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Silent Hill 4, short impressions.

Ar_

Member
Im curious to hear what others think about it.
For now, a description to give a idea of the game to who didnt have the chance to play it yet.
I think is one of the best games in the franchise, thought its innovations may turn off a some old fans. Definitely the most innovative since the first.

Good story, it spells you the main things you need to know to get a sense of closure, but leaves you wondering on many important details.
Suffers a bit from a lack of surprises or significant evolutions of the situation along the way.

The characters are better than SH1 and 3 ones, thought not as good as in 2. Personally I Found Walter interesting.

At popular request, blacksmiths found Silent Hill and repaired most locks. For good or bad that it can be...
You can now enter all 22 of them that open on the sides of a single long
hospital
corridor. And every room of the traditional
apartment building
. Enjoy =p
The compromise is, the world is smaller. The
hospital
, for example, only has two floors. In other words, is not that the number of accessible rooms increased, as much as the number of unaccessible ones decreased.

Half the areas (
subway, apartment, hospital
) are already seen material, and quite uninspired in ther last incarnation, but nothing is as dull as the subway and tunnels in SH3.
The others (
woods, prison, commercial building, stairway down
) are very interesting visually and / or structurally.
A disappointment, there are no more big (streaming?) outdoor areas like the city of SH. Outdoors are broken in small rooms, like SH3 amusement park, and even some corridors are broken by a loading area.
The Room itself does little for the gameplay, but serves well its function to add atmosphere.

Monsters are technically impressive, thought scarcely disturbing. Their number is reduced from SH3, but is now harder to run from them.
On SH3 release, I suggested here the addition of random and scripted encounters (something Fatal frame does very well), possibly by means of monsters growing out of the organic walls. Maybe something listened, cause they have been added =)
Ghosts are immortal, can only be downed for a brief time, come out of walls, and have some unique attacks; some can hurt you just by their proximity.
Some creatures grow out of the floor, they dont move or attack, just slow you down forcing you to cut them; an interesting novelty at first, that soon turns in mere annoyance.
Some creature will follow you across a few rooms.

The bosses are now low profile, just some ghosts with unique looks, story and attacks. They also can appear in different rooms. Nothing as spectacular as in the previous games, but they work well.
The last boss is a simple but really cool fight, great camera work.

You wil have some company for a big portion of the game, slowing you down if you dont park it in some safe room when not needed.
A good addiction imo.

Endings arent as good as in SH2, but still decent.

Is not scary at all, even less than SH3. maybe due to assuefation, maybe the lack of darkness, radio and flashlight; cool devices, but the reoccurring presence of the last two was getting silly.
Still the atmosphere is good. Feels a lot like an adventure, also due the slighty slower pacing.

Combat feels clunky, since you move slowly with the weapon extract, and the aim doesnt seem very precise.
The new moves are satisfing thought. A dodge move replaced the block from SH3, and you can charge melee attacks. The powerful swing will send monsters flying away if hits, but leave you wide open.
Cool animation for the finishing moves, Henry sure kicks those corpses with passion.
You now have a lifebar, appearing when in combat.

Weapons are mostly melee, plus two guns for desperate situations.
Still there are a couple interesting ones, some rare magic swords that can impale a fallen ghost in place, and be retrieved if needed (at the price of freeing the ghost again), and an amulet that protects from ghost damage, but will break with use.

The real time iventory is good, imo better than the traditional one.
Adds a limit to the number of objects you can carry, but it doesnt get as annoyiong as in RE games.

No more riddles, puzzles are trivial at least playing at normal. No idea about hard.

Istant deaths from SH3 have been removed.

Pacing is a bit slow, since requires to revisit some areas, and takes a while to save - only one save point in the game, in your room, and takes a couple minutes to go back there and return.
It serves the purpose to give significance to the room, at least.

Due the pace, the idea of replaying it may not appear very enticing. The first time thru was very enjoable thought.
 

TTP

Have a fun! Enjoy!
Forbidden Siren spoiled me. I don't like dribbling enemies anymore and ugly montsers per se don't scare me anymore. I've yet to finish the game but as for now I'd give it a C-.
 

McFly

Member
I just finished Fatal Frame II, will now start playing Obscure and then Silent Hill 4 ... woohoo! :D

Fredi
 

Miburou

Member
I have yet to finish the game, but the fact that it's no longer scary nor challenging is a major turn-off, regardless of whether it was intentional or not. Also,
how come I have to try a dozen times to be able to place a holy candle in my apartment? Why do I have to stand exactly in front of the coin/ticket slot to use a coin/ticket? Why can't I use the sword of obedience on a downed ghost until after I've knocked it down 3 times? Why do ghosts get stuck on you sometimes when you're close to them while they're getting up?

The AI for the enemies is pretty shit, too. Some of the enemies will lunge at the place you were at 2 seconds ago. Some will just look at you without doing a thing. And is it really fair to have enemies that drain your health just by being close to you? A good game is one where it's possible to never lose health if you play very well. Even if there are health items everywhere, it still is a bad design decision.

It's not a bad game, though, and it might get better in the remaining 20% until I finish it, but so far I won't be replaying thisgame, while I've replayed every other SH game at least 4 times. This game is just too annoying and not challenging nor scary enough for a second time through.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Miburou said:
And is it really fair to have enemies that drain your health just by being close to you? A good game is one where it's possible to never lose health if you play very well. Even if there are health items everywhere, it still is a bad design decision.

If you notice they don't start actually taking health until about 4 secs after the screen starts to go red. So It's still possible to go through the game and never lose health, but personally I'd say the dogs and moths are the toughest challenge in that respect.
 

Jan

Member
The game is quite dissapointing for me .

The control is still horrible and the AI of the foes almost inexistent .

Too slow pacing and very annoying to save .


I like FF2 better .
 

Bebpo

Banned
Judging by the review scores at gamefaqs, and the split opinions on this forum I think SH4 basically boils down to a love/hate game.

There is the group that really likes what they were trying to achieve and enjoys the creativity and originality to a degree that they can overlook the game's (many) flaws and still have a great time and rank it as one of the better SH games.

There is the group that likes it at first, but the flaws are too strong and many in their opinion which cause the game to become more of a chore than entertaining; as they despite wanting to like the game, they keep seeing the negative flaws and that distracts them from enjoying the good points of the game.Then they leave unsatisfied, and feel it was one of the worst in the series.
 

maskrider

Member
Bebpo said:
Judging by the review scores at gamefaqs, and the split opinions on this forum I think SH4 basically boils down to a love/hate game.

There is the group that really likes what they were trying to achieve and enjoys the creativity and originality to a degree that they can overlook the game's (many) flaws and still have a great time and rank it as one of the better SH games.

There is the group that likes it at first, but the flaws are too strong and many in their opinion which cause the game to become more of a chore than entertaining; as they despite wanting to like the game, they keep seeing the negative flaws and that distracts them from enjoying the good points of the game.Then they leave unsatisfied, and feel it was one of the worst in the series.

It all boils down to one's expectations on the game, I play for the interesting story/plot of SH games and I enjoy them immensely, many are not.

The gameplay has flaws, but not major, the one that bother me the most is the camera, and then the animation of his movements during battles, I am just a little bothered on the dithering. It may be better if there are a little more locations in addition to the current ones.

I have played the game more than 5 times from start to finish, have unlocked all the known stuffs and I want a little more unlockable stuffs.

Other than that, I have no complain.
 

Miburou

Member
What exactly are the innovations SH4 brings to the series? Many of the new things in SH4 don't really seem to make much difference, or are plain annoying. It's nice having a 1st person perspective in the apartment for added atmosphere, but as little happens in there, it's not that big a deal. The inventory system frankly sucks, especially since you can't drop unwanted items, causing you to constantly go back to your apartment. The lack of flashlight, fog and radio is a step back IMO, since there's nothing to replace them.
 
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