Why all the hate?

[rm2kking]

I will never understand why Silent Hill 4 is so maligned. Most gripes about it are petty and insubstantial, such as the lack of radio, or everybody's favorite, that it wasn't originally a Silent Hill Game. The game had an excellent story, a terrifying atmosphere, great pacing, and it ties together all three of the first games. People will say it's unlike the rest of the series because they have this idea that the Silent Hill brand was somehow grafted onto an unrelated game. Most of us know this to be bullshit. The game was changed early in pre-production. Hell, the whole game is knee-deep in Silent Hill mythology. I've been playing it again, and upon a Google News search I found a review of it, stating how it's the worst in the series and such a departure. So there's no fog world-dark world dynamic. How does this mean it's not Silent Hill? Anyone familiar with the series can see the influence of the Otherworld practically dripping from the environments, plus theres the story to consider. Worst in the series is also going too far, imo. That dubious honor belongs to Homecoming at the very least. Silent Hill 4: The Room is a great Silent Hill game, and a great horror game. It does nothing wrong, in fact, it made a few interesting changes to a series that had started to become stagnant with repetition. We've seen this happen since, with Homecoming and Origins, which did little else than try to emulate the early games in the series, or in the case of Homecoming, the movie. I think we should revel in what Silent Hill 4 did, as it crafted a truly disturbing, hellish world, as only Silent Hill can.

I know most of you share my opinion, but after seeing that review, I had to gripe.

[Xev]

I definitely share your opinion, SH4 is a great game that even after the years of owning it, I still play rather regularly. It is way underrated! It isnt cookie cutter creepy either, it has some truly original ideas.

[Mr. CCA]

I don't hate SH4, but it is a very repetitive game. They should have changed the levels for the second half. Being forced to escort Eileens sorry a** was another mistake. I think the biggest gripe is the lack of exploring Silent Hill.

[Jigsaws apprentice]

I personally love the game and will hold my hands in the air and declair it my second favourite! but I do agree it gets rather repetitive but I believe it is the most disturbing SH to date, and it reminds me of asian horror. (which is probabily why I love it) it gets so much hate, cause its so vastly different to the previous 3... but then again Homecoming got slated for being the same old SH we are used to now. I believe though that this SH is getting much more recongition as a good game since recent entries haven't been as good since Team Silent Left.

[kumiko]

SH4 has always been a favourite of mine only thing I had a gripe with was the 2nd half but other than that I agree with what you say king

[shaka]

I totally love this game. Without a doubt Silent Hill 4 is one of the best horror games in years.

[Doctor Eggnog]

I disagree. You say that it has a terrifying atmosphere and great pacing. The game never scared me, and as for pacing, I mostly only like the beginning and end of the game, and the rest of the experience is meh.

Also:
The ghosts look like floating zombies
After the great first death scene, they get rather uninteresting
Controls are more awkward than in past games
Controls are changed to make everything in-game (annoying) and no 3D control (sacraligous)
Level design isn't as interesting or fun
Henry is a dull and rather annoying character
The graphics don't look as good as SH2 or SH3
Not enough music
Only one true boss
Not many puzzles
No town exploration
Lame sound effects

The only Silent Hill I liked less was Homecoming. 4 at least had some neat concepts.

[SilentWren]

As far as I'm concerned, 4 is horribly under rated.
Don't get me wrong--it's not the best game ever. But it's got it's moments.

I remember back when every forum was overrun with "THISISTHEWORSTSILENTHILLYETOMG!!!" Compared to 2&3, it's pretty weak, but it's by no means awful. I'll never understand why people didn't like the idea of change, all though I did miss the flashlight & radio. *sad panda*

[Soulless-Shadow]

I liked SH4. It had a good story. I hesitate to say "good characters" though because Henry was quite dull and boring. The others were good though. My only problems with the game was the repetition in the second half, as people already mentioned. It would have been better, imo, if the second half had been more varied. New sections of each world to explore. Also, I hated that I couldn't permanently get rid of the ghosts. They popped up randomly, and prevented me from fully exploring because their presence was enough to hurt Henry. I don't mind random monsters every now and then, but it's a real pain in the arse when they all turn up and gang up on him while I'm trying to explore. And there was little I could do about other, other than run and maybe later pin one or two down with the swords.

[Typographenia]

I really liked 4, but I understand where most of the criticism is coming from. I don't believe it to be nearly as detrimental as most seem to treat it as, but there were two things I can think of that negatively impacted my experience more than anything else-

1. Backtracking
I understand many games will have backtracking for padding, but this felt somewhat ridiculous at times. I would probably have preferred a shorter game to revisiting so many areas.

2. Hauntings/Ghost Removals
Don't get me wrong, I thought they were great to break up your only true sanctuary. That said, I didn't like how finicky they were when it came to removing them. The ghosts and hauntings never seemed to react to the candles or medallions the way they should have. It caused more frustration than fear, and it would often leave me resetting the game because a candle wouldn't work.

[Violent Corpse]

I LOVE Silent Hill 4. I'll always remember it for being one of the games I enjoyed playing-through the most. It was scary, mysterious, superb plot!

[AuraTwilight]

It's because it's different.

Also, the ghosts and the Eileen escort mission were kind of bullshit.

[Tillerman]

I like SH4 and I think it's underrated... but I do recognize the flaws.

Let's take the ghosts for example. A lot of people complain about them. Honestly, they do kind of look like floating zombies, which is a bit weird and takes away from their scare power. Look at the ghosts in Fatal Frame... they look really cool and disturbing. Why couldn't the ghosts in SH4 have looked like that?

I also don't mind there being invincible enemies, but I find it really annoying when a ghost is "guarding" an area that I want to explore. This happens repeatedly in SH4. Of course you can save a sword to pin them, but that gets old, and usually what I ended up doing was exploring the room with the ghost while taking hits, and if there was nothing important, reloading my save. Not exactly the ideal situation.

The Eileen thing I didn't mind... I think a lot of people were annoyed because they didn't realize you can unequip her weapon to make her stop charging at enemies. But still, it's always frustrating when you have to be so reliant on A.I. controlled characters. I'm replaying Fatal Frame 2 at the moment, and one of the cool things about it is that it doesn't seem to matter a lot if your sister gets attacked. I think her health gets regenerated from room to room or something.

To me the largest problem is just the 2nd half of the game. I don't mind backtracking, it can potentially be very cool. All the Silent Hills have had lots of backtracking, but the difference is that they make it interesting by changing the area into "the otherworld." So it feels like a new area. SH4 doesn't do this... it just makes you re-explore the exact same areas. There are new ghosts / puzzles / enemies, but that's not enough. And what adds insult to injury is the fact that at the halfway point, you've seen all there is to see. You even get to explore the final level of the game, the apartment world at the midway point of the game. So when you explore it in the final level, it seems rehashed. That's a huge design flaw in my opinion.

Having said all that, I think the game has an awesome concept, a great story, good atmosphere, and is fairly scary. I'm fine with Henry's personality too... it's really weird how subdued he is, but I feel like that works. Overall, I like SH4, just not as much as the first 3 games.

[46n2]

Great pacing? Since when does having to backtrack to the room multiple times a level constitute great pacing? Or repeat worlds with a useless tag along? Also, having half the story and background bits related through memos screws the pace up too.

And say what you will about Homecoming, but at least there were no screeching gorillas or vengeful wheelchairs.

I mean, I like The Room, I love the while concept of being trapped and the 21 sacraments thing but damn, this can be straight up ridiculous at times.

[Tillerman]

Those twin-headed baby monsters are ass-kickingly awesome, though.

[HELLS HOLE CREEK]

I liked some of the ideas in it but halfway thru I thought fuck they must of had a few shit fights during the boardroom discussions about creating this game it felt like the whole process of dev just jumped ship and abandoned the sinking vessel then the janitor copy pasted everything to please the boss before deadline

[stopped_clock]

I liked some of the ideas in it but halfway thru I thought fuck they must of had a few shit fights during the boardroom discussions about creating this game it felt like the whole process of dev just jumped ship and abandoned the sinking vessel then the janitor copy pasted everything to please the boss before deadline

I completely disagree, I think it was a very calculated and thought out move to have the second half of the game set up the way it was. I'm pretty sure I've said this in another thread somewhere but anyway: The first half of the game introduces you to each world and to the characters that have come to inhabit them. You learn your way around each world In these relatively calm first visits so that later on, when you must return to each world, you already know your way around. Can you imagine how f_cking annoying it would be if they had just stuck you into totally new surroundings where you have little chance to explore because now you have the extra victims and trigger happy Walter to deal with and you have to get Eileen safely through.

The complaints would come thick and fast, and they'd be similar to the complaints about the nightmare sections of Shattered Memories because there's all these huge locations that you never get to really explore because you are constantly being chased and so have to hurry past everything.

Anyway, I absolutely love Sh4, it's my 3rd favourite in the series (after 1&2).

[46n2]

Of course it would have been hard to do all that if you didn't know your way around the worlds, but they could've like, changed the game. For instance, they could have made you go new places but not had you babysit Eileen. While you're suggestion makes sense, they didn't have to choose between the lesser of two evils- It was their game to change.

[Zaneゼイン]

I am still yet to "actually" play the game. I tried it once but I guess I was already feeling a bit bored and I just totally hated the controls. I also have some attention trouble, I kinda get easily distracted therefore specially on games like silent hill I need to really explore the areas and I was tired of the "floating noobs" and then the way Henry started walking like feeling a headache because of the ghosts. But I admit It was a bad time for me to play the game, and I think I´ll try it soon to see how it goes.

[clips]

I liked the game...the way they handled the inventory system, made you backtrack un-necessarily to your room......i also hated the way they handled your ammo...(it didn't pile up or mix together) which means it ended up taking up more space....the ghosts were annoying at times as well too.

Having said that tho, i loved SH4's concept...it was quiet and subtle in the beginning and later on you was on the brink of madness. Sh4 has one of the strongest storylines in the series as well...it was very unorthodox and unique....the way little walter thought the "room" itself was it's mother gave the game a very different dynamic and feel....

It wasn't just a cliche` storyline with somebody with forgotten memories looking for a missing person, but something absolutely different...walter was looking for his mother (a room)..... and i also loved the struggle that both adult walter and young walter had with themselves...there was truly alot of interesting and weird concepts goin on and i get it's all opinion, but alot of folks are missing these interesting dynamics that were going on behind some of the gameplay flaws.

The level designs were great as well...they all felt very different than what we've seen in previous games...the water tower world was a brilliant design.....yet the game itself still felt like a SH game...and let's face it..the game probably has thee BEST trailer the series has ever seen. When i first saw that extended trailer, i thought that this game was going to be brutally terrorfying...and it was creepy in some parts, but nothing like that trailer...