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| Re: Silent Hill 4: The Room (Japanese Release) by curst 09/08/2004, 8:45am PDT | ||||
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| It's out now, and Fussbett's review is great. Much like pretty much every game in the series before it, SH4 is pretty good but frustrating in certain ways.
DOWNSIDE: no flashlight. UPSIDE: this is because there are seemingly zero dark areas, and this lets you appreciate the environments more. DOWNSIDE: not that they're very interesting at first. The new favorite environment for the SH designers is apparently the subway. UPSIDE: but that changes over time. I'm not sure whether laughing my ass off at the one room in the new hospital was the proper reaction (I believe the designers were aiming for "WTF?!" instead of "L-O-L"), but it was still pretty cool and bizarre, quickly becoming the most talked about "moment" of the entire game on GameFAQs. There's nothing quite as great as the alternate-world hospital of SH3 but there's still plenty of strange moments here and there. DOWNSIDE: then again, the unkillable ghosts that constantly chase you everywhere make it difficult to "stop and stare" the way you could in the coolest areas of SH3. I'm always a fan of games that, once I've taken care of all the enemies in an area, allow me to settle down and soak everything in. The constant harrassment thing is one of many reasons I didn't like System Shock 2 or Siren, and it's not much fun here either. UPSIDE: not only are you eventually given ways to deal with ghosts (I might add that while the ghosts are annoying more than creepy, they also introduce the majority of the The Ring-esque special effects, which are nice), but in the meantime the combat is better than the previous SH games, although still not up to the new high watermark in survival-horror games that is The Suffering. DOWNSIDE: the only time combat gets really intense is when you have to try to protect a companion (luckily for a while it isn't an issue, this happens some ways into the game). UPSIDE: you can give your companion a gun so that they can at least reasonably fend for themselves. DOWNSIDE: in a nice little homage to Fallout, your companion will gleefully plug you right in the back as they completely fail to notice that you're standing in between their gun and their target. UPSIDE: all of this is set to a game that sounds every bit as stellar as the previous games - with the exception of the voice-acting, I'm not sure that there's another gaming series that uses sound as well as Silent Hill. DOWNSIDE: although I am so very sick of that lullabye song that got played in every trailer they released for the game and that I now have heard about forty more times while playing it. Every five minutes I hear the refrain of "it was always you that I despised" to which I now just say "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP." UPSIDE: apparently you can get a version of the game that comes packaged with the soundtrack, and the music is always interesting if nothing else (crazy little mix of triphop, ambient and industrial). DOWNSIDE: unfortunately that may not be the version you'll find on shelves, which is why I came home last night with the soundtrack-free version of the game. =( |
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