Silent Hill 4 : The Room

[Shapermc]

Surprisingly there is not an official thread yet. I got EGM today with an article on Silent Hill 4 in it. I took pictures if you want to see and you can collect interest and speculate about it here.

EGM:
Henry Townsend hasn’t set foot out sided his small apartment for five days. It’s not that he doesn’t want to leave, he can’t. His windows won’t open. He can’t break through the walls. The phone’s dead, and nobody seems to be able to hear him outside. The front door? It’s bound by heavy chains and sealed with a series of huge locks. But their just might be a way out after all. Henry woke up this morning to find a huge gaping hole in the back of his bathroom wall. God only knows how it got there, or who made it, and what is on the other side – but chances are it is going to be bloody, loathsome, and disturbing beyond belief.

Akira Yamaoka:

“There’s not a direct connection in terms of story lines. You might however see some people that you would never expect. There’s a common theme of the alternative world of Silent Hill.”

“I can say that the story is darker than the past games. “

“The theme of the story lies in solving the connection between the room where you live and the alternate world. Why is the alternate world tied to your room?”

I edited this to make it interesting and take out silly EGM commentary. But yea, this gives away a good amount of plot info. Eat it up

Links to other threads:
(Neo Contra & SH4)
(Let's visit Silent Hill *SPOILERS*)
(SH4 Teaser Trailer)

[icarusfall]

This makes me sexually excited.

[g0zen]

This game is gonna pwn me. Any word on a release? I don't care if it's the most far-fetched, unreliable rumor site on the web, I want a date. Hell, pick one out of a hat and I'll be happy. That is, until that day arrives and I'm not basking in SH4 greatness. At that moment your life would be forfiet.

[epmode]

april 31st

[mollipen]

I was going to say something about those f**ktards at Konami who need to stop with all of this off the wall crap and just have a back to basics Silent Hill back in the city we saw in the original, but I've already said that a billion times now. *sigh*

I'll love this game, no doubt, but the more I hear about this "stuck in your apartment" crap, the more I'm hating it. Next we'll start on a space station and some sort of tempral warp will send the main character to Silent Hill.

They're screwing up the original idea of the city more and more by making it able to reach so far out into the "real" world.

[g0zen]

I was going to say something about those f**ktards at Konami who need to stop with all of this off the wall crap and just have a back to basics Silent Hill back in the city we saw in the original, but I've already said that a billion times now. *sigh*

Without innovation there is stagnation, they've let you cover just about every part of Silent Hill and a few places beyond. If they just rehashed it and made you go through it again, someone else would complain that it's nothing new and thus not worth playing.

I'll love this game, no doubt, but the more I hear about this "stuck in your apartment" crap, the more I'm hating it. Next we'll start on a space station and some sort of tempral warp will send the main character to Silent Hill.

I remember when the first Silent Hill was about to come out, and a lot of people were complaining that it was just a Resident Evil clone, that it could never match (much less excede) RE. You don't hear those voices anymore, because they're still too busy eating their words.

They're screwing up the original idea of the city more and more by making it able to reach so far out into the "real" world.

They're not 'screwing up' the idea, they're branching out with it. They want to try something new. If you want the same game formula over and over for decades, go play KOF.

The people at Konami behind Silent Hill have never failed to impress me, I think they deserve a little indulgence instead of blind ridicule from those who can't accept the least bit of change.

[Satsuki]

Thanks for the scans, sharper!

I remember...hell, 6-7 months ago I thought SH was just a Res Evil clone. I never really bothered to get involved with it. As soon as I picked up 3...boy, I knew I was wrong D= I consider it a far superior series to RE, but that's just a personal feeling.
frothing demand and all that, yes. We really do need a frothing demand icon.

[Dyne]

until they make the combat quicker i dont care. im sick of the characters swinging shit like it weighs 8million tons. i want to kill shit, not spend my time running from it.

[Despair]

And as I alway say, combat in SH is fine. Never had any problems with combat.

Pipes and Axes were done better than knife in RE series, and SH3 improved combat much, with sidestepping, ability to block and do combo attacks.

[mollipen]

Without innovation there is stagnation, they've let you cover just about every part of Silent Hill and a few places beyond. If they just rehashed it and made you go through it again, someone else would complain that it's nothing new and thus not worth playing.

More and more wackier ways of getting people stuck in Silent Hill =/= Innovation.

I remember when the first Silent Hill was about to come out, and a lot of people were complaining that it was just a Resident Evil clone, that it could never match (much less excede) RE. You don't hear those voices anymore, because they're still too busy eating their words.

Not sure what the point of this part was.

They're not 'screwing up' the idea, they're branching out with it. They want to try something new. If you want the same game formula over and over for decades, go play KOF.

Man, I've been on SH's dick since long before the original game came out and anybody knew what it was. There's NOBODY in this world who wants to see the Silent Hill series grow and expand more than me.

The problem is they're doing it the WRONG WAY. They're typical Japanese video game developers who don't understand that you don't have to re-invent everything each time to make a game fresh and new. The original presented us with a town that was seriously messed up andnightmarish. It was a great launching point, and I looked forward to the next game which would bring expanded gameplay and better graphics.

So what did we get? We got a game that totally screwed up the "nightmare" side of Silent Hill, stuck us in a much smaller ass-end of town, and reduced the exploration elements of the first. Don't get me wrong - I love Silent Hill 2. The game is no SH1, but it's still great, and it did at the same time give us some new aspects - the fact that the town could be a place where your dreams can come true, albeit for a huge price.

So from that point, what could Konami do? That last part - the dream fulfillment - opens the doors for countless storyline possibilities. And at the same time, they had the chance to fix everything that they screwed up about part two. So, Silent Hill 3 had a lot of potential.

So what did we get? We got a game that was certainly pretty, and a game that make a welcome return to a "nightmare" version of Silent Hill. Except, whoops... half of the game WASN'T EVEN SPENT IN DAMN SILENT HILL. You want to make a character get to Silent Hill? Great. But taking half of the game to get there, and then only giving us 1/4th of the MUCH SMALLER boonies we got from the second game was ridiculous.

As well, the game proceeded to break the entire idea of Silent Hill. Silent Hill was supposed to be this town that became damned and which would catch people, who then had to try to escape. But we don't have that anymore. Suddenly, anywhere can become Silent Hill. Screwing the town over like that wasn't needed, and isn't something that I consider "progress."

If the gameplay elements of the game were perfect, then maybe I could see your supporting the "innovations" (which aren't) that are being put into the game. But the gameplay is far from perfect. Puzzles have gotten worse since the first. The exploration aspect has gotten worse since the first. The creatures still feel like cheap RE-knockoff creatures. We still have yet to get a real return to Silent Hill proper. So many more innovations could be made to the gameplay that it isn't funny. (For example, they could take a break from the people working down the hall and put in some "hide from the enemies" stuff ala MGS.)

It's like saying that too many stories about people set in New York get boring after a while. It's what you do with those people and those surroundings that count. So much more still can be done with Silent Hill that it doesn't NEED to start bringing in gimmick ways of getting people there. But as I said, leave it to Japanese developers to create something and then get too bored with it to actually see the idea through.

The people at Konami behind Silent Hill have never failed to impress me, I think they deserve a little indulgence instead of blind ridicule from those who can't accept the least bit of change.

As I said before, I've been with Silent Hill since the beginning, and probably put in more time with the first game than anybody else on this board. Nobody loves SH more than me. I'm just appauled and saddened to see where the creators are taking it. They've lost a lot of the vision they first had, and are doing a lot of wrong things instead of doing a lot of the things they should be doing.