Silent Hill 4: The Room Preview

There is a misconception in the adventure community that the Silent Hill games are not adventure. The truth is that not only did Silent Hill 3 contain more puzzles than many ‘pure’ adventure games like Jack the Ripper, but that the Silent Hill games also have a slider bar that allows the player to set the puzzle level to ‘difficult’ and the action level to ‘easy.’ Now, I’m not going to try and pull the wool over your eyes and claim that you will never need to fire a weapon, but you will find yourself needing only one shot to dispose of a foe rather than three or four. I find it a great satisfaction to be able to enjoy the game on a cerebral level while still getting the adrenaline rush of vanquishing a misshapen baddie.

Which brings us to Silent Hill 4. The conclusion of the last entry neatly tied up all of the loose ends from the trilogy so how could Konami possibly do a sequel? Well, SH4 is a fresh approach to the series and supposedly is not related to the previous episodes (though we all know that somehow, someway all of the games will intersect).

Silent Hill 4: The Room takes place in the small town of South Ashfield, only a few short miles from Silent Hill. This time you play as Henry Townshend who wakes from a nightmare to find that he is trapped in his apartment. The outside door is heavily chained and boarded shut. Strange sounds are coming from the bathroom (okay, knock off the giggling), but when he goes to investigate he notices a strange portal that leads to alternate worlds. There is not much more we can reveal about the plot as a) Konami is being very tight-lipped, and b) we couldn’t hear a damn thing the Konami rep was saying to us at the E3 as the noise in the Konami booth was ungodly loud.

Your point-of-view will change depending on your location: first-person viewpoint for the reality of your apartment and third-person viewpoint for the alternate worlds. The control system is exactly the same as the previous games as are the excellent graphics and soundtrack. The monsters once again resemble something that Clive Barker would have vomited from his imagination. The new Silent Hill seems to once again be the perfect balance of puzzles, action and horror

The brief E3 demo was more than enough to get me jonesing for the final version. I can’t wait to once again sit in the dark, afraid to peek around the next corner. Konami has indeed perfected the fine art of scaring the crap out of gamers.