We didn't know how good we had it when Silent Hill 4 was considered the worst entry in the series, did we? And I get it, gone are the iconic dark hallways and rooms lit by your meek flashlight, now there's a bigger emphasis on combat with wonkier controls than ever, you have to constantly deal with invincible enemies that pursue you through long stretches of the game, item management is now a centerpiece of progression that forces you to backtrack frequently, and to top it all off, the game commits the cardinal sin of turning half of its runtime into an escort mission with a frustrating AI through levels you have already been through. But goddammit, is that what makes it so compelling.

Conditioning the player to feel a sense of relief and security during their time spent in the titular room inbetween the intenionally unpleasant and "not fun" levels, only to eventually pull the rug out of their feet is what makes SH4 brilliant and a success of horror game design. The player gladly takes any invitation from the game to return back to the room, away from the outside world with its unwieldy and untamable third person camera, if only to get their health replenished back and take a quick breather, where they quickly establish a routine of menial tasks removed from any kind of danger, sheltered by the non hostile 1st person view.

And many years before Yurt or Lautrec defiled our Nexus and Firelink Shrine havens, our perceptions and understanding of how hub worlds and save areas should work in videogames is betrayed and weaponized against us. We perceive our small houses and bedrooms to be the one corner in this world where we get to be ourselves truly and safe from any outside social anxieties that could harm that well being, and having those walls turn against your isolation and loneliness is a very real threat that i'm sure many have felt in some shape or form. SH4 being able to explore that dread and horror through the language of safe spaces in videogames is nothing short of genius and what makes this entry in the franchise wholly unique.

With the introduction at the halfway point of a NPC that requires your constant protection from more powerful and invincible enemies, along with the sudden predatory shift the room takes, SH4 ramps up the anxiety with all those at first dubious design choices previously mentioned working in tandem to create a highly stressful dynamic between the outside world and the apartment. And while the hauntings eventually become an easy threat to deal with, the damage is already done, the room is no longer the same and that sense of respite you learned to cherish each time you found yourself inside those 4 walls is long gone. The Silent Hill franchise has always been very interested in our relationship with setting and spaces and the horror we can bring out of or into it, but it wasn't until SH4 when that concept was fully explored through the strengths of the medium.

Even disregarding SH4's strongest aspects, its world still manages to captivate just as its predecessors did, with nightmare inducing settings and monsters that provide some of the best scares in the series. The literalization of confinement and entrapment from the outside world through gameplay lends itself to numerous readings and interpretations of our innate desire for human contact and vouyeristic curiosity, despite how much we might intentionally or not struggle to fight against it, and the villain's bitter and cynical childlike propensity for violence provides a great foil and parallel to Henry's ubiquitous passive blank slate posture that we are meant to self insert into. I've always found interesting how Henry doesn't try to call Eileen through the peephole. She probably wouldn't hear him, but he doesn't even try, why is that?

Sure, it lacks the level of polish its predecessors enjoyed and there's no way for me to defend the nurses burping their way down the stairs, but Silent Hill 4 stands tall in the ps2 trilogy, and is a fitting endcap to Team Silent's stamp in the survival horror genre that, unfortunately, won't be topped anytime soon.