Developer: Konami
Completion Time: 9 hours, 46 minutes
This is not a comfortable game to play, a lot of the difficulty comes from how frightened the game's atmosphere makes you while playing. I have honestly never had a horror experience as frightening as this game. I don't know how the developers of the Silent Hill series continue to come up with new material and make it exceedingly disturbing each time, but I love them for it. This now completes my collection of the currently released games, and I am proud of that fact. Silent Hill 5 and the hope of a Final Fantasy 7 remake are two reasons I might be crazy enough to purchase a PS Triple out of the three current generation consoles... maybe I need to increase the dosage on my meds. Either way, let me share a bit about this exercise in absolute terror.
Silent Hill 4 is uniquely themed about a boy and his mother, I won't spoil any more of the plot than that. The gameplay introduced a few new mechanics to the classic formula including an item box system borrowed from Resident Evil. This managed to be fairly tolerable considering you are constantly returning to your "base" to switch out items, save progress and uncover more of the masterfully crafted story. The room segments also take place in first person, another first for the series. You then travel through various locations and settings via holes in walls that portal you from one freaky scenario to the next. In true Silent Hill fashion, everything you witness and partake in has some semblance in the great scheme of the story. I found this round to be much more satisfying than 3 surprisingly, despite hearing mixed opinions prior to actually playing the game.
The only thing that annoyed me about the gameplay in 4 is the addition of ghost enemies and hauntings in your apartment towards the later portion of the game. In my survival horror games I can appreciate the need to run from enemies, but when the enemies follow you from screen to screen and can't be killed(only "pinned" with an item in limited supply) that sucks. You are constantly tense and on the run for most of the games areas, ok fine, but then you reach a point in the game where your apartment has hauntings and you're no longer safe there either!? Get out of town! There has to be some semblance of a sanctuary to ease your nerves while dealing with all of the messed up stuff the game throws at you. After the hauntings started I felt an urgency to rush through the rest of the game just so I could finally relax.
Don't get the wrong idea, I cherish Silent Hill 4 and its predecessors, there aren't even close to enough games this good. Just, I doubt I'm going to be able to sleep right for the next week. I ended up with the bad ending of the bunch, according to a FAQ. I guess it was important to get rid of the hauntings in your apartment instead of run past them quickly, and also important to better protect your stupid AI escort partner rather than use her as a meat shield. My bad! I still rather enjoyed the bad ending, even though it closed things on a depressing note.
The puzzles seemed much easier for me to solve in this one, things just clicked. I don't know if this is because they were less cryptic, or because my brain function has increased after nearly half a month of sobriety. I'll take whatever I can get, running up and down stairs to check Gamefaqs when you're scared out of your mind is a little intense for old Kuni.
I'd like to think I'll maybe play the Silent Hill series again, and probably will. Not for some time however, have to let the nightmares subside. Thanks again Konami for probing the dark recesses of the human psyche and making a fun game out of it!
Spooky scary Kuni rating: 5/5
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