It's interesting that a lot of these comments are praising "Silent Hill 4" for it's story alone. While I fully agree that the storyline is incredibly engrossing and fascinating, what these people fail to acknowledge is the simple fact that "Silent Hill 4" is SUPPOSED to be a video game. And as a video game, it is far from being an impressive installment to the series.
See the thing is... the Silent Hill series is all about telling an eerie and fascinating tale. And they've all been successful at doing so, even in this latest chapter. But what the others have that this doesn't is an interesting and fun game-play aspect. Silent Hill 4 really isn't that fun to play. It's actually really pretty boring to be honest. You run around in beautifully creative environments fighting somewhat cool monsters with a clunky and hindered battle system. There are no puzzles. No brain twisters. No real challenging obstacles at all really. The only "problem solving" you need to do is backtrack through a vast environment 2 or sometimes 3 times to pick up a key or get behind a closed door.
The entire "game-play" obstacle is simply getting from point A to point B without getting too frustrated and turning your system off. You run from room to room, from environment to environment, dodging annoying ghosts and monsters that are bent on frustrating you to the very end. They are not there to provide interesting combat but instead they are meant to make your journey literally a living hell.
So yes, the story is amazing and the Silent Hill games are incredibly at providing an interactive movie sort of feel. But Silent Hill's 1-3 gave you a great storyline and really fun game-play mechanics. The fighting was phenomenal in these games, the puzzles were challenging and interesting, and the stories were fantastic. "The Room" has VERY little of this.
This game took me nearly 4 months to beat because I simply couldn't stand how it played. The ONLY thing that kept me coming back to it was that I really, really, really wanted to see how it ended. And the entire story arch and ending are just fantastic. BUT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A VIDEO GAME! If you just wanted to see an engrossing story from Silent Hill then they should have made "The Room" a book or a movie or something. As it stands, this was a poor attempt at reinventing the series although yet again Konami proves they are fully capable at creating an intricate, beautiful, and creepy storyline was fascinating characters and incredibly visuals. Sadly, it's not enough in the big picture. I actually only wanted to give "The Room" a 6 out of 10, but as many have mentioned here before... the story is just so dam good. It's just too bad the GAME was so lackluster and poor at times.
See the thing is... the Silent Hill series is all about telling an eerie and fascinating tale. And they've all been successful at doing so, even in this latest chapter. But what the others have that this doesn't is an interesting and fun game-play aspect. Silent Hill 4 really isn't that fun to play. It's actually really pretty boring to be honest. You run around in beautifully creative environments fighting somewhat cool monsters with a clunky and hindered battle system. There are no puzzles. No brain twisters. No real challenging obstacles at all really. The only "problem solving" you need to do is backtrack through a vast environment 2 or sometimes 3 times to pick up a key or get behind a closed door.
The entire "game-play" obstacle is simply getting from point A to point B without getting too frustrated and turning your system off. You run from room to room, from environment to environment, dodging annoying ghosts and monsters that are bent on frustrating you to the very end. They are not there to provide interesting combat but instead they are meant to make your journey literally a living hell.
So yes, the story is amazing and the Silent Hill games are incredibly at providing an interactive movie sort of feel. But Silent Hill's 1-3 gave you a great storyline and really fun game-play mechanics. The fighting was phenomenal in these games, the puzzles were challenging and interesting, and the stories were fantastic. "The Room" has VERY little of this.
This game took me nearly 4 months to beat because I simply couldn't stand how it played. The ONLY thing that kept me coming back to it was that I really, really, really wanted to see how it ended. And the entire story arch and ending are just fantastic. BUT THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A VIDEO GAME! If you just wanted to see an engrossing story from Silent Hill then they should have made "The Room" a book or a movie or something. As it stands, this was a poor attempt at reinventing the series although yet again Konami proves they are fully capable at creating an intricate, beautiful, and creepy storyline was fascinating characters and incredibly visuals. Sadly, it's not enough in the big picture. I actually only wanted to give "The Room" a 6 out of 10, but as many have mentioned here before... the story is just so dam good. It's just too bad the GAME was so lackluster and poor at times.