We didn't know how good we had it when Silent Hill 4 was considered the worst entry in the series, did we? And I get it, gone are the iconic dark hallways and rooms lit by your meek flashlight, now there's a bigger emphasis on combat with wonkier controls than ever, you have to constantly deal with invincible enemies that pursue you through long stretches of the game, item management is now a centerpiece of progression that forces you to backtrack frequently, and to top it all off, the game commits the cardinal sin of turning half of its runtime into an escort mission with a frustrating AI through levels you have already been through. But goddammit, is that what makes it so compelling.
Conditioning the player to feel a sense of relief and security during their time spent in the titular room inbetween the intenionally unpleasant and "not fun" levels, only to eventually pull the rug out of their feet is what makes SH4 brilliant and a success of horror game design. The player gladly takes any invitation from the game to return back to the room, away from the outside world with its unwieldy and untamable third person camera, if only to get their health replenished back and take a quick breather, where they quickly establish a routine of menial tasks removed from any kind of danger, sheltered by the non hostile 1st person view.
And many years before Yurt or Lautrec defiled our Nexus and Firelink Shrine havens, our perceptions and understanding of how hub worlds and save areas should work in videogames is betrayed and weaponized against us. We perceive our small houses and bedrooms to be the one corner in this world where we get to be ourselves truly and safe from any outside social anxieties that could harm that well being, and having those walls turn against your isolation and loneliness is a very real threat that i'm sure many have felt in some shape or form. SH4 being able to explore that dread and horror through the language of safe spaces in videogames is nothing short of genius and what makes this entry in the franchise wholly unique.
With the introduction at the halfway point of a NPC that requires your constant protection from more powerful and invincible enemies, along with the sudden predatory shift the room takes, SH4 ramps up the anxiety with all those at first dubious design choices previously mentioned working in tandem to create a highly stressful dynamic between the outside world and the apartment. And while the hauntings eventually become an easy threat to deal with, the damage is already done, the room is no longer the same and that sense of respite you learned to cherish each time you found yourself inside those 4 walls is long gone. The Silent Hill franchise has always been very interested in our relationship with setting and spaces and the horror we can bring out of or into it, but it wasn't until SH4 when that concept was fully explored through the strengths of the medium.
Even disregarding SH4's strongest aspects, its world still manages to captivate just as its predecessors did, with nightmare inducing settings and monsters that provide some of the best scares in the series. The literalization of confinement and entrapment from the outside world through gameplay lends itself to numerous readings and interpretations of our innate desire for human contact and vouyeristic curiosity, despite how much we might intentionally or not struggle to fight against it, and the villain's bitter and cynical childlike propensity for violence provides a great foil and parallel to Henry's ubiquitous passive blank slate posture that we are meant to self insert into. I've always found interesting how Henry doesn't try to call Eileen through the peephole. She probably wouldn't hear him, but he doesn't even try, why is that?
Sure, it lacks the level of polish its predecessors enjoyed and there's no way for me to defend the nurses burping their way down the stairs, but Silent Hill 4 stands tall in the ps2 trilogy, and is a fitting endcap to Team Silent's stamp in the survival horror genre that, unfortunately, won't be topped anytime soon.
Conditioning the player to feel a sense of relief and security during their time spent in the titular room inbetween the intenionally unpleasant and "not fun" levels, only to eventually pull the rug out of their feet is what makes SH4 brilliant and a success of horror game design. The player gladly takes any invitation from the game to return back to the room, away from the outside world with its unwieldy and untamable third person camera, if only to get their health replenished back and take a quick breather, where they quickly establish a routine of menial tasks removed from any kind of danger, sheltered by the non hostile 1st person view.
And many years before Yurt or Lautrec defiled our Nexus and Firelink Shrine havens, our perceptions and understanding of how hub worlds and save areas should work in videogames is betrayed and weaponized against us. We perceive our small houses and bedrooms to be the one corner in this world where we get to be ourselves truly and safe from any outside social anxieties that could harm that well being, and having those walls turn against your isolation and loneliness is a very real threat that i'm sure many have felt in some shape or form. SH4 being able to explore that dread and horror through the language of safe spaces in videogames is nothing short of genius and what makes this entry in the franchise wholly unique.
With the introduction at the halfway point of a NPC that requires your constant protection from more powerful and invincible enemies, along with the sudden predatory shift the room takes, SH4 ramps up the anxiety with all those at first dubious design choices previously mentioned working in tandem to create a highly stressful dynamic between the outside world and the apartment. And while the hauntings eventually become an easy threat to deal with, the damage is already done, the room is no longer the same and that sense of respite you learned to cherish each time you found yourself inside those 4 walls is long gone. The Silent Hill franchise has always been very interested in our relationship with setting and spaces and the horror we can bring out of or into it, but it wasn't until SH4 when that concept was fully explored through the strengths of the medium.
Even disregarding SH4's strongest aspects, its world still manages to captivate just as its predecessors did, with nightmare inducing settings and monsters that provide some of the best scares in the series. The literalization of confinement and entrapment from the outside world through gameplay lends itself to numerous readings and interpretations of our innate desire for human contact and vouyeristic curiosity, despite how much we might intentionally or not struggle to fight against it, and the villain's bitter and cynical childlike propensity for violence provides a great foil and parallel to Henry's ubiquitous passive blank slate posture that we are meant to self insert into. I've always found interesting how Henry doesn't try to call Eileen through the peephole. She probably wouldn't hear him, but he doesn't even try, why is that?
Sure, it lacks the level of polish its predecessors enjoyed and there's no way for me to defend the nurses burping their way down the stairs, but Silent Hill 4 stands tall in the ps2 trilogy, and is a fitting endcap to Team Silent's stamp in the survival horror genre that, unfortunately, won't be topped anytime soon.
10 Comments
Thanks for reading! I mentioned the burping nurses cause it's usually something people bring up to criticize the game, and while it does come across as a bit silly, I honestly had no issues with it or other stock sounds used in the game, feels like something people go overboard with to justify why they dont like the game.
As for the peephole thing, yeah it was more of a rethorical question than anything else. Beyond Henry's social awkwardness, his lack of communication through the peephole implies a sort of satisfaction he gets from it, but maybe that's just me who's fucked up.
As for the peephole thing, yeah it was more of a rethorical question than anything else. Beyond Henry's social awkwardness, his lack of communication through the peephole implies a sort of satisfaction he gets from it, but maybe that's just me who's fucked up.
really good review. i can understand why people like this one the least of the 4 but the back half being like i was in this agoraphobic n surreal slasher movie is a feeling no other game has given me, and i wind up thinking about this one more than most of the series before it. im glad you caught on to that aspect of it too!!
Thank you! Yeah, the back half of the game is the actual meat and interesting stuff in SH4, it's weird to me how much backlash those design decisions get, they rarely ever got in the way of the experience. Then again people also tend to complain about Ashley's escort mission in RE4, and that's such a brief and non intrusive passage in the whole game, some people just aren't able to take in that kind of frustration and anxiety as a net positive for the experience.
This review genuinely has me interested in replaying the game at some point. I never gave it much of a chance before.
it's worth a revisit for sure, can't speak for others on this but I found it to be very doable and I didn't die a single time, people really exaggerate about the frustrating aspects of this one.
once you get past the escalator its relatively smooth sailing from there, thats the only really bad part
i was dreading that part and managed to pass it unscaved with the pistol and axe lol
You should play Silent Hill Origins.
Trust me, it's bad.
Trust me, it's bad.
I played it a long time ago as a kid, and even then it felt like a Bepis version of 2
GutterTrash
3 years ago
Whether it was intentional or not, I feel like the stock burp sounds exist, like a lot of stuff in SH4, to do the same thing the rest of the horror in the game intends on doing. Unlike the previous games which go for more outright scary and disturbing horror, SH4 focuses a lot more on disorienting the player. While you mention the room doing this in your review a lot, I think the games constant use of shitty stock sound effects add to this feeling a lot too. Like, think about it. If you're in some kind of horrific hellhole of a location, and you heard the constant sounds of someone burping as people fall down the stairs, it'd probably a hell of a lot more confusing than anything else, which is the modus operandi of the entire game.
Also Henry not calling out to Eileen through the peephole: He's just an awkward guy? This is the same guy that has almost no reaction to watching people he somewhat knew die in front of him, and his only other interaction with another person in the game at that point is him literally spying on them. The game does a lot to paint him as just generally very socially awkward, so I doubt he'd want to call out for help. (Also if the guy spying on you claimed he was trapped inside his apartment/hell world how willing would you be to believe them)
Good review tho! Congrats on not getting filtered by what this one pretentious cuck thinks is the best game in the franchise.