Been thinking about this one lately. Silent Hill 4: The Room is a weird messy game, in line with honestly most of the series being weird and messy as well. This is a game that is about the corrosive effects of agoraphobia and how that leads to repetitious days, which of course gets reflected in the game itself in ways that can be honestly really frustrating to players including myself.

A fairly common critique of this game is that the second half is bad, and this is due to the fact that you are having to protect Eileen while going through environments that you were in before. It has often been speculated that the game was rushed development-wise which is what led to the recycling of assets, and that a lot of the game's flaws are therefore stemming from that. I can certainly understand this perspective, since Silent Hill 4: The Room has as many locations any other Silent Hill game before this point, and in terms of budget and development time it probably wasn't feasible to invent even more new areas for the back half of the game.

But like it's also complicated? This repetition is supposed to be frustrating because of how it is manifesting a lot of the game's subtextual notions. Henry is fairly explicitly an isolated agoraphobe, this is something that is true even outside of the context of the game's plot mechanics itself by examining how he actually lives in his apartment, how little care to decor he's devoted to and how little interest he has in the things around him. You can examine his stove for instance and he'll make a comment on how he isn't hungry or doesn't want to cook or anything, along with how often the game uses non-optional voyeuristic camera perspectives with him. This is why Henry speaks in such a strange detached way, I read it that he's not only very introverted but he's also very depressed.

Eileen is the only person in the game you are capable of having meaningful interactions with, which in a lot of metaphorical ways shows the frustrations of actually combatting agoraphobia. It can feel like a complete uphill battle to forge a meaningful connection with someone of you've convinced yourself the outside world is actively hostile and malevolent.

One thing that stuck in my mind is the WHY of why The Room is the center of how the Otherworld is projecting outwards, and at its core it all stems from loneliness and isolation. Walter Sullivan was indoctrinated into a cult that actively dehumanizes its individual members to hate the world, and yet in pretty fucked up ways he still wants to connect with people and attempt to see people. This is why he wants Eileen to be reborn as a Holy Mother, and also extremely notably why he wants Henry as this container of knowledge. I don't think it's coincidental that Henry of all people is involved with all this, I feel like a lot of this happened BECAUSE of how Walter related to those feelings of isolation and twisted that into these really dark manifestations. Why else would he continually have Henry see aspects of his own memories while he commits murders? He wants someone to see what he went through, but is incapable of progressing beyond showing his wounds.

All this to say, I ended up really vibing with this game. There are very many obvious issues to observe with it, but I want to accept and understand things the way they are now instead of imagining an alternate 'fixed' version that will never exist, and I relate highly to this game because it reflects a lot of my own issues in ways I rarely see other media tackle, which is enough for me.

What a strange entry in the series. The first half of this game is fantastic, focusing on the best parts of the franchise, the dungeons, but the 2nd half is such a drop off in quality. Eileen is awful as an AI and there are so many times where she just got kinda stuck or would let enemies hit her for no reason. Revising a lot of the same locations was also a tiny bit tiring and it overstayed it's welcome by a lot by the end. Didn't hate this though, this was still a great survival horror game overall, I just wish it could keep the momentum it had the whole way through.

I'm going to be brief and resist saying things that are generally mean because as someone who's played games for over 25 years, I don't think this "game" is for me.

I'll start with one of the only positives in that Team Ninja, for a team their size, has achieved a very high level of both mo-cap and general graphical fidelity. However, the fact that they force you to experience this world through a letterbox smeared in vaseline is a crying shame to all the artists who worked on this game's visuals. Using the game's photo-mode to blow open your view of this game's landscapes is a truly baffling experience.

TN's use of binaural audio is also impressive. Having voices or footsteps surround you during certain parts of the game can be very immersive. However, having some of the dullest dialogue recited to you ad-nauseum is a complete waste of the technology. "ChatGPT, please write me 20 sentences about dark, light, blood, pain, shadows with 10 being self-affirmations and 10 being negative self-talk".

I'll leave it there. I think the less said about the combat the better. All the characters are mostly forgettable and the game does little to build on Senua's personality or goals from the first game beyond shedding feelings of guilt and doubt.

I applaud TN for sticking to a goal during development for so long, especially during a clearly tumultuous time for Microsoft 1st Party but I do wonder what made this story (or even franchise) need to be a video-game.

3 of my favorite genres together

one of the best games ever made

ost is GODLIKE