Silent Hill 4: The Room

By Kristan Reed Published 27 April, 2004

World Exclusive: We go hands-on with Konami's latest slice of horror - and survive!

Sometimes it's hard not to be paranoid. As blissful as we are in our ignorance, certain strangeness creeps up you until you can almost feels its breath on your neck. Is this the scary of coincidence born of the crazy dreams of an overactive imagination or did they really happen? Perhaps a mild addiction to Jarlsberg? Too much herbal relaxation? Could be. But exactly when did the furniture get rearranged? Where did weird wall stain come from? How come the door's covered in chains? They did warn us that chat rooms were full of dangerous weirdos, but how did they get our address? What is that noise? Can you smell something? What's that note? "Don't go out?" Well, it doesn't look as if we have a whole lot of choice right now.

The question is, who's behind it all? Perhaps it's the grinning execs at Konami all along, happy to lure us in with the day-glo happiness of Dancing Stage before eating away at our very souls with the mind altering Silent Hill series. Somewhere near its milky, putrefying surface is a test of lateral logic and primal fight or flight. Dig a little deeper and you have a series wrapped up in harrowing subjects touching on euthanasia, loss, love, confusion, and forever tainted by the omnipresent fear of death.

Moan, moan, moan

'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 1'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 1

The first three were loosely connected variations on a theme (2 being something of an anomaly) centering on the mythical abandoned town of Silent Hill. A place of swirling fog, populated by the lost and lonely, along with a gang of unfeasibly twisted, mutated, writhing, moaning apparitions with limbs in entirely the wrong place, not to mention blood, mucus and locked doors. Far too many bloody locked doors.

Konami knows it can't just keep churning out formulaic sequels endlessly. The law of diminishing returns would see to that cynical strategy, and some would rightly observe that version three wasn't exactly a huge departure from the marvelous No.2. What the sinister men in long coats in Tokyo have done with the latest in the series - due out in September in Europe - is essentially fix the things that annoyed people in the previous titles while retaining that uniquely malevolent Silent Hill atmosphere.

For all its marvelously brooding atmosphere, the last thing most people want to do is trudge around a vast, sprawling game area in order to find the object-that-fixes-the-puzzle-that-gives-you-the-key-to-the-door-all-the-way-across-the-other-side-of-town. It's part of the deal, but does it make the experience any more fun? Probably not. Likewise, other areas of the game needed a touch up, with certain elements of the combat and control system perhaps not giving the player the degree of flexibility you might wish for these days. It's often the little things that conspire to reduce your enjoyment and yank you back into the real world.

Henry: Portrait of a serial thriller

'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 2'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 2

The modifications in The Room over the previous trilogy are immediately apparent, with the first section of the game dropping you right into the heart of the central character's apparent nightmares. Viewed through the eyes of Henry, the first things you see are the spinning blades of a ceiling fan. Dazed and apparently confused, Henry gets up off his bed to wander around his apartment, noticing an unusual stain on his wall before recoiling in horror as a dark creature of the damned emerges headfirst from the wall, as if being born, covered in black slimy placenta.

[Minor spoiler alert.]Cutting to the credits it appears the whole thing is just some crazy nightmare. "Oh man, what a dream," utters a dazed Henry, relieved to note that his apartment has returned to sane normality, with all the gack and filth no longer adorning every facet of his accommodation, and the creature from hell back in its lair. But when the phone rings, and all he hears is the sound of an analogue modem, you know the nightmares have only just begun.[Spoiler over.]

At this point you take over, and it's quite disorientating at first to navigate your way around the four-roomed flat from a first-person view. With a quick customisation of the controls to accommodate our reverse Y-axis preference we slipped straight into the new system. Wandering around, it's apparent that Konami has responded to calls to make it more obvious as to what you can interact with, with an eye icon appearing anytime you're within range of something of interest. The principle is the same as before, with the game offering up simple yes/no options to the user, but it helps solve those potentially frustrating moments where you miss an otherwise crucial object.

We don't go out anyway. No problem there...

'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 3'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 3

[Minor spoiler alert.]Further exploration reveals the power's been cut off, and the front door wrapped up in chains, with a sinister message daubed on it screaming 'DON'T GO OUT!' Although everything looks normal from the view from your windows, clearly something is very wrong indeed. A sinister note slipped under the door pleads "mommy, why won't you wake me up!" A mere hint of the childbirth-related chaos to come.

Another scrap of paper nearby offers an immediate clue as to what to expect from The Room, and talks of a world that "exists in a space separate from the world" a place "within yet without the lord's world" in "extreme flux". Uh-oh. A place with "unexpected doors or walls, moving floors, odd creatures". Sounds like a perfect template for Silent Hill all right. Worse still, "anyone swallowed up by that world will live there for eternity, undying. They will haunt that realm as a spirit".

As if that bombshell wasn't enough, this anticipation of nightmarish oddness is only further confirmed with a visit to the bathroom that reveals that some kind of tunnel has been burrowed direct into the wall. Trapped, alone, and with no choice but to venture into the dark bowels of hell, you grab a sewer pipe as a weapon, climb into the 'womb' and emerge utterly confused in the depths of an apparently abandoned underground train station with a strangely flirtatious woman called Cynthia for company.[Spoiler over.]

Ah, zombie dogs, we meet again

'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 4'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 4

At this point the game kicks off in earnest, with the viewpoint switching to third-person and the more familiar Silent Hill gameplay of old, with an immediate selection of malformed dogs and floating zombies to contend with, alongside the traditional lock/key puzzles that we all know and love.

Some interesting additions to the control system give a greater degree of flexibility to the proceedings, notably the ability to 'charge up' your weapon swing by holding down R2. A quick stab might be good enough to fend off approaching enemies, while a longer press will cause the clock meter to fill up and result in a mighty lunge complete with shuddering force feedback. The game provides a whole range of objects to use in this manner, including a full range of golf clubs, pickaxes, a spade, a sword, a bat, chainsaw, spear, bug spray and even a wine bottle.

Naturally projectile weapons play an important role, too, with a basic pistol available almost straight away, with the promise of more powerful arms as the game progresses.

No spoilers here

'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 5'Silent Hill 4: The Room' Screenshot 5

Without wanting to drop any further clues as to the direction of the plot, Konami appears to have solved many of the problems of trudging around large play areas by effectively using your flat as the central gaming hub of the world, with the option of ending the 'dream' and returning you through various holes in the wall/portals back to your bed, with recharged health. Often the plot gets moved on via subtle additions to your flat, such as objects moved, which themselves help move on elements of areas that you may currently be stuck on. Once you get your head around this, progression seems fairly straightforward, with each task in hand becoming your focus.

Later, we dipped into two other sections to get a feel for the other environments and their denizens of doom. In trademark Silent Hill fashion, the creatures conform to the expectations of being simultaneously evilly mutated, sinister, bastard-hard and even comical. The two-headed creature which walks on its hands stands out as being a particularly nightmarish creation, but if you've played any of the other games you'll almost take such displays of freakish unreality as read. Elsewhere you'll encounter flaming floating zombies, giant flying bugs of death, and plenty of long tongued canine freaks - no doubt with a face off against some vile pissed-off embryo from the pits of hell.

Visually, the previous titles were easily among the most stylish the PS2 has ever seen, and The Room keeps up that tradition with some wonderfully realised environments full of impressive touches that you can almost smell, such is their slimy, decayed hell-bound crustiness. The texturing and lighting are wonderfully dark and murky as ever, with just enough abandoned detail to make you relish every disgusting locale. Both the Water Dungeon and Forest environments are classic survival horror locations, and complemented by a newly flexible camera system that now allows you to snap back behind the character with a tap of L2. If you find the dynamic camera a little badly placed, tapping this button usually gives you an immediately favourable view, and instantly the camera issues of old are solved.

Give me hell on Earth

All round, from our three-hour stint with the game there appears to be more than enough to excite old hands while providing a good entry point for those who have somehow managed to resist the series' charms. If you've been absent from the proceedings so far, you're pretty much risking the gaming equivalent of eternal damnation to not consider The Room as one to watch.

But the question we're burning to find out is what prompted all this foetus related bile in the first place? It must have been a difficult pregnancy. What did Henry ever do to deserve all this crazed madness? He doesn't appear to be as ruefully lost as previous Silent Hill characters, but my god does this man need a decent night's sleep. The truth is we're itching to get a chance to play the finished article, and all the signs are that The Room is shaping up to be one of the thinking man's adventure games of the year.

The Room is due out on PS2 in PAL territories during Q3/4, with a Japanese version confirmed for a June release. NTSC territories can expect a November release. For more exclusive screenshots, click here.

Picture of Kristan.

About Kristan Reed

Kristan is a former editor of Eurogamer, dad, Stone Roses bore and Norwich City supporter who sometimes mutters optimistically about Team Silent getting back together.

Read more articles from Kristan by visiting the Kristan Reed archive page.

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Comments (55) Latest comment 8 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kami #1 8 years ago

    "The first three were largely unconnected variations on a theme centering on the mythical abandoned town of Silent Hill.

    EXCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSE ME?

    Silent Hill 1 and 3 were VERY much connected. 3 was the first games direct sequal in a way, following on the storyline. Kristan, I think you need to address that comment. 2 was a bit off, sure, but it did stick with some SH1 areas - so did Silent Hill 3. But the first and third games were connected in numerous ways and I expect you to know that! Plot, characters, areas... even an ending to continue on the originals "joke" ending. Silent Hill 3 was definately reliant on the original and demanded that a player had at least a basic knowledge of the original to really understand what the heck was going on. And when you put 2 and 2 together... oh boy oh boy oh boy! What a storyline! From Heather's dads death linking to the original... to her background and the rather disturbing plot twist near the end... there was a LOT of linking to and from SH1 -> SH3 to make this game work.

    Minor correction aside... I can't wait for this game. It looks incredible... I guess I'll be kissing goodbye to a few nights sleep trying to finish this game when it's released...
    Edited by 1 at 27/04/04 @ 16:13

  • simiankid #2 8 years ago

    Sounds wicked but

    "With a quick customisation of the controls to accommodate our reverse X-axis preference.."

    Should surely be the Y-axis...

    /pedant

  • Roarer #3 8 years ago

    Playing Silent Hill games is certainly a very weird experience. It's the only game where you don't want to progress and everytime you reach a new area it's with a sense of dread and a feeling that maybe you should have stayed in the previous room. Or at home. In bed. With all lights turned on.

    Anyway, really looking forward to this one and it sound (and looks) absolutely fantastic by all accounts. Nice little preview, certainly made me giddy!
    Edited by 1 at 27/04/04 @ 16:11

  • UncleLou #4 8 years ago

    This sounds absolutely marvellous, although the appartment part seems more interesting than the SH-gameplay of old once you're outside.

  • BLACKSHEEP #5 8 years ago

    A room without a view?

  • Blerk #6 8 years ago

    Eeeeeeeexcellent. Sounds ace. I'm getting it. Yes.

  • Nemesis #7 8 years ago

    A womb without a view, even.

    S'okay, coat's on already.

    /exit
    Edited by 1 at 27/04/04 @ 16:22

  • Kami #8 8 years ago

    "Sounds interesting. Are the Silent Hills worth playing?"

    Well... it depends. It's not as action-paced as Resident Evil. Silent Hill is genuinely a little slower in that department - but it's the scare factor which really gives Silent Hill games an edge. The mist swirling around you in Silent Hill 3 serves both atmosphere, and to restrict your view so you don't know what is coming!

    The characters are generally a little messed up, and the monster creators were probably taken from padded cells...

    Yeah. Silent Hill is worth getting into. Each game has several endings with certain conditions for each ending... and each game has a humourous ending as well to lighten the tone a little and make you smile. Worth the time, and definately a refreshing change of tone and pace from Resident Evil...

  • UncleLou #9 8 years ago

    The gameplay of the Silent Hill games is dubious, to be polite, but they are marvellous despite all their obvious shortcomings. Exceptional sound and monster design, and first and foremost they're scary. Tons of atmosphere.

  • CashDollar #10 8 years ago

    "Sounds interesting. Are the Silent Hills worth playing?"

    The scariest games ever IMO. Totally agree with Roarer, half the time its almost as if you dont actually want to get any further...

    thats a good thing BTW ;)

    cant wait for this.

  • Zero Beat #11 8 years ago

    Sounds like the most interesting or varied SH yet. What's going on with the Xbox version though, are they delaying it to add/improve stuff?

    Interesting to see that potentially Europe will get it before the US again but what of soundtrack or making of type extras?

  • Blerk #12 8 years ago

    The scariest games ever IMO.

    Project Zero ever-so-slightly has the edge. But they're still damned scary. Scaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaary! Whoooo!

    /runs

  • UncleLou #13 8 years ago

    Well, System Shock 2 is still scarier than Silent Hill and Project Zero. So there. :-)

  • pjmaybe #14 8 years ago

    Never found SH1, 2 or 3 that scary TBH.

    3 is the best so far IMHO.

    2 was utterly boring.

    1 was ground-breaking for the time in that it pretty much screwed the resi series for good.

    Peej

  • Shinji #15 8 years ago

    Well, System Shock 2 is still scarier than Silent Hill and Project Zero. So there. :-)

    Not a hope. System Shock 2 is a great game and all, but it's got nothing like the sleeping-with-the-lights-on kind of psychological chilling that you get out of Project Zero.

  • Angel_Treats #16 8 years ago

    /falls over with excitement

    I can't wait to get my hands on this. I'm replaying SH3 *again* at the moment. Fair enough the combat's a bit limp and all three so far have their various faults but I've been scared shitless by them.

  • pjmaybe #17 8 years ago

    This screenie alone will have me buying it. Those nasty half-babyfaced things remind me of the horrors in the film "Brazil"

    Looks ace but pretty much "safe" at the same time. I'll have to get it just for another chance for a shamble around Silent Hill though...

    Peej

  • Sko #18 8 years ago

    "This screenie alone will have me buying it. Those nasty half-babyfaced things remind me of the horrors in the film "Brazil" "

    I thought the same thing although my reaction was more "Hang on, I've seen _those_ before!"

    Does anyone know where I can get a summary of the plots of the SH games? I've given them all a bash but either due to simple cack-handedness or other distractions, I've never really seen them through to their conclusions. I wouldn't mind reading up on the stories/plots/spoilers.

  • Kami #19 8 years ago

    Note: Thank you for correcting yourselves :)

    Honestly... *rolls eyes and laughs*

    I don't find Silent Hill scary per se... but it's a compelling twist on a tired genre at times. Which I like...

  • bungalooBunny #20 8 years ago

    All screenshots I've seen so far show no flashlight. Can you guys tell me if there was one in the demo you played? I'm really curious about this.

  • UncleLou #21 8 years ago

    Not a hope. System Shock 2 is a great game and all, but it's got nothing like the sleeping-with-the-lights-on kind of psychological chilling that you get out of Project Zero.

    Wuss!

    /hears monkey
    /panics

    Project Zero is scary, but System Shock 2 worried me somewhere deep, deep inside of me, in regions Project Zero never advanced to.

    But then the scare factor is probably more subjective than anything else.

  • OnlyMe #22 8 years ago

    I just tried Manhunt for the first time. I thought it reminded me of a mix between Splinter Cell and Silent Hill. Is it very wrong to call Manhunt a stealth-survival game?

    It's tense as hell, and extremely fun to play. The graphics are very good for Rockstar, and a hell of a lot better than the GTA games. Manhunt is very underrated by the public, mainly because of the extreme violence. Look past the violence and you have a very good game with great gameplay.

    That said, I look forward to buying Silent Hill 4 although I've only completed the first one, and SH2 and 3 I got about midways before I stopped playing. I don't like getting scared, but I still buy them. I must stop torturing myself.

    Still, Resident Evil 4 doesn't look scary at all, but the gameplay looks ace! I will probably buy that on release. Shame not everyone gets to play them, Resident Evil shouldn't have been an exclusive.

  • Freek #23 8 years ago

    So has the locked doors issue been dealed with aswell? Aside from the one in the appartment ofcourse.

  • BluePhoenix #24 8 years ago

    sko

    Check out www.gamefaqs.com

  • Sko #25 8 years ago

    Ah. Gamefaqs honestly didn't occur to me. Cheers BluePhoenix.

  • Kami #26 8 years ago

    "kami yer a neeeeeeeerd! you need to get out more!"

    I think the problem may be I'm getting out TOO MUCH now rather than not enough... drifting awaaaaay from my consoles... (They haven't seen use in over a week.)

    Seriously though. You play Silent Hill 3 for a while, you know it's a direct sequal to SH1. A bit of accuracy is expected when you make claims saying all three games are unconnected. Storywise, 2 was unconnected but it (a) was set in Silent Hill (Like, 'duh!) and (b) did revisit some of the originals areas.

    Someone has to point out the mistakes... can't let Kristan look incompetant now, can we?

    Besides, I'm into games with plots... heavily story-driven. And the occassional intensely gory/disturbing bit for good measure... not a lot of that going on in the gaming world right now... except Painkiller.

  • space_ace #27 8 years ago


    peej- 'silent hill 2: restless dreams' is a masterpiece (of misery, yeah, but that was the idea)

    disc- you might want to check out the "fatal frame" series - they have a unique twist on the genre and it works, unlike "forbidden siren".

  • bungalooBunny #28 8 years ago

    Krudster, dude. May I ask if there is a torch in the game? And is the radio there too?

  • Bassassin #29 8 years ago

    Those two-headed, walking-on-hands zombie guys are extras from Shadowman, aren't they?

  • krudster #30 8 years ago

    Truth is Kami, I only played the first few hours of SH1, as I got it several years later. Completed both 2 and 3, so forgive me for not knowing the initmate relationship of 1 and 3...it doesn't appear obvious.

    As for a torch and radio...it doesn't appear to make an appearance this time at all, but don't know for 100% certainty, as I only played it for three hours.

  • bungalooBunny #31 8 years ago

    Thanks man.

    *SH3 SPOILER* Basically Heather from SH3 is the daughter of Harry from SH1. In the good ending Harry gets a newborn baby. Heather is that baby, the reincarnation of Cheryl.

  • Sko #32 8 years ago

    Right, I'm all au fait with the SH story. My life is now complete...

  • Blerk #33 8 years ago

    what I want is a game where you dont have any weapons at all... and cant kill the monsters...

    That's Clock Tower 3, isn't it?

  • valli #34 8 years ago

    hope they'll implement the radio in the final version. The static noise does a lot for the atmosphere, even after all these years of SH!

  • pjmaybe #35 8 years ago

    Much as I like SH1 and 3, there are still things about the whole SH franchise (and survival horror games in general) that piss me off to buggery...

    1) Locked door - in a real situation would you just shrug your shoulders and walk away? No of course not, you'd either hoof the bloody thing down, or grab your shotgun and blow the lock off...! Grrr!

    2) "Sticky" paths. Would be much better in the SH series if you could go ANYWHERE.

    3) Ineffective melee weapons (on high difficulty settings)

    Peej

  • space_ace #36 8 years ago

    pjmaybe- those things work best when accepted as a nightmare. there is _no_ other game like sh2, where you progress inside the mind of the main character, and everything is driven by his sense of guilt. radical stuff, yes...

  • Blerk #37 8 years ago

    Gotta admit, I don't agree with you on the SH thingy, peej - my favourite is SH2 by a long shot. Then SH1, then SH3. Although they're all really good.

  • pjmaybe #38 8 years ago

    Praps I just missed the "point" of SH2. I couldn't gel enough with the characters in it to care less whether they lived or died by the end of it, and found James to be a completely boring tosser of a character. Did finish it in the end though and it wasn't quite as bad as Resi Evil 0 for being a waste of gaming time.

    SH1 was peerless for me at the time, and SH3 also has enough insane edginess to keep my interest too, but Project Zero 1 still knocks em all for six...

    Peej

  • Blerk #39 8 years ago

    *** BLOODY GREAT SILENT HILL 2 SPOILER FOLLOWS! ***
    The bit near the end of SH2 where you meet Angela for the last time on the burning stairs is the creepiest bit of the entire series - when you warn her about the fire and she just says "You see it too? For me, it’s always like this".

    Brr! Fan-bloody-tastic!

  • Kami #40 8 years ago

    "Truth is Kami, I only played the first few hours of SH1, as I got it several years later. Completed both 2 and 3, so forgive me for not knowing the initmate relationship of 1 and 3...it doesn't appear obvious."

    *SPOILERS WARNING - If you've not got far in Silent Hill, DO NOT READ FURTHER... meh. Why do I bother? People still read spoilers...*


    Heather is indeed the recreation of Cheryl. If you remember, in Silent Hill 1, Cheryl's "older self", a one Alessa, was due to give birth to a demonic god. To keep herself from completing this ritual, Alessa sorta shed a part of herself. This was the baby that Harry and his wife found near Silent Hill.

    There are MANY arguments about Silent Hill. From the "Twilight Zone" Theory (Which says that it never happened. Which may be reasonable - Harry and Cybil both had accidents. Dahlia could have used their spirit forms...) to the "Jakobs Ladder" Theory... The bad ending, Harry dies. Essentially, this theory relies heavily on you believing that it was Harry's mind coming to terms with the face he is dying... very similar to Jakobs Ladder. Whatever the theory... Silent Hill 3 arrived to kinda say Harry DID survive, and so did Cheryl/Alessa/Heather. (Or did he? Hmm... the plot thickens!)

    Of course, if you think "Heather" aka Cheryl Mason aka Alessa Gillespie has got away from the curse of Silent Hill, you are wrong. Heather has never shed the demon inside her womb... in all technicalities, she has always ben pregnant. Always carried the demonic god inside of her womb...

    This, for me, is the key to Heather's shifting between the real world and the dark world. Heather suffers headaches and stomach cramps while the world transforms around her... the demon inside her is perhaps trying to get a message across... that she has no escape, anywhere.


    - MASSIVE PLOT SPOILER WARNING! WARNING! -

    The key is when Heather arrives back at home. A few of us realised this instantly, some refuse to believe it - but the scene is familiar to players of Silent Hill 1. Remember the room with the dead guy in the chair, watching the broken TV? Say hello to that scene in SH3. In effect, Harry in SH1 had a vision of his own death. This is the scene which shows the strong link between SH1 and SH3... and Heather must come to terms with it. To her, her father has died. To us, the player, he was forewarned in the first game of what was to come...

    - End massive spoiler -

    Also questionable is when Heather is quizzed about the monsters she has killed. This is probably the most potent of plot devices - and may symbolise they're either all in her head, or perhaps even normal people.

    The theories from SH1 do carry over. It may be Harry never raised Heather, that she was merely drawn back to his former home to see a recreation of how he dies in the car. It could be Heather is also dreaming. That she is a victim of a brutal attack in the cafe , teeterinmg between life and death and getting images of the world and a decent into hell.

    -- end all spoilers --


    Whats the point of such a post? Because the clues are there. The links between the first and third game are strong, and they have to be as well for the whole thing to make sense. By featuring key map areas, and that one particular - IMO critical - scene in Harry's Apartment, the games don't just link, but fit together naturally.


    Sorry if I've spoiled some key Silent Hill storylines. But the clues are there... as we go... NO NO NO! *hits head against wall* Must stop watching daytime TV...


    But you're forgiven. You really do need to have finished both SH1 and SH3 and seen all the endings to really begin to make sense of how powerful the connection is and how the storyline constantly plays on the classic Silent Hill 1.

    Just thought it's better to let you know when you're not quite right... I still think saying SH1 and 3 are loosely connected is wrong, but I do see the point and I would happen to agree since SH3 is still an entirely different story.
    Edited by 1 at 28/04/04 @ 12:09

  • UncleLou #41 8 years ago

    I made a forum thread, Tiger, let's hope not everyone's ignoring me. :-D

  • Kami #42 8 years ago

    Clock Tower 3 definately came out in Europe since I own a copy of the game.

    Extremely tidy game... can be a bit frustrating at times. But a good scare, and makes a change to have to run occassionally...

  • Kami #43 8 years ago

    Have to admit something here, Silent Hill (2 an exception) has always had a strong childbirth thing, what with Alessa in #1 and Heather in #3... another strong demonic childbirth-heavy story isn't going to surprise me...

    Which is maybe the only thing Konami need to work on...

  • bungalooBunny #44 8 years ago

    I only found Project Zero scary at the start, mainly when that ghost just pops up in front of you when you go into.. erm can't remember which room it was. But then I just got used to seeing ghost I couldn't care less.

    Sure the lady with the broken neck was kinda scary first time, but after that I would just go 'stop waving around, I'm trying to take your picture'...

    SH1 is the most scary in my opinion..
    Edited by 1 at 28/04/04 @ 18:54

  • rygel #45 8 years ago

    God... I feel like a big frickin' baby... I can't stand any of these games that you lot mention. They scare the bejesus out of me. Shame, really 'cos they sound like really well put together games... My loss I suppose :(

  • Freek #46 8 years ago

    No it won't since the two series are so widly different in their aproach to survival horror they can hardly be compared and can peacefully co-exist.
    That and the fact that RE4 is NGC exclusive and Silent Hill isn't going to be released on the NGC.
    Edited by 1 at 29/04/04 @ 01:21

  • Blerk #47 8 years ago

    And all things aside.... Resi just isn't scary. Full stop. There's the odd 'jump' moment, but it's not even remotely scary - it's too 'B-Movie'.

  • addam12 #48 8 years ago

    I prefer the RE games over SH. There more complete as far
    as gameplay and "eye candy" excluding RE3. I rented each
    SH game but was always turned off by the graphics. The PS2
    is capable of so much more than Konami is willing to shoot for.

    RE may not be as scary but the graphics suck me in.

  • Blerk #49 8 years ago

    Do you have eyes? The Silent Hill series is far better graphics-wise than Resi. IMHO, of course. :-)

  • OnlyMe #50 8 years ago

    It's not even an opinion, should be considered a fact. Silent Hill looks fantastic, both SH2 and SH3. They have a different approach than the Resident Evil games. Those games have so far only been pre-rendered backgrounds, while Silent Hill has always been full 3D.

    And Resident Evil 4 while be even more different than the original Resident Evil series, the game seems to take a whole different approach. And I didn't find the pre-view video of Resi4 even remotely scary, while the preview video of SH4 scared the hell out of me (well, it was at least more scary than the RE4 video).

    That said, I look forward to both games. But RE4 isn't "scary" for me, it's more about fun gameplay which it seems to have implemented. For scary games I play SH4.

  • valli #51 8 years ago

    Again, the futility of these discussions... RE:outbreak has excellent graphics but it takes 20 seconds to load each room more or less forcing you to buy a HDD in order to play the damn thing.

  • Kami #52 8 years ago

    In defence of Resident Evil - YES! it's B-movie style. But you do realise some of us LIKE B-Movies and cheap horror flicks?

    Graphically, it's stunning now. IMO, RE3 was the most out-of-place for it's day, but corrected that by being so damned addictive. I still play it. It's just that good (You can never get tired of ol' Nemesis).

    Silent Hill and Resident Evil are POLES apart. Resident Evil is the all-out action horror where ass get kicketh and blood go flyeth. It's the gory, fast-paced and weapons-loaded type where the mutants and zombies are SO going to regret coming back to life.
    Silent Hill is the psyche-horror. It doesn't need weapons. It doesn't need a huge budget for special effects. The story, the setting, the acting and what monsters you do throw in are enough to make the whole thing give you a heart-attack. It's finely balanced to really have that sinister edge without showing you TOO much...


    I mean, you couldn't have two games any more different. Sure, they're both Survival Horror. But thats a genre now. I like Resident Evil AND Silent Hill. They're so different it's not fair to compare the two.

    It's like comparing The Exorcist to Shaun of the Dead... you couldn't have two things being any more different if you tried...
    Edited by 1 at 29/04/04 @ 12:26

  • Blerk #53 8 years ago

    In defence of Resident Evil - YES! it's B-movie style. But you do realise some of us LIKE B-Movies and cheap horror flicks?

    Ah, I never said I didn't like Resi. I do - I have them all. But it's still not scary. :-)

  • Kami #54 8 years ago

    Maybe not... but as I said, Shaun of the Dead is a horror and it's not scary!

    Horror doesn't ALWAYS mean scares... sometimes it just means zombies getting blown to pieces. Which more than satisfies some peoples blood-lust :)

    (I have them all too. RE3 is my fave. Nemesis rocks the game, Jill looks great, Brad gets whats coming to him from RE1 and... well. Carlos is probably the light relief...)

  • bungalooBunny #55 8 years ago

    I think Resi tried to be scary in the first couple of episodes, but then it became more of a House of the Dead with puzzles, mainly judging by the looks of RE4.

    I like both Resi & SH and agree there's plenty of space for both to coexist, although I prefer SH. Whoever said SH graphics were poor must need to go urgently to the optometrist.