Product Description

Brand New and Sealed PS2 Game. Backed by a 45-day guarantee.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3739 in Video Games
• Brand: Konami
• Model: 83717200826
• Released on: 2006-06-15
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platform: PlayStation2
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .50" h x 5.25" w x 7.25" l, .25 pounds

Features

• Face giant mutant wasps and dogs as you navigate through horrific, alien dimensions
• Terrifying and more powerful new zombies that can walk through walls and float through the air
• A cast of mysterious new characters -- some of whom will try to block your way
• Stranger creatures are waiting for you, as you unravel a horrible story

Customer Reviews

Yet another reason not to leave your apartment.
Silent Hill 4 is some scary scary stuff, but that is nothing that years of therapy cannot fix. That being said, you must now obtain this game. This review is of the Japanese Import of the came, but the US release will be identical in almost every aspect (All the in game dialog is in English, and the menus are multi-language).

It must be mentioned that this game is a departure from the first three of the series, but everything it does different it gets right. The bosses have been removed, but don't worry there is still plenty to back you into a corner and make your cry for mommy. The removal of the bosses has added to the overall fluidity of the game. It seems less like the structured chapter based plot and more like a constant downward spiraling nightmare. The puzzles are a bit more straight forward (not nearly as cryptic as some of the earlier puzzles) and the enemies have become a bit more organic. The skinned dogs are still roaming around but new enemies such as the creepy yeti-babies and ghost/zombies will defiantly keep you on your toes and loosing sleep. I considered the more human of the monsters to be the scariest (Pyramid Head, The Nurses, Blood Soaked Alessa) and this game capitalizes on this.

All of the aesthetic changes are well received like the new health bar and power gauge. The first being so you no longer have to guess at your health via limping or hemorrhaging and stop the game for a inventory check; the second is used for swinging weapons to charge from a moderate THUMP to a full blast body-hurling home-run style WHACK. Two of the biggest departures are the first person perspective mode and the limited inventory. Gone the way of the dodo is the Resident Evil rip-off inventory screen and introduced is the Resident Evil inspired limited inventory. This adds a whole new level to the game being that what items you carry now matter in the sense that you can no longer pick up any more if your inventory is full (and in some parts, what you carry affects the level). No need to worry being that the portal/hole system that traverses you from your room to different `worlds' allows you to go back to your room and store unneeded items in a stylish ottoman/chest placed next to your possessed television. Also to please your inner voyeur, the frist person view allows you to peek out your window to see into your neighbors' apartments and to spy on the single white female living next to you.

Returning SH fans will find that this new addition has much to offer with it's tentacles embedded in plot from all previous Silent Hill titles bringing new light to old events (What was the outcome of James Sunderland's trip in SH 2, What really happened at the Wish House from SH3, etc.). New players stepping up to the challenge will not be disappointed with beautiful detailed graphics and a story line that drives you to dig deeper and deeper until it all makes sense. Konami once again has created an audio/visual attack on the sensed that is truly designed to scare the living crap out of you.

This is more like it.
My first reaction to previews of Silent Hill 4 was that they had run out of ideas and this was going to be a lame attempt to make this instalment a bit different. Well, I think I was wrong. Silent Hill 4 has rewarded me with more fear and unease than I experienced in the second and third games, and I've really fallen for the new structure. In case anyone is not yet aware, this game takes place in an apartment, from which the main character, Henry, is unable to escape. Henry is thoroughly cut off from the outside world until the day he finds a strange hole in the wall, which leads to adventures in hideous, nightmarish locations. The main innovation here is that all action inside the apartment takes place in 1st person prespective, and although I was initially skeptical about this, it really works. After walking around in it, and returning to save in it between trips through the hole, I got to know where everything was and it really felt like MY apartment!

It becomes the restful respite from the horrors of the "other" worlds... and it's a secure feeling that the game designers obviously wanted to instill, as later in the game - skip this bit if you haven't played yet - the apartment itself starts to get invaded by supernatural manifestations, and you can no longer roam around it in safety. This overturning of the game's only "safe space" really worked on me, and I longed for a way to rid it of the evil prescences that were taking it over.

The adventures that take place through the hole are in the traditional SH style, 3rd person, running around looking for items and attacking weird creatures. Again, the designers have come up with some new monsters, and the two headed baby-faced creature is definitely the most memorable. The game also includes floating ghosts that can't be killed - they also attack you, so this is pretty frustrating at times. And watch out later for some very dangerous "Frankenstein" creations that roam around the hospital level - very dangerous. On that note - what is it with Japanese survival horror games and hospitals? That's all four SH games, plus Siren and Resident Evil that use hospitals as a location! The other levels are more creative, and include an orphanage and a particularly weird cylindrical prison standing in the midle of the sea. There's also an apartment block which is far better than the one in SH2.

Again we have multiple endings, and in this case, the conditions that have to be met to obtain them are much more satisfactory. So in all, I have no hesitations in recommending this game to Silent Hill fans, and it's a welcome relief, after the 2nd and 3rd SH games struck me as duplicating the first one too much. The character models and scenery are all superbly rendered as I expected. The graphics in SH games just continue to get better every time. Drawbacks? Well, just a few. As the game draws to a close, you have to revisit all the locations again in the same order and carry out slightly different tasks. This seemed a rather cheap way to pad out the playing time to me. Plus you can now carry only a certain amount of items, so lots of trips back to the apartment are needed to drop off unwanted items in one central storage box. And every clip of 10 bullets counts as one item! So carrying a gun means you are going to fill up all your slots with bullets. A bit mean, that one.

But as a result of this, I did nearly all my fighting with melee weapons, which, it has to be said, was much more fun anyway as these weapons are all random everyday items like golf clubs and spades. Oh yes I forgot to mention the new fighting system - you can land lots of little hits on an enemy, or you can launch one very strong attack by "charging up" your strength and then letting rip. You'll see how it works when playing. And every weapon has it's own attack style, all superbly realised. Watching Henry fling his steel pipe all the way around and almost topple over with the effort is almost worth playing for alone.

I can see reviews here that must have been written by people who haven't played the game...my advice would be to ignore them. Try it for yourself. Its definitely a frightnener. There are a lot of very painful deaths and other sickening sights on display here, so do not apply if you are squeamish. For the rest of us, though, it's a great ride.

A new Silent Hill formula to keep you awake...
I love all Silent Hill games. I love everything about them, from the music, to the graphics, to the storylines intricately woven into each one. Now comes Silent Hill 4 The Room, which is a new story that revolves around the events in all the other games. Well, I shouldn't say that, but the other games have something to do with this one, in one way or another.
I have just beaten this game, and I was quite impressed. The story was good, the graphics were good. But wait, something is missing. Actually, make that three things are missning.

For anyone who have ever played any of the Silent Hill games, you should have noticed certain reoccuring items in 1 through 3.
One, the fog. Two, the radio. Three, the flashlight. None of which make an appearance in the new game. Sure, it is set in the town of Ashfield, near Silent Hill, but still, that only compensated for the missing fog. But what about the other two items? I mean, what's a Silent Hill game without your radio freaking out and your crappy flashlight barely giving you any visibility? I'll tell you what it is, it's a new survival horror game that is never really dark (light-wise).

In fact, it is quite possibly the brightest of all the games. I mean sure, the other games were bright when you were outside, but still. They also had some pitch black areas too. Almost throughout the entire game, everything is well lit. Which won't hurt the games score, but it's just something that i've grown to love in these games. And as for the radio, well, the only thing that comes close is the ghosts making your screen start to mess up and then there's a bit of static, but there's no explanation for it. Well, I guess it makes his head hurt whenever they are near, so it does make sense in that way. But still, even then, he's still lacking that small appliance from his person.

Which is something else, you have a limited amount of items you can carry on you at one time. You have a chest back in your room that you can drop things you don't need at the moment into, but if you accidentally pick up something you didn't really mean to pick up, you have no way of dropping it until you find a hole to get back to your room. So sometimes you'll have to waste a full clip of pistol ammo or use a nutrition drink to clear up a slot so you can pick up the key item you need to take with you. This is probably my only complaint, and it really isn't worth whining about. I do like the on-screen health bar and swing meter, which thankfully fade away after you're out of combat, as does the item selection menu. Because I would be really pissed of if I had to have some freaking crap cluttering up my screen and blocking the gorgeous graphics.

If I can I'd like to add a little here on the new main enemies, ghosts. These apparitions come through the walls and float around chasing you. If they get too close, without even getting their hands on you, you will recieve damage. The coolest one is that of a main (semi-main) character, who, when in ghost form, kind of resembles the little girl from The Ring, you know, the one that crawls out of the television. What I really found cool about this character is when you knock her down, she doesn't always get right back up, sometimes she'll use here arms to pull her around all crazy like on the floor toward you. Pretty creepy.

I know that I don't talk much about the story or the characters in my reviews, maybe that's because I like to sprawl out the rest of the stuff in the game that nobody else talks about. But if you want to know, you play as a man named Henry Townsend. And at the beginning of the game, you have already been trapped in your apartment for five days. The front door is covered in chains and locks and none of the windows open. While in your apartment, you can listen to the radio, if anything is on other than static, look through the peephole to the hallway outside and watch people walk by or have an arguement, look through the hole in your wall in the living room to see into the room next door where a very special girl spends time watching t.v. or painting her nails. But one day, you find a gaping hole in your bathroom wall and decide to ivestigate, upon doing so, you get a steel pipe (i'm glad they atleast left that in there, I sure do like beating things with my steel pipe), and the story begins to unfold. And on the story, while good, it wasn't what I expected. Sure it was twisted and insane, but it just didn't have that punch at the end. No real shocking twist. But oh well, if you liked or loved the other games, buy this one immediately. But I would just like to warn you, this game is totally different from the others. It's not so much Silent Hill 4, it's either The Room or Ashfield Heights.

All in all, a great game, just not a real Silent Hill game. Still spooky though. If it does one thing better than anything else, it's the sense of claustrophobia you get from spending so much time in your room, which you won't want to stay in for too long later in the game...one word: haunted.