

I still find these games highly disturbing and uncanny but at the same time charming and super sexy

Replaying 1-4 almost every year, but Silent Hill 4 always amazes me with its craziness and creativity

Silent Hill 2 is more like beautiful poetry but this one was much more impactful and scarier for me with all this dreadful plot about the man who considers the apartment to be his mother

The people who created the classic Silent Hill games are absolute geniuses

Uma experiência densa de survival horror e terror psicológico.

Silent Hill 4: The Room acabou por se tornar um dos meus favoritos da saga, algo que eu não estava esperando, apesar de desde um tempo me sentir instigado à jogar esse jogo. Esse game tem diversos problemas, mas a experiência de desvendar essa história foi tão boa e satisfatória que eu consigo facilmente relevá-los, problemas esses que são majoritariamente técnicos. Encaro a frustração de empacar em algumas partes puramente como skill issue e incompetência da minha parte de pensar e resolver os puzzles.

Às partes técnicas que me agradaram pode-se pontuar principalmente à dinâmica apartamento/outro mundo. A forma como o apartamento se torna uma entidade do jogo, que você usa como refúgio pra se curar, salvar o jogo e resolver alguns puzzles, e como na segunda metade essa zona de conforto é quebrada com o início das aparições lá dentro, eu acho de uma genialidade sem tamanho. O pacing da história é um dos melhores da franquia, cm a forma que os mistérios vão se desdobrando através das notas postas na sua porta, os diálogos com as outras personagens que estão tão fodidas quanto você nessa espiral de insanidade. A relação e referências que o jogo tem com a cidade de Silent Hill é também fantástica. E, apesar do jogo não se passar em Silent Hill de fato, tem tanto da cidade no texto e sub-texto desse jogo que fez eu me sentir mais presente ao ambiente de Silent Hill do que o 3º jogo por exemplo. O fator terror psicológico aqui é fortíssimo, muito sustentado pelo fator survivor horror que é provavelmente o mais forte da saga, graças às mecânicas de, por exemplo, inventário cm espaço limitado. O que leva o jogador à gerenciar todos recursos possíveis, desde munições e itens de cura até os itens para lidar com os fantasmas do outro mundo e aparições do apartamento. A história é extremamente cativante, os plots são satisfatórios, é um jogo que prende e te instiga cada vez mais a descobrir a verdade por trás disso tudo. E a verdade é loucura pura. Melhor antagonista da franquia disparado. Trilha sonora marcante, diferente das anteriores por ter mais performances vocais, algo que me agradou bastante (Akira Yamaoka não decepciona nunca). Personagens, como de costume de um game SH, estranhos. Diálogos incômodos com doses de apatia e loucura, apatia essa muito presente no protagonista Henry e sua densidade como personagem. O que muitos interpretam como um personagem sem sal, caladão e indiferente, eu encaro como um homem introvertido, solitário, que encontra conforto nessa solidão. A dinâmica dele com a Eileen é muito interessante na história, mas não tão interessante em gameplay. Escoltar ela pelas fases é uma experiência um pouco frustrante, mas nada que eu já não tenha lidado em RE4 por exemplo.

Os pontos negativos são coisas bem bobas que poderiam ser melhoradas sem muito esforço. Por exemplo, uma opção de descartar itens era imprescindível, e infelizmente não tem nesse game. Os cachorros são um pé no saco, com uma IA totalmente injusta. Também acho que fantasmas poderiam ser melhor trabalhados como inimigos, infelizmente por serem MUITO brokens você só não os enfrenta pq simplesmente não vale a pena.

Mas enfim. Esse jogo é inegavelmente injustamente subestimado e até desdenhado, muito por expectativas de jogadores que gostariam de uma experiência igual à dos jogos anteriores, experiência essa que já estava saturada. A criatividade e coragem dos desenvolvedores de criarem algo novo dessa forma é provavelmente o fator principal de esse jogo ser tão tirado pra merda. Um excelente game que, com alguns ajustes/retoques na parte técnica, seria sim um jogo de terror perfeito.

Left to Rot

Team Silent's last effort went into this experimental and odd entry in the Silent Hill franchise. It is not as well remembered as the trilogy itself, at least for what I could read on the internet and asking people online. It is quite sad, but I can totally understand why after finishing it and is not everyone would enjoy, initially. Specially comming from prior entries which follow a set structure regardless of how wildly they might differ thematically. The Room is different.

We awake in an unknown apartment complex, inside what must be our room: 302. After taking a look at the main entrance to the room, we find out the door is completely shut. Someone took a huge amount effort and emphasis on not wanting us to leave the room whatsoever.

"Don't Go Out!!"

-Walter

Peeking into the door's peephole reveals that we are at least not alone, a lone woman wonders outside our door. She can't hear us and our only way to interact with "the outside world" is through pen and paper; notes. After exploring most of what the room has to offer up to that point, we end up staring at a large hole in the bathroom wall. In classic Silent Hill fashion, our protagonist ventures straight into the darkness to another entirely different location where the adventure starts.

The Room as I said before drifts away from the conventional spirit of the series. For instance, it is not even located in Silent Hill to begin with but a town nearby called South Ashfield. The town is full to the brim with people just living an everyday life, that is quite a contrast to the other three games. It makes emphasis in the room itself, not just as a place but as an enigmatic living entity that lives on it's own throughout several small changes we'll be seeing while we progress in the adventure. It feels like being inside of a creature that doesn't exist or rather, we can't comprehend.

But where does the "bad reception" comes from exactly? Tough one. The very nature of this game being an experiment of sorts for Team Silent delivers a layer of complexity above prior titles when it comes to storytelling and structure. It's story is secretly sparse and told in the aforementioned notes, that can be found through the apartment and the worlds themselves as we explore. How the game structures the map is simpler than prior entries, since it's divided into little worlds entirely different from one another. Think of it just as a level or zone. The absense of challenging puzzles (aside from the water prison world puzzle) might have been one of the factors too since they were not challenging at all. It is fractured into little pieces and the room serves as the central hub to take a break from time to time, read through the notes and piece the story together in something that can make sense in your head.

But, I believe there is something definitely lacking in The Room: Emotion. It is known that Silent Hill as a town can manifest people worst thoughts and transform them into reality. What does that have to do with Silent Hill exactly? This isn't about the protagonist we control, Henry. But rather it's the story of Walter Sullivan; an individual with more close ties to the town of Silent Hill, an it's religious cult. The distant nature of Henry is quite peculiar as it is non-intrusive and let's the story flow naturally while exploring a world that is not his with more ease. But it lacks that strange yet beliveable human connection characters previous titles had up to that point. This is were The Room fails to make an impact on me.

The Room is unusual, unsettling and quite interesting knowing this is Team Silent last game. Definitely feels like a side-project, while Silent Hill 3 was recieveng all the manpower and money possible to develop; Silent Hill 4 was a strange experiment that they turned into a full game. For me, it's the scariest Silent Hill game by a long shot. Don't believe me? See the intro for yourself.