Silent Hill 4: The Room 20th Anniversary Review (Xbox)
The last of Team Silent's efforts in the Silent Hill series, the more underrated entry is really one of the most scariest ghost stories.
Developer: Team Silent
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation 2, PC.
Release Date: 17th September 2004 (EU), 7th September 2004 (NA), 17th June 2004 (JP)
It wasn’t until 2017 when I got more curious about Silent Hill, but wasn’t until maybe 2022 when my curiosity about the series really peaked. And when I tried out the first game, sat down and really got stuck into it, I very quickly got captivated by the series. I completed the first game, dove into 3 and then 2 and without question I was in love with the series. So it was a bit of a shame that I had a little trouble getting into Silent Hill 4: The Room. It had a good first impression, I appreciate it taking a different approach to the first 3 games, and its setting caught my curiosity enough, but I think maybe because it was so different and it being scarier it was harder for me to take to it compared to 1-3.
Silent Hill 4 is very different to the first 3 games. While 1-3 is set in Silent Hill itself and having you chase after your missing daughter, your dead wife, and seeking revenge and killing god, 4 takes place on the outskirts of Silent Hill in a small city called Ashfield. It still has ties to Silent Hill with its cults and, in fact, direct references to Silent Hill 2 but this one feels much more out of the circle of the previous games. 4 also has a slightly different approach to its horror; 1-3 are more emotionally driven psychological horrors while 4 is a very creepy and unsettling ghost story.
The story sees Henry Townsend, resident of South Ashfield Heights in room 302, wake up one day to find his apartment door mysteriously chained and locked up. With no way out and no contact to the outside world, let alone his neighbours or superintendent unable to get the door open on the other side or hear his pleas, things quickly start to go very wrong sending Henry into an abyss of horror. An eerie hole opens up in his bathroom wall and diving into it he finds himself outside in the nearby subway. Returning back through another hole to his apartment he finds the hole growing larger, and grows larger still as diving through it more he ends up in other places; a forest, a water prison, a building complex, the apartment building, and a hospital. Throughout he uncovers journalistic pages of his apartment’s previous resident, Joseph Schreiber, and learns of serial killer Walter Sullivan, who plans to return to his mother, which he considers to be the apartment 302 itself.
The first half of the game starts off kind of slow with a vague and unsettling introduction, wandering from place to place trying to figure out what’s going on exactly, although with some very clever twists in the opening subway area. However, by the halfway point where you help your neighbour, Eileen Galvin, out of the hospital things become more apparent. Sullivan had been committing murders for, as what he had learned growing up with the cult that raised him at the Wish House Orphanage outside of Silent Hill, the 21 Sacraments; a ritual of 21 sacrifices that would “awaken his mother”. One of his murders was referenced in Silent Hill 2 in a newspaper you find in the dumpster outside of the apartment complex you first explore. The twin victims he was reported to have murdered also appear in this game as a twin headed enemy. It’s very unsettling. In that same document it was reported that Sullivan killed himself with a spoon and, to make things even more disturbing, had been continuing his murders long after his death from beyond the grave, making him a notorious supernatural killer. By the 21 Sacraments ritual, Henry and Eileen are unwittingly a part of it all with Eileen considered the 20th victim “The Mother Reborn” and Henry the 21st victim “The Reciever of Wisdom.”
The second half of the game is when it really goes off the rails in the best of ways. Your apartment starts to become haunted every so often with terrifying possessions and a new hole opens up in his apartment’s laundry room. Entering the new hole, Henry descends backward through all of Sullivan’s otherworlds with Eileen beside him, until finally confronting Walter Sullivan. Depending on how well Eileen is looked after, you will either have an easy or difficult time defeating Walter and preventing his ritual from suceeding. There are 4 endings to this game (and none with a UFO or dog ending sadly) which, again, depend on how well Eileen is looked after but also how well you treat and exorcise the hauntings in your apartment. The good ending, Escape, where Walter is killed once and for all and Henry and Eileen are both safe and both find a new place to live; the Mother ending where Henry and Eileen are safe but Eileen returns back to South Ashfield Heights; Eileen’s Death ending, aptly named where Walter is defeated but Eileen dies during the ritual; and the worst and grimmest ending of the game, 21 Sacraments, where Walter succeeds in the ritual and gets what he wants, returning to his apartment mother with everyone dead and others in the apartment building mysteriously falling ill and dying too. It is the bleakest and most disturbing ending I have ever seen in a game.
I could go on much, much further about the story but I’m not writing a wiki page article on it, and I also don’t want to give away too much of it. What I will say, however, is it is easily the most unsettling, disturbing, and horrifying story of all of the Silent Hill games with great twists. It has amazing themes of childbirth surrounding Walter Sullivan, with the hole itself you travel through in your apartment being a metaphor for rebirth, as well as Sullivan’s umbilical cord playing a crucial role near the end to defeat him. In some cut content there are more direct references to childbirth with monsters representing pregnant women and nurses performing c-sections. It carries off from Silent Hill 2’s references nicely and builds upon them further developing Sullivan’s villainy with ease. James Sunderland’s father, Frank, appears as the South Ashfield Heights superintendent who plays a pivotal role in Sullivan’s motivations, possessing his umbilical cord after all, and Henry also comments on how Frank’s son and daughter-in-law disappeared in Silent Hill directly referencing 2, in particular the In Water ending. The more I think about the story the more I realise how unique it is in comparison to the previous 3 games. And, as 3 is more of a direct sequel to 1, I would argue that 4 is more of a direct sequel to 2.
I went into this game totally blind and while I was captivated by the story, the game, and was eager to continue, because of how tense and overwhelming it feels, especially by the second half of the game feeling like I need to plan ahead to make sure I get all of the right items to get the best possible ending, it took me a long while with long breaks in between to come back to this game and complete it. I initially had trouble at the beginning getting into it because of how dissimilar it was to the first 3 games and adjusting to what it was trying to do differently. But the more I played and deeper I got into the story the harder it got to persist through it because of how intense the horror is and how it presented itself. Which is not a detriment to the game, in fact it’s more a praise of it and how effective its horror is. However, after a several months break, I really wanted to complete it. I love the first 3 games so I needed to finish this. Add that cherry to the top. And I’m very happy that I did carry on because the more I think about it after having completed it the greater I start to appreciate it.
The gameplay itself controls pretty much like the previous entry if with a little refinement and specificity introduced. Instead of exploring around almost freely and somewhat linearly, 4 is more level based with your apartment being primarily the main hub world, of which you explore around in first person. You can go about in every room and explore as you might. You have an item box to store your items in as this time you only have a limited amount of room on you to carry items, so you must pick wisely and conservatively on what you want to take out with you into the supernatural otherworlds. Bring a good weapon, a little health, and puzzle items you’ll require and space enough to pick up other important items of use within the level, or else you’ll do a lot of backtracking back to your apartment and shuffling around your items because you ran out of space. While you’re in your apartment, you’ll periodically find Joseph Schreiber’s red pages about the place chronicalling his time in the apartment as well as his findings on Walter Sullivan, adding further depth to the story. You can look out of your door peephole and see your neighbours going about their daily lives and trying to get through to you. Creepily, there are handprints on the wall which represents the sacrifices of the 21 Sacraments so far. A peephole also appears in your living room giving you access to spy into your neighbour Eileen’s bedroom watching her. No, you don’t catch her in the middle of changing, they don’t satiate that level of perversion of yours.
As for running around the levels, you now get a more visible hud on your health, no longer requiring you to check the pause menu for the status of your health, as well as a little circular meter measuring the strength of your swings of your attacks, of which you can hold to charge up into a heavier swing. You interact with items all the same as before, ready to attack holding R and swinging with A, holding B you can run around. Using the d-pad you can cycle through your items and use or equip them or get a detailed explanation on them instead of now pressing start to cycle through your items. Combat is pretty easy and simple enough as before, although I was playing this on easy, but some enemies such as ghosts will still give you a hard time, which I will touch on more in a second. There are still plentiful enough puzzles to solve, some actually quite complex to solve, needing you to fetch one vague item or another and place it in another location you otherwise might not think to place it, while others are a little more straightfoward. But they all feel rewarding to accomplish, using a walkthrough or not.
In the second half of the game, ghosts become much more apparent. As your apartment starts to become haunted in certain areas, you must exorcise them or else you lose health getting too close to them and damage your chances of getting a good ending. As such, you can pick up holy candles and Swords of Obedience, but be careful as and when you use them. Holy candles are best used for clearing the hauntings in your apartment while Swords of Obedience are best used against ghost mini bosses, which will keep them pinned down and prevent them from bothering you as you go about the level as they will chase you around in unsettling ways. You can also get silver bullets to knock down the ghosts in one hit giving you an easier chance to impale them with the sword but these are incredible scarce, so be very careful as and when you use them.
After saving her in the hospital, you also get Eileen joining you. Along the way you can find weapons to equip her with; her handbag, a riding crop, a chain, and a baton. The chain I found to easily be the best weapon for her and happily she’s a pretty great companion to have around you. She’ll attack everyone you need attacked rather viciously. More often than not it felt like having a companion who is as equally skilled as you are in slaying enemies, which made certain overwhelming situations easier to deal with, especially as you didn’t need to worry about her defending herself as much. However, you still need to be careful with her and look out for her. If you leave her in a room full of enemies while you run off into you apartment for too long, or attack her for whatever barbaric reason, Eileen will become susceptible to posession. She will grow more bloodied and it will move about her skin in an eerie way, she will speak more childishly “Henwy I’m scawed”, until she becomes full on possessed babbling in tongues the rites of the 21 Sacraments. If she becomes possessed as such, you’re guaranteed to get more of a bad ending as the more possessed she is the faster she moves down the walkway in the final boss fight. The less possessed she is the slower she moves making it easier to get a good ending and save her. Otherwise she’s a pretty welcoming and helpful companion to have tag along with you in the last half of the game. You grow more fonder of her as a character. While traversing the woods a second time, you will find inelligible scrawlings that you can’t read, but give her a moment and Eileen will be able to read them for you, divulging further little bits of the story.
The visuals are the most unsettling yet of any Silent Hill game. Masahiro Ito doesn’t do the art for this game as he did in the first 3 with, instead, Masashi Tsuboyama in charge of art design, but he still does a fantastic job creating deeply disturbing visuals with environments and character designs that is still, bizarrely, very pretty to look at and admire. Although there is some lighting issues with most visuals being way too dark to make anything out, of course you can brighten the levels in the options menu. Of the levels, the opening subway is very open and isolative with creepy dogs running around and disturbing large pulsating tubes winding in and out of the walls. The woods are dense, rife with enemies that will jump out at you from everywhere be it gnashing dogs or bothersome flies, and nestled deep within those woods is the orphanage Walter Sullivan grew up in. The water prison echoes with past horrors of its former inmates creating an unwelcoming atmosphere. Everyplace you go feels horrible to be in. Previous inspirations for the series, such as Jacob’s Ladder, are still strongly felt here.
And if you thought the hospitals from the previous Silent Hills were horrifying, this has them all beat. There is a long and dwindling corridor with many doors on either side and roving wheelchairs with minds of their own screaming, and another later with horrifying bi-pedal creatures. But the most unsettling of all is the Eileen room. You enter this room unsuspectingly, seemingly it looks ordinary as the camera from a low angle points at you and the door, but with a curious moaning sound... Stepping forward the camera pulls around and there filling up the room is a giant deformed head of Eileen, her face scarred and eyes twitching and vibrating wildly as they follow you about the room whereever you go. Immediately you’re repulsed and feel chills running through you from this haunting visual. Her head doesn’t do anything and you can’t do anything to her except feel her wandering eyes all over you and hear her disturbing moans filling the room. What’s more disturbing about this is this is supposed to be a voyeuristic reflection on you having been peeping on her in your apartment all of this time, so it’s throwing it back to you and making you feel what it’s like being spied upon. It is so creepy yet so well done, and as finding this door is random it will always catch you by surprise. Wether this can be avoided if you don’t look through the peephole or not, I’m not sure, but it is a fantastic horrifying visual. When you revisit the hospital with Eileen in the second half of the game and enter this room again, Eileen won’t react to the giant head of herself, only look at you too, so it is implied that only Henry sees this punishing visual.
Silent Hill 4 is rife with these unsettling and horrifying visuals. The depictions of the ghosts are dark and gnarled, and the hauntings in your apartment are varied and disturbing. You’ll get the ghost of a child standing in your wardrobe and wailing, blood fills your kitchen sink, radio and tv static, figures morph through and out of the walls, and, if you pick up the shabby doll from Walter Sullivan on the apartment stairs in the first half of the game and put it in your item box, masses of the dolls grow out of the wall above the item box. One of the most horrifying hauntings in your apartment is set at your front door. Looking through the spyhole you’ll find a ghost of yourself whimpering with a darkened face looking up and twitching. But, drop a holy candle where these hauntings take place and watch the wick burn away and it’ll be rid of it. Another unsettling visual with the spyhole is you’ll have Walter coming by and just staring deep into the spyhole directly at you with a wry smirk waiting patiently. It’s so creepy.
Silent Hill 1-3 had a more red and rusted or cold and misty colour scheme for its visual horrors but this goes full on dark and ghostly. It works so effectively you’re sure that a ghost reaching out for you from the walls of your apartment could also reach behind you in your seat playing this and grasp at your shoulder sending deathly cold shivers down your spine as you leap to a shriek.
Akira Yamaoka is once more in charge of sound and music with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn on vocals in certain songs and additionally Joe Romersa. The music is appropriately Yamaoka and Silent Hill keeping that audio language a constant with even more haunting and unsettling melodies adding greater flavour to this ghastly ghost story. Easily he adds a more horrifying atmosphere than his previous 3 efforts with nasty animal noises, screaming ghosts, disturbing cries, and even with some enemies gross belchings. There is a section in the apartment complex where you investigate a pet shop and after solving a puzzle you hear Sullivan attack the place, killing every animal and the owner to screams and cries. It is very disturbing yet so well executed… pun intended.
The soundtrack is as enjoyable as the previous 3 games with very catchy songs. It might have taken me a little longer to come around to liking it compared to 2 and 3, which instantly took to my liking, but it is still a solid soundtrack. 2 might be Yamaoka’s favourite soundtrack of the franchise, but he has still done wonderfully here. One track, Confinement, sounds to me like a much, much slower version of Kraid’s Lair from Metroid. It was scratching my brain so much listening to it and I knew it sounded familiar.
The dialogue is as eerily paced and delivered as always. Walter comes across appropriately creepy and there is a scene near the end in 302 where Joseph appears to Henry and Eileen as a ghost hanging upside down from the ceiling. Having reported on Wish House Orphanage and digging deeper into the cult, he found himself stuck in his apartment the same as Henry with a hole opening and descending into Walter’s otherworlds. Of course he doesn’t make it out alive, but his delivery in telling Henry and Eileen that they need to kill Walter Sullivan is so hauntingly delivered it might be one of the creepiest scenes in the game.
Silent Hill 4 The Room overall is a haunting, deeply layered, and terrifying ghost story that’ll worm its way into your mind throughout. It may be in continuity with the first 3 entries of the series, but I feel like 4 is a different beast entirely. It went into deeper levels of horror, particularly with supernatural horror this time as well as keeping to psychological horror as its predecessors did, and its resulting scares end up sticking with you, lingering and festering in your imagination. It being so far apart from the previous entries may have made it an outlier and harder for people to take to, but I feel in that instance it also makes it stand out better and be more independent from the previous 3.
There is lots of replayability to this to get all of the endings and unlockables. I managed to get the best possible ending my first try going through this (although by the second half I resorted to a walkthrough) but still I have the itch to play through it again, find little bits that I missed, and I’m sure gain a greater appreciation for it on a second go through.
For being Team Silent’s last efforts in the series, they showed they had learned a lot from the previous 3 games but also still had a lot in them to utilise for further horrors. It’s a shame we never saw any of that sooner, but with Silent Hill The Short Message that was released earlier this year and Silent Hill f coming at some point, it’s exciting to see how more Silent Hill stuff can exist outside of the town itself but still having its roots embedded into it, brancing off into other strange horrors.
20 years on, I feel this has got a very long and enduring legacy ahead of it. The first 3 games are classics but I believe this will continue to gain greater appreciation as the years go by and in time be better acquainted with its predecessors. It is a worthy sequel in the series, the scariest one of the lot with bold creative choices and tons of depth within its story.
I do not believe this game is for everyone, especially the superstitious, but it is absolutely worth a try for horror and Silent Hill fans alike. Accept that it isn’t like 1-3 entirely but it is still wholey a Silent Hill game. A very terrifying ghost story Silent Hill game.
Where to Purchase:
eBay: £20-£400 (newly sealed) /$40-$2,970
Amazon: £40-£164/$85-$250
CeX: £20-£40
GoG: £7.19/$9.11 Available here