I really wish I could sing higher praises of this game, but unfortunately it is living deep within the shadow of the first 3 games. A lot of people will claim the Team SILENT quadrilogy has "purposefully bad gameplay and controls" to make things more tense, but those first 3 games do indeed have a really good and tight gameplay loop. Silent Hill 4 does not have that.
It is constantly throwing new shit at the wall non-stop until the game ends. New mechanics, new ideas, new enemies, and normally this would rock, but these things don't particularly mesh well in all honesty, especially not with this game's absolutely ridiculous new control scheme. In a game where the camera shifts SO MUCH I don't think anything BUT tank controls will work. I also don't think a Silent Hill game needs to have half of its runtime be a bad escort mission with the worst AI ever where the quality of your escorting ties into the game's ending.
Some positives, this is easily one of the best sounding games of its generation. Great music, great sound design, its solid. The story, while a little confusing and hard to follow at first, is really strong here. The inventory management actually adds a fun level of depth to these games that prior entries didn't have. The creature designs are absolutely killer. And before Eileen joins you the core gameplay loop is conceptually good.
But like I said, this game is sadly living in the shadow of 3 way way way better games. Wish I had more kindness to give it, but this was just frustrating for a lot of its runtime. BUT its still a Team SILENT game so it is of course better than 80% of games that released the same year as it. This game IS good, I just wish it were MORE good.
It is constantly throwing new shit at the wall non-stop until the game ends. New mechanics, new ideas, new enemies, and normally this would rock, but these things don't particularly mesh well in all honesty, especially not with this game's absolutely ridiculous new control scheme. In a game where the camera shifts SO MUCH I don't think anything BUT tank controls will work. I also don't think a Silent Hill game needs to have half of its runtime be a bad escort mission with the worst AI ever where the quality of your escorting ties into the game's ending.
Some positives, this is easily one of the best sounding games of its generation. Great music, great sound design, its solid. The story, while a little confusing and hard to follow at first, is really strong here. The inventory management actually adds a fun level of depth to these games that prior entries didn't have. The creature designs are absolutely killer. And before Eileen joins you the core gameplay loop is conceptually good.
But like I said, this game is sadly living in the shadow of 3 way way way better games. Wish I had more kindness to give it, but this was just frustrating for a lot of its runtime. BUT its still a Team SILENT game so it is of course better than 80% of games that released the same year as it. This game IS good, I just wish it were MORE good.