silent hill 4: the room
type: game
"Henry wakes up trapped in his own apartment. Forced to crawl a mysterious gateway on the wall, he's taken to grisly realities that holds both secrets and answers"
I was surprised to find out sh4 was not received well at all when it came out, because I absolutely loved it..
I played the pc version and had some trouble with mapping the controls at first, but once everything worked i got into it very easily.
this game is so visually appealing.. one thing that immediately grew on me was the camerawork and how dynamic and clever the usage of perspective was in certain areas. it had a very cinematic feel to it. From a gameplay point of view, it also showed things to or hid them from the player in an engaging way (which is definitely something I'll remember to incorporate into future projects). the graphics are stylized in a way that appeals to my taste in visuals and aesthetics as well.. i just love how this game looks. i uploaded some screenshots i took here! Too many to put under this post.
The soundtrack is fire too (as with all the silent hil games tbh). i've been listening to it a lot since finishing the game.
There’s an overarching theme of loneliness in sh4 that really resonated with me, i think. While the story mainly revolves around walter and his abandonment, henry definitely is a part of this theme. He has no initial emotional connection to the machinations of the plot (or seemingly anyone, for that matter) and is introduced to us as a lonely, unimportant guy. I think through someone like henry as the player character we get especially separated from the outside world. Our neighbors only know us in passing and no one seemingly cares about us enough to even notice we’ve been trapped in our own apartment (except for eileen kind of?). either way we are totally left to our own devices in finding an escape from the room, as any attempts at getting help from outside are futile.
Henry’s dialogue is very emotionless too, which I'm appointing to his distant personality rather than to bad voice acting lol. He makes the player feel like an observer to the situation that unfolds and someone who is pulled in rather than the cause of these events. One of the very few things we learn about henry is that he likes photography, which i think is a great little detail that kind of enforces his 'observant' nature.
henry is the protagonist, but it's not his story at all.
And while henry literally climbs through every hole he can to escape, it feels like he isn't even sure of what he’s supposed to be doing himself. when he meets cynthia and eileen, i want to think the weird affinity he develops for them is his detached attempt at reaching out and building a connection to someone. eileen is a link to the outside, a pillar of support and a motivation to escape the isolation. she's the mother reborn.. she becomes to henry what room 302 is to walter, maybe?
i do think henry loves her in a way, or wants her to love him, similar to how walter wants the comfort of the room's love. because love is like a liberator from isolation
I see myself in henry so this might just all be projecting a little too much hahshaha
There is also the clever integration of the Room into the gameplay. It’s introduced as a safe space, the way it appears to kid Walter, as a loving “mother” that keeps you safe and heals you throughout the first half of the game. Only to become a space that wants to hurt you after learning the truth, as if the true nature of Walter’s mother who actually abandoned him in that very room is revealed.
The holes are also kiiiind of like umbilical cords serving as connections from the mother (room 302) to the child (Walter and his consciousness manifested as the other world). Im tweaking whatever
the other world definitely is a manifestation of walter's psyche though and i think that's really sad because it's all so haunted and twisted. walter is so lonely. he gets neglected and manipulated by those around him that his sense of reality becomes all distorted and wrong, that he can't see the world as anything but cruel and yearns for nothing but to return to his mother's womb, because that's the only place he ever felt loved. i really can't hate him as an antagonist, even if the things he does and is implied to have done are really terrible.
Walter and henry kind of mirror each other very well.. to me, they're both reaching for an escape from isolation, only that walter sees loneliness in the cruelty of the world while henry sees loneliness in himself and the very room that walter is trying to escape to.
i think it’s also really cool that the room becomes a tool to solve the puzzles in the other world and that the limited inventory forces you to return to the room every once in a while. even if i got a little annoyed by the fact that you can’t just throw away broken items.
The second half of the game just being one big repetition of the four worlds and also an escort mission is probably a big turn off for some people. but it didn’t really bother me, as there was enough “new” stuff to encounter. Except for the 2nd trip to the building world, that one felt a little taxing.
I do have a little bit of an issue with the ghosts and the wall men enemies as well, as their placements and hitboxes felt unfair at times.. And the ai in the game also isn’t the best. but it ended up being funny most of the time, especially with Eileen and Walter, so i can't really be mad. Another thing that i can't fully get around to though is the ”one truth” boss fight. It feels out of place and doesn’t really hold any narrative significance to me.. Maybe I'm just stupid though idk.
but yeah, all in all this game rules. i've been daydreaming a lot about it since i finished it
[23.04.25: this all feels pulled outta my ass i'm sorry. i was very sleep deprived when i wrote this.. please excuse any weird wording and bad grammar etc etc as always]
just now realized this drawing paul did was supposed to be werner.. how funny
