Silent Hill 4: The Room

I owned this on Xbox but never got around to playing it, so there isn't any nostalgia in it for me or maybe making an exception because it has an amazing story. I really wouldn't know. It's fairly compelling as a narrative and has a somewhat creepy vibe, but it is so, so bad at everything else when viewed through the lens of 2025 standards.. I first played it on hard and turned it down to normal because the initial enemies took so many hits to kill, and the melee combat was so awful. Stilted controls and a very limited camera didn't help either . Beyond the cut-scenes it lacks atmosphere and scares. Previous Silent Hills had (for the time) fairly impressive and ominous shifts from the "normal world" into grim, distorted realities, whereas this just slaps lame stuff right in front of you without any rhyme or reason, or any effect. It's weird for sure, but it's also bland and even for a 2004 title it looks pretty naff. The textures are grainy, the image is washed-out and the lighting is unimpressive. This was an OG Xbox title, but even so it could have looked much better for the time. On the game-play side of it I stopped playing after a few dull enemy encounters, as it's quite poor in that regard. Your character lumbers about and isn't particularly responsive, and your attacks are turgid and shoddy. There's a bit where you have to go up an escalator and these creatures start forming out of the walls and swiping at you. The hit-boxes for their attacks are huge and annoying to evade, but you can't really attack them either. I tried shooting them but my character kept auto-aiming at ones I'd already shot and temporarily stopped, rather than aim at the next one along that then ended up walloping me back down the escalator. After umpteen times of this, and it also happening when I just tried to run past them or time dodging their attacks, I'd had enough. It really is quite poor and only massive nostalgia for it would make it worth buying in this day and age.

Very disturbing with the best soundtrack of the series, story and characters are so special i love that game so much even if some boss fights and sequences are really annoying

very tedious

First half's mediocre, second half is atrocious. Do yourself a favor and play Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3, and don't bother with this one. Puzzles and map design are far, far weaker than the prior three games to the point where most worlds are just set dressing, and the second half of the game has your backtracking through the first half with even less to interact with, but with significantly more irritating enemy encounters, and an annoying, mandatory escort quest that determines your ending. Inventory management starts off interesting enough, but quickly becomes tedious, making you either skip over items because you can't hold onto them, or make time-consuming trips back to your apartment to sort items out (and there's no way of dropping items on the spot either, so no way to, say, consolidate ammo if you find a pickup).

The voice acting is weak, the combat is awkward and uncomfortable. Henry is cute but lacks a personality. However the atmosphere and story are intense and harrowing, a flawed but worthy send off to the Team Silent era.