Silent Hill 4: The Room

Crashes every 20-30 minutes.

At the start of this year, I experienced Silent Hill 4: The Room for the first time, playing it on Windows 11 through the GoG port of this game. Though I was well aware before getting into this game that Silent Hill 4 was considered divisive by the community for changing certain aspects of Silent Hill's classic formula, I wanted to give this game a chance and see how much I'd enjoy it. Now that I have beaten this game and given myself enough time to think about Silent Hill 4's story and gameplay, I can safely say that this is one of my favorite titles in the entire franchise, other than Silent Hill 2 and its recent remake. So, what exactly is holding my rating back? Unfortunately, it is the current state of this game's port. While there were some recent patches for this version, there's one critical bug that transforms how the whole game must be played. Roughly after 10-15 minutes of playtime, interacting with objects in a room or opening a door will immediately trigger the game to crash. Due to this severe issue, you will be speedrunning from savepoint to savepoint while also save-scumming far more likely than you would on a regular playthrough. Sure, though uncommon, there were some community patches for this game other than the ones that added the missing PS2 hauntings into the GoG version. However, nothing as of yet that I've tried was effective enough to patch out this particular bug. Fortunately, this game is still beatable given its condition, even in the final area where there is only a single savepoint that you have to constantly backtrack far too. Though I enjoyed my experience with Silent Hill 4: The Room, I hope that this bug will eventually be patched so I can take my time to explore each area in a future playthrough. I'll be happy to give this game five stars if this issue ever gets resolved.

SH4 is still erroneously considered to be the black sheep of the main series, when it is in fact the black swansong of the series. The Room has the hardest survival horror elements of the main series; limited inventory, far more aggressive and frequent enemy encounters, invincible ghosts, a stalking predator AND an escort mission on top of it all. It is only missing an underwater timed section to become a legendary meme. However, all of these elements do mesh together into a coherent and rather unique serial killer narrative that doesn't get the praise it really should. This is a Silent Hill game through and through, but it asks more of your time and willpower than the games before it. If you are willing to let the game crush your comfort zone, it will stick with you for a long, long time. Also, it seems the port actually runs just fine. It shows it's a PS2 game, but at this point it's part of the charm.

I can remember the good old times, then my older brother and I played the game on the original Xbox. The game itself is pretty nice and creepy, and I think it has a very good, if not the best atmosphere compared to the other 3 games. I think the PC version is pretty good, but you should have more customization with mouse controlls. At Henrys Apartment, the mouse movement in the first person perspective feels a bit weird. Also it would be nice, if you can use your other mouse buttons (mouse 4,5 etc)

Amazing game liked it!