SILENT HILL 4: THE ROOM
DON’T MAKE ME PLAY!
Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game
Back in 2006 I bought The Silent Hill Collection on PS2, which consisted of Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4. Although I loved the second and third games, I decided within five minutes that I hated the fourth and never played any more of it. I think it was because it opened with a first-person section, which threw me a bit.
Being an entitled sod at the time, I dropped a NotMySilentHill hashtag (well, I would have if hashtags existed) and vowed never to play it again. And yet, here I am now. Annoyingly, playing it properly for the first time, I realise I was an idiot, because not all of the game is in first-person, only the sections in the titular room (Henry’s boarded-up apartment, which acts like a sort of hub between all the normal third-person bits). The majority of gameplay is your typical Silent Hill style.
I’ve decided this fourth entry is probably the scariest game in the series, too. Silent Hill’s monsters are pant-churningly creepy at the best of times but some of the swines in this game – the weird two-headed cherub thing being a particular ‘highlight’ – had me squealing like a helium junkie.
It isn’t perfect, though. The increased emphasis on combat compared to the other Hills is annoying, and I hate that the only place in the entire game where you can save or arrange your inventory is the room, meaning playing is a constant back-and-forth where you head off to a certain location, get so far, have to come back so you can save and store some items, then head out again. There’s a lot of faffing around.
It isn’t the best game in the series, then – that’s still Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, in my eyes. But despite its flaws Silent Hill 4: The Room isn’t anywhere near as bad as I’ve assumed it is for well over a decade.
THE WEIRD TWOHEADED CHERUB HAD ME SQUEALING LIKE A HELIUM JUNKIE.