Silent Hill 4 Isn't That Bad...

[Seil]

So I lucked out when going to EB to get into Silent Hill again, and picked up a used copy for $4.00 - yeah, someone dropped off 2, 3, and 4 and they sold them all that day for $4. Awesome. But why in the crap would you sell 2 and 3, arguably the best games from the original Silent Hill team? Oh well. I had some good fortune, and picked up Silent Hill 4.

Now I like Silent Hill 4 - I know it wasn't originally going to be a Silent Hill video game, but they got a lot of things right. The environments are there, the music is as awesome as it ever was, the enemies are trademark Silent Hill, though not as psychologically interesting as they were in 2. Also, I concede that SH4 has one of my top five Silent Hill deaths - Cynthia Velasquez. It struck a chord with me.

Now, it's criticized for having a few design flaws. Instead of the box/color health system, you've got an actual health meter. The inventory system is different, too - you can only carry a certain amount of items, and bullets don't stack. You've also got an attack meter, which allows you to do a quick light attack, or a strong heavy attack. The biggest change, though, is in the game play - instead of a puzzle solving focus, the game is more on a hole focus. At the beginning of the game - A well-done introduction, I think, it sets the scene pretty well - you're locked in your apartment room, and the only way out is through a hole in your bathroom. In order to store items and save, you need to return to your apartment periodically through holes scattered through an area.

Now, while most games in the SH series have you using a wide assortment of items in order to make a key for a door, such as the Tarot puzzle in Silent Hill 3, or using an item, like a camera, or finding a memo containing a password to a door. Silent Hill 4 still has the puzzle solving aspect of "take item A to place B, use A to collect C." That's still there - but the focus is more on the story - and Silent Hill games can do story.

As Henry Townshend, you're locked in your apartment. It's been days, and you can't get out. A hole appears in your bathroom, and traveling through it you meet a girl named Cynthia Velasquez in some strange subway station. Cynthia's convinced it's a dream, but Henry isn't sure. It becomes apparent that there's something wrong when Cynthia runs into the girl's bathroom, then, out of the men's room, come strange dogs who quickly attack Henry.

It's different than then the first three, that's for sure. But it's more Silent Hill than Origins or Homecoming. I like Henry because he's very relatable; we're both filled in, brown haired introverts, we wear a white collared shirt and jeans everywhere, and the only real terrible deed we've done in our past is move into the wrong apartment. Walter Sullivan, the antagonist, is genuinely creepy - another innovation in SH4 is that you can look through the peephole and see other tenants - and sometimes Sullivan will walk into view and stand there watching you watch him through the peephole.

The game is awesome, and though it doesn't completely follow the Silent Hill format, it's still a fantastic Silent Hill game. Silent Hill 1 set the bar, 2 is one of the best games of all time, 3 continued the tradition with some great moments and 4, well, see above. The originals are still the best.