Note: This review contains minor spoilers.
One of the reason I love the Silent Hill series is because of its attention to subtext. Subtext, for those who don't know, is the implied text within a given work of art. In Silent Hill 2, the design of the creatures having thematic significance would be considered subtext, or at the least participating in an overarching subtext. Subtext is downright exciting in video games because of the wealth of subtextual wells in every nook and cranny of the world, menus, and mechanics. Video games often have explorable areas, inspectible items, etc. that give numerous routes toward more story. Dark Souls has been my go-to for talking about great video game subtext, but likewise Breath of the Wild succeeds with, say, its abandoned battlefields covered in old, rusted swords and shields.
Silent Hill 4: The Room either went too far with subtext in some places, or has a lot to say, I'm not really sure. Silent Hill 4 is the black sheep of the Team Silent entries in the Silent Hill franchise. It was made partially side-by-side with Silent Hill 3, and where Silent Hill 3 felt like it was in a tug of war between an extremely traditional Silent Hill game and something new and interesting, Silent Hill 4 feels like something very different altogether. First of all, it only has one area near Silent Hill, and it's across the lake from the infamous town. Dhalia Gillespie is mentioned to have visited this area, which houses a cult-funded orphanage, and that's about as many references as we get to Silent Hill (two characters recognize it as well, but to no significance to the story). Secondly, the game takes a new approach to your inventory system, where now what you can hold on to is limited and you have to go back to your apartment to trade items in and out of your stash box like Resident Evil (stacking items is also severely limited, being virtually none at all unless you are bullets, and even then only in groups of 10 and 6 for the two types of ammunition). Silent Hill 4 also abandons the (relatively) fixed camera work of the first three for a fully free camera, and, when you are in the apartment, a first person view (to great, claustrophobic effect). Silent Hill as a series has, up to this point, been more or less a classic adventure game with a slightly unwieldable combat system. The game's are usually about solving riddles and checking every door on the map to see where you can go and what you can interact with. While that exploration still exists to some extent, the riddles have instead been integrated with the story. Instead of solving riddles about flying birds and translating it to the keys of a piano, now you are learning about Walter Sullivan, his murder spree, and a weird cult ritual he has been attempting to complete over the course of roughly a decade in order to progress.
The story of Silent Hill 4 is both traditional and weird. It follows the cult from Silent Hill we are all so familiar with (even if I'd rather they drop that plot element already) and an everyman exploring abandoned, creepy areas in order to progress. But Silent Hill's iconic fog is nowhere to be found in what may be the only game in the series (Disclaimer: this isn't completely true, but it's true enough that we'd be arguing about semantics if we were to discuss it). Likewise, there is an intense focus on the titular Room. That room is your apartment. You are Henry Townsend, and you live in apartment 302 in some nondescript city not far out from Silent Hill (I wonder if this is where Cybil from the first Silent Hill was from). At some point before the start of the game, you woke to find that most of your appliances don't work (such as the phone and the TV), and a web of chains and locks across your front door. Written in red just below the eye hole says: "Don't go out! -Walter". The windows don't open but you can look out of them and watch your neighbors in their day to day, or the cars pass by the subway station nearby. Eerily, you can move a dresser and peek into your neighbor Eileen's bedroom, a young woman who you will hear throughout the game wondering what is up with that guy in 302, and why hasn't he been around lately?
Silent Hill 4 plays heavily with voyeurism themes. You are always on the outside looking in, with little to no other action possible while in the room. At some point, a hole appears in your bathroom, and crawling through it dumps you out in the subway not far from your house. There are monsters here, though, and a woman named Cynthia who says she will "make it worth your while" if you help her find the way out of this creepy, alternate-subway. As you progress, you will see more holes, all of which lead you back to the room. The only place to save in this game is in your room, and doing so will tell you which "world" you are returning from. Here, it looks like: "Returning from Subway World". This was something odd to me for most of the game: was this satire of Mario levels, a video-gamey joke, or was there actual subtext to it? The voyeurism theme seems to pull through here. You see the world through holes, and you enter worlds through holes. They are pocketed "worlds" because of the nature of being a voyeur, of looking in to a place you can't fully explore. Granted, levels are larger than any voyeur hole could ever hope to see, but I think the symbolism is intentional.
Either way, Cynthia doesn't have much time left in this world. It turns out that the Walter who left that message on your door is also the Walter who killed ten people, took their hearts out of their bodies, scratched a number code into their flesh, and then finally killed himself in prison. Since his death, there have been four others - five including Cynthia - all for the means of some ritual called the 21 Sacraments. As you progress through the game, you go from the subway to the forest outside Silent Hill where an orphanage sits, and then a panopticon type water prison, a mall across the street from your apartment, and then an alternate version of your own apartment building. Each of these will have a new victim for Walter, as well as shedding some light on who he is and why he's doing this. Very quickly you realize that his final victim's are to be you and Eileen, your neighbor. It turns out Walter is trying to bring his mother back, a woman who supposedly died (although it feels as though it implies she isn't dead so much as having abandoned him as a baby with his abusive father who didn't want him), a fixation he developed as a child. This early developed obsession has split Walter, and you will occasionally see adult Walter or child Walter depending on where you are in the game, where child Walter is committing the murders while adult Walter is pushing the victims in the right direction to be killed. The two don't seem to get along, and the younger Walter is scared of the older Walter. This duality is captured in the guise of the Twin Victim enemy, conjoined twin baby heads on a body draped in some feathered cloak that will point and whisper at you until you get close enough to aggro them (terrifying as fuck, just by the way). Younger Walter and, to an extent, adult Walter, believe that room 302 is their mother, as they were born and abandoned there. You are also not the first tenant of room 302 to be going through this horror. A journalist named Joseph was investigating Walter after being trapped in the room. Somehow he entered the alternate-apartment and remains there, able to send you his old journal entries to help illuminate the horror befalling you. In order to bring his mother back according to the 21 Sacraments, Walter must use the hearts of ten sinners and then kill himself. After killing himself, his ghost must kill ten more people each based on a particular trait: "Temptation", "Wisdom", etc. You are the "Wisdom" kill, having been shown every detail of the ritual through the game, and Eileen is the "Mother Reborn", who will vessel as Walter's mother.
In the Apartment world (easily my favorite level, with several mini-plots going on and a good deal of exploration), Eileen is severely injured and sent to the hospital. Your hole is destroyed, and you must make another and enter the hospital world. You find Eileen, and from here on out you have to retrace your steps through the levels, starting with the subway and up to the apartment world again, with Eileen in tow. Eileen can't die, but she can become cursed if hit too much or abandoned for too long, and when cursed will hurt you periodically. As far as escort missions go, Eileen isn't the worst person to have lugging around behind you, but as the levels become more and more compact and complex, she can be a serious chore to keep up with, especially when unkillable ghosts block her from following you. But what really sets off this last half of the game is that your apartment no longer heals you. Up to this point, you could either use a health item or you could go back to your apartment and let it heal you. Now, not only does your apartment not heal, but it will periodically become "cursed" with ghost possessions where it will hurt you if you get too close to the cursed object. These curses can be as docile as the windows banging or your peep hole bleeding, or as creepy as demon babies pressing through the wall in a nauseating mold pattern. In order to get rid of these possessions, you have to use a holy candle in front of them, which are relatively uncommon (though there are more than you will need for all possessions) and with your limited inventory and its inability to stack can be a chore to lug back to the room.
Taking away your safe area is maybe a mark of genius, despite how annoying it can be late in the game. Suddenly, everything feels that much more tense where you may have been a bit more risky. Not only are you worried about leaving Eileen for too long to go back to the room lest she become more cursed, but now going back to save comes at the risk of you getting hurt. Luckily, health items are far more plentiful in the last half, but never enough to make you feel as though you are safe.
Silent Hill games have always been good at stress. While Silent Hill 1 and 2 where mildly stressful here and there, you probably never felt like you weren't going to finish the game. Silent Hill 3 wasn't particularly hard, but it did pile on the enemies and conservatively dole out the health items, making that question a bit less certain. Silent Hill 4 goes full tilt, putting so much stress in the latter half that you could be convinced to just drop the whole thing if you hadn't already come this far. That is to say, I'm not entirely sure Silent Hill 4 would be called fun for the latter half of its run time. I'm not sure if fun is exactly the point. I'm a strong proponent that games don't always have to be fun to be good - after all, Schindler's List isn't a fun movie, but it is great - and I think Silent Hill 4 fits into that category. If the gameplay itself didn't have you tied up in stress knots, the imagery more than likely will. Rather than the demonic horrors of past games (the ghostly enemies still remain), Silent Hill 4 has a lot of mold imagery. There are mold enemies that grow out the floor and make disgusting squelching noises. As a matter of fact, mold seems to be a major thematic element. Stagnation to the point of perversion, of a lack of care and being taken over by a foreign colony of filth and disease. It feels gross, but it fits the themes. The voyeurism themes feel kin to this mold imagery, of disregard for self for that which is outside, of planting yourself somewhere and perverting the people and areas around you with your silent interaction with them. It never feels right when you are looking in on Eileen, even if it is in trying to make sure she's safe. It doesn't feel altruistic at all, but selfish and perverse, of control somehow.
But the voyeurism themes sort of melt away by the end. Like other Silent Hill games, there are multiple endings, and few of them seem to play off of the voyeur themes throughout. Most play in to the voyeurism as a good thing, as something that did sort of save Eileen. In the two endings where this isn't the case, the only tip towards voyeurism is in your inability to stop the horror from befalling others. It could be that voyeurism was a byproduct, that you weren't some creep invading others' personal lives, but someone incapable of fighting your way out of a stagnant life. Walter is more the voyeur, someone confused as to what and who he wants, and uses what he has observed in others' supposed 'sins' in order to meet his own selfish and violent means. In this case, you are forced into a sickening state of voyeurism, and it becomes a way of life, a tethering between you and the awful works of Walter. You see what he wants you to see, like being trapped in a box with a hole in it while someone directs that box in particular directions. There is one odd image that keeps me on to the voyeurism vibe, which is in the hospital level. There is a room where Eileen's head fills up the entire back of the room. She looks disturbed and hurt, but her eyes are wild and follow you as you move around the room. You were the small eye touching every inch of her and her room with your eyes, and now you are being drenched in her horrific vision. It is an inverse of power, and one meant to make us feel uncomfortable.
The thing with Silent Hill 4: The Room is that it feels like a lot of stuff in one, ideas threading over one another without a clear way to tie them all off. The themes are there, and impossible to overlook even when considering endings that don't quite play into them. As with all Silent Hill games, there is an obvious David Lynch influence throughout, so perhaps it could be the point that none of this ties together, that it is a series of impressions layering over one another into a thick cloudiness preventing anything from being more coherent than mere shadow. However we sum it up, Silent Hill 4 is one of the most effectively unsettling stories in the Silent Hill cannon, a horror both inside and out, as participant and victim. It isn't a relaxing play by any means, and can feel like work by the end, but for those looking for something different, thematically challenging, and with a respect to the modes and methods in which stories can be explored in the medium, I can't help but give Silent Hill 4 some credit and regard. It is extremely memorable, even as it left a bad taste in my mouth. I never want to play it again, but I'll never forget it either.
7.5
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