Henry Townshend wakes up one day to find that he's trapped inside his apartment with no escape... until he finds a hole in the wall that leads to a parallel dimension, a terrifying place.
I'll give this game 10. Maybe, you'll think I'm crazy, but no, I really think this game deserve it. Yes, it's most contradictive part of original SH series, Yes, this game is really hard. Yes, it brokes some good SH traditions. But this is its speciality, its originality, individuality. Its creators made some experiments in gameplay and I like the result. They just wanted to add some originality to new game. It's risky, it's always risky. The old fans are waiting for classic gameplay, revolutions may fear them. And it's happened to SH4... But if you need something new, if you're looking for non-standard ideas, you need to try SH4. If you can fight against difficulties, you'll see, that this game is pretty good in some way.
And soundtrack is excellent!
It is similar to previous silent hill games regarding to atmosphere, which is dark and gives you a feeling that something bad is going to happen. You use portals to go to another dimensions and face varied enemies. Silent Hill 4 presents more combat situations, more enemies in a given area, and more narrow areas and cramped spaces. Weapons are mostly the same ones seen in the past silent hill games but this installment includes a new one (which is a golf club).
What's more, Silent Hill 4 has just a bit of hard puzzles and more easy tasks about looking for certain items. It is risky to implement changes in a new installment of this popular series, but i think the developers did well with this game. It's not an outstanding Silent Hill, but it's satisfying.
A 7 score seems fair, because:
1) âšī¸ Revisiting previous areas about halfway through the game with little to no changes in them.
2) đ¤Ļââī¸ Very unjustified use of overused sound effects, starting with the screaming guy in Henry's apartment right after he wakes up at the very beginning of the game. Seriously, that sound has been used and abused to death in all forms of media, to the point where it's become a meme; how could the devs be so incredibly lazy is beyond me.
3) đ¤ Eileen's very, very tedious and frustrating escort mission.
4) đĩ No puzzles. Seriously, it's a SH game, and it has no puzzles; how could they do this?
My favorite game in the series, it felt to me like a breath of fresh air with its different take on gameplay and setting, mainly after the previous title, Silent Hill 3, felt like a SH greatest hits compilation. The pc port feels a bit rushed due to some missing hauntings in the apartment later in the game and the gameplay framerate is locked at 30 fps. However it has almost non existent loading times when compared to the console versions.