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RENT WORTHY AT BEST

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 14
Date: September 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First of all I'd like to clerify that I am an avid fan of the Silent Hill series since the first installation. Silent Hill The Room was just released so naturaly I got a copy. If you're reading this review you probably know the basic plot, you play as Henry Townshend, a resident of apartment 302 in an average building in a small city, half day's drive from Silent Hill. For five days Henry's been trapped in his apartment with no way out and no way to communicate with the outside world. With that said lets get to the meat and potatos of this review, the game play. The graphics are similar to those of Silent Hill 2. Objects and levels are well rendered but washed over with a grainy effect. The character designs and animations are up to par with any other title on the xbox and voiceovers are done extremely well thanks to a cast of convincing actors. Sound effects are eerie and ambiant noises manipulate as well as warn you of danger. A new addition to the Silent Hill universe is the first person perspective. Henry is able to walk around his apartment completely in first person perspective (and you will be revisiting the apartment frequently). An icon appears on the upper left to notify the player they are looking at an item of interest. This feature is done well enough and movements translate smoothly from controller to screen.
THE ENEMIES
Although the enemies are well rendered and nicely animated, combat is extremely frustrating because of
POOR CAMERA ANGLES.
This is where the game falls apart. Although the weapons are easy enough to use, the camera is set in front of Henry and aimed at him from three to four feet away at nearly all parts of the levels where enemies await you. Since most of the levels are halls and small rooms (like the previous SH's) this "cinematic" approach acomplishes only getting you killed in the game. Survival Horror games are plagued with bad camera angles and this has been a concern among gamers with the first three Silent Hill games and this version takes that frustration to the max. It's almost as if it was done deliberately to annoy the players. The story is very well done, the atmosphere is ambiant and creepy. It is a very good game, the camera angles however hinder your ability to fight enemies and being swarmed by three or four dogs is bad enough, try fending them off with a camera two feet in front of your face LOOKING AT YOU instead of the action.
Fans of the SH series should rent The Room. If the cinematic-yet devastating to gameplay- camera angles don't frustrate you, this is another excellent installment to your collection of morbid tales from Silent Hill. The designers put forth a valiant effort however gameplay was not as enjoyable as it should have been because of HORRIBLE camera angles.

beware of the 39.99 game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: September 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

With video games, it seems you get what you pay for, and with the exception of expansions, games that have had the appropriate amount of time and talent put into them are $49.99. So when I saw Silent Hill 4 for $39.99, I was suspicious. However, being a fan of Silent Hill 2 (3 never came out for xbox), I figured it was worth a try. Big mistake (and I think it speaks volumes that Amazon has ALREADY dropped the price by a few bucks only two days after its release). As noted in a previous review, the camera angles kill the game. You are constantly looking at your feet, your face, or walls. If you are lucky enough to see the enemy in front of you, you can't see the one behind you until it has already attacked. The attack system is awful, too. Bullets are useless, and it takes about 20 hits or so with the pipe to kill the enemy. The "story" is completely derivative, with many scenes and effects taken straight out of horror movies like The Ring. The first 15 minutes of the game was one clip after another, interspersed with walking around until enough time has elapsed in order to play another clip. Saving the game requires running all the way back to the apartment, which you'll want to do after killing an enemy or two (seeing how long it takes to finally lead-pipe them to death)...otherwise, you'll find yourself loading up the last save which typically loses you ten or fifteen minutes of work. The game barely breaks out of the "one star" categories only because the atmosphere and sound is effectively creepy. Overall, a huge disappointment and one that is headed straight for the "bargain bin" at EB's.

The Room: most innovated SH game yet.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: September 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

For some fans of the series, this game will come to be a shock when you find out that there are two view points in this game, 1st and 3rd person. You see when your in The Room you have to be in 1st person for some odd reason but the only thing that bothered me about this setup was trying to get used to the somewhat clunky control scheme used there. Sometimes you might need to look at a certain thing, let's say looking out the window, well sometimes you'll get this message that says "I haven't been able to open the windows in 5 days..." when I was trying to look at the main glass part of the window.

Sometimes this 1st person can be a problem, but I started getting used to it and most of the problems stopped.

As for gameplay, it's your normal SH game but they've added some new features. Like you can only change weapons by using the D-pad in real time, meaning if you run out of ammo in the middle of the battle you can't pause it to save you so you have to plan ahead and bring melee weapons.

Also you iventory is no longer limitless, you have to return to your room and deposit your unneccessary objects in a chest, kind of like the boxes in RE.

They've added a special ability mode too where you hold down the A button while in combat position and wait for a bar to fill up, once it's full you unleash an attack that can either be more devastating or can hit more enemies.

The storyline of the game is great and has little tidbits from the other 3 games (which can easily missed so look carefully) but other than that this game is like the 2nd where it has no connection to the main storyline of the characters from the 1st and 3rd (want to know their names and plots? Well go buy the games and play them to learn the secrets of the cult based in the town).

The graphics in this game aren't bad some of the creatures in this game are creepy, and they've added ghosts, which cannot be harmed by normal weapons and are kinda like the Nemesis from RE3.

Buy this game if you like the series or if you like the whole survival horror genre.

Good but no the best

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: September 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is good but is far from being the best SH game to be made, I played SH1 when I had a PSX, and the controls and graphics weren't the best but it was PSX, I have played through SH2:RD over 7x's and played through SH3 (borrowed a friends PS2, since it never came out for XBOX) and am now playing SH4:The Room. This game is a good game for people who have played the other games (or atleast one of them) but it would be really hard (the controls and all) for somebody who has never played even a minute of a diff. SH game.
My opion is that this is a really good buy for people who have played other SH games, not very good if you have never played a SH game.

Silent Hill moves into the surreal

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: September 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Silent Hill 4: The Room is the most unusual entry in a most unusual video game franchise. While earlier installments in the series have focused on stories designed to evoke spine-chilling horror, this fourth chapter in the saga causes much deeper feelings of anxiety and unease. I remember being more traditionally scared playing Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, but the underlying, more psychological sensation of existential dread I felt playing this game was something altogether new.

The Silent Hill games have shown a narrative progression by which the nature of the town is expanded upon in each game. In the first two games, your character went to Silent Hill and had his horrific adventure. In the third, Silent Hill itself "came to" the main character of Heather, who merely wanted to have a nice day at the mall. In Silent Hill 4, the town has now invaded your last refuge of security, your home.

You play Henry Townshend, who lives alone in a small apartment in the bustling town of South Ashfield, half a day's drive from Silent Hill. After suffering from inexplicable nightmares, Harry awakens to find that his apartment door has been chained and padlocked shut from the INSIDE. He can't open his windows, and no one, even people standing directly outside his front door, can hear him when he pounds on the door and cries for help.

The game expertly evokes the desperate confusion and lurking fear you would feel if you simply couldn't get out of your house. The strangeness of Henry's situation is underscored by the fact that, tantalizingly, he can see the real world right outside his window, with cars and pedestrians zipping by on a street only fifty yards away. Neighbors in the apartment building opposite his can be seen going about their business (one guy, amusingly, is playing air guitar). The banality of day to day life takes on a whole new meaning when one person is suddenly set apart from it by horrific circumstances he can't understand or control. The next time you're taking a walk down the block, imagine if something terrifyingly Silent Hill-ish was happening to someone in the very house you're walking past, and you're safe outside with no way of knowing. The whole character of the neighborhood will change. That's the kind of thing the Silent Hill series does so well: conveying the deep terror that can result when what is normal and commonplace suddenly and without warning goes all WRONG.

The action begins when Henry discovers that a large hole has emerged in his bathroom wall. As it's the only way out, he must crawl through it, and doing so, finds himself in the decaying, blood-spattered environments of Silent Hill with which the series' fans have become so familiar. But this game offers alarming differences. Some of the creatures that menace you -- like the ghosts that look more like floating paralyzed corpses -- can't be killed, and others -- like the two-headed babies that walk on adult arms -- are so bizarre they beggar imagination. You're also limited in what you can carry, and the only place you can save your game is in your apartment, a safe haven you can return to through holes in walls spread throughout the levels. But even that safe haven isn't safe for long.

In earlier games, the horror, while nightmarish, was still rooted in a sense of realism that, in turn, created realistic horror. You'd walk down dark corridors or misty deserted streets armed with a flashlight and your weapon. But here, the environments are more outrageously surreal, as if you're literally wandering through a bad dream. Spiral staircases seem to float in thin air. A enormous woman's face peers at you from a hospital wall. Living tendrils of no discernible biology dangle upwards from the floor to bar your way. Wheelchairs zoom down corridors by themselves, as if it were a freeway for paraplegic ghosts. It's as if the game designers just decided to let Salvador Dali loose with 3D rendering software and instructions that he was to exercise no restraint at all in coming up with ways to freak people out.

Sometimes it gets a little TOO weird. At times I found myself less frightened by this game than morbidly intrigued; I was actually interested in getting to certain rooms just to see what kind of crazy thing I'd encounter next. In that sense, I'd have to say the earlier games work a little better as pure, edge of your seat, bloodcurdling horror. But Silent Hill 4 still does a bang-up job of generating an entirely different kind of fear, one that doesn't so much leap out at you from the dark as crawl deep into the back of your mind and lurk there.

I leave you with two pieces of advice. One: if you're new to the series, don't start here, start with 2 and 3. Two: don't take the doll.

Havent played yet but if it follows like the others in.....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: September 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

the series.....well then I will be screaming for my mommy on a second to second basis. I am so looking forward to it, and it's on XBOX! I have a PS2 but the graphics and sound will probably be better. The sounds I think are the most terrifying so if you have surround sound turn off the lights and turn it up! The monsters appear to be a little creepier than the last (although pyrimad (sp) head was super creepy) And the nurses who can forget the nurses. Since all the Silent Hill games were good I don't see why this one wouldn't be. So I will buy it and hopefully have a better review for you.

Stepping Backwards

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: September 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ok, so I could not believe in the bad press until I played through this game myself. This is the first SH game I didn't really enjoy. There is so much that is just wrong with it that it starts to overtake that which is new or innovative. Basically you play through 5 generic levels.......then you get to struggle through the same identical 5 levels with a limping companion who gets injured easily and who gravitates into conflicts with invincible enemies (I am not kidding). Some of the monsters/ghosts are creepy the first time you see them (which is saying something seeing how you don't encounter them in the dark with a flashlight) but lack the originality of SH2 or SH3 and have seemingly nothing to do with the storyline. The story is a re-hash of "Seven" morphed with "Nightmare on Elm Street" with a main villain who is about as scary as some trendy 20-something actor playing a serial killer in any boring 20-something neo-horror flick (not to mention Henry). Your room is an interesting and engaging concept but doesn't equate to what the spralling town of Silent Hill did for SH1 & SH2. Lastly, there is the soundtrack. Whoever thought to put a weak neo-metal ballad vocalist and a Peter Murphy wanna-be singing the lamest lyrics ever over the soundtrack needs to seriously explore another direction. On the SH3 soundtrack it was annoying and embarrassing, now it just sucks. Konami needs to put "quality" back into this series (no repeating levels, no RE item system) and seriously reconsider the nuances between scary and annoying game play.

Just what I would expect

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: September 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After finally figuring out the problem I was having with the game and being able to FINALLY play it I have to say I like it.

I been with Silent Hill since the beginning on the Playstatin and it's just what I would expect.

The first person is only while in your room so it's okay. I'm not a fan of first person but this doesn't bother me. What sucks though is that I read in an interview that the new SH's may be strickly first person... If that becomes true then this will be my last SH. So I'm hoping it's not!

Aside from that, the game is Silent Hill. It's scarey and intriguing, just as the previous SH games. But still has the poor combat which doesn't bother me as I play it more for the uncovering the story rather then combat.

New to SH is the sense of urgency. Unlike the previous SH games this one creates a sense of urgency. Between the sounds, monster-things and the storyline itself... Instead of taking your time and exploring every cornor of an area you're sort of rushing through, creating more of a sense of realism. And this rush is enforced through the new monsters which are unkillable and follow you around. You can also see them follow you through the wall... Scarey!

I really enjoy the game. And am surprised they were able to create that urgency. I've never played a game before that was able to rush me through it.

Back to the Silent hill world

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: September 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

i like this game like all the previous ones i've played .. i thought i was gonna visit Silent hill again in this game.. i was wrong. I guess they're trying to come up with new stories for players to live..it's all good, i like all the Silent hill series they come up with.. but i gotta say ,that Silent hill 1 was the one game that made me feel real horror, cause it was my first silent hill experience I could ever live, and it made me voracious for more silent hill series.
i wish if they can make the endings a little longer, like when you win the final battle, you get to watch couple scenes of your ending and that's it..i'd like to watch more, it'd be more fun. and if we could have lil romance between the characters lol.

Another solid silent sequel.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: October 19, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Silent Hill The Room plays like other Silent Hill games,with the exception of the players apt. area which is first person. If your a fan of this series you'll probably like this game as it is the same format of previous silent hill games.My only complaint is I wish you could choose between 1st person or regular perspective. For me personaly I feel more like I'M in the game when its all First person like in the room. But I know diehard fans who are used to the format wouldnt like it.I just wish it was ALL first person perspective or at least you could switch between first and third on the fly. But still its another solid silent hill game,with the added feeling of being trapped in,like the title says ,THE ROOM.

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