Everybody Loses

From the very first installment, the Silent Hill franchise established a distinctive brand of horror–grotesque yet fundamentally psychological. That intimidated me years before I would start playing myself. I still remember reading about the industry preview of the first game at E3, with audience members leaving the Konami booth in disgust.

I jumped on at Silent Hill 2 and found a game which remains one of my favorites to this day. Silent Hill 3 suffered from a more action-oriented design which disappointed fans of the more cerebral terror of its predecessors, myself included. When the promotional material for the fourth game revealed Konami doubling down on the action element (a health bar felt blasphemous), I was out.

I would occasionally wonder about the game as years passed. Every time critics panned a subsequent installment, I’d hear more about Konami’s legendary “Team Silent”–the group of designers who disbanded following 4. It agitated the completionist in me to think that I’d left a tetralogy (in spirit) unfinished. With fans insisting that it boasted some of the series’ creepiest moments even ten years later, I figured it couldn’t be all bad. In the spirit of challenging my grudges, I decided to give it a shot. (Though I still dragged my feet a bit, but can you blame me? After three years of COVID-19 precautions, the “stuck in your apartment” motif would test even the most jaded player’s tolerance for irony.)

Right away, Silent Hill 4 gave me a perverse kind of hope in the dread it inspired. The opening cinematic almost spooked me into turning away. Pressing on, I met characters who communicated through consistently stilted dialogue. This struggle to express oneself will be familiar to players of the prior releases, but it also evokes a more universal dream state of reduced agency. My first few sessions were cut short by my aversion to simply existing in those spaces, harkening back to summer nights in the basement with Silent Hill 2 (though I never felt the need to turn the lights on this time around).

The game confirmed my pessimistic suspicions almost as quickly. Enemies abound, so their presence quickly becomes mundane. Even the most well-designed among them (Twin Victim, I’m looking at you) come to feel less like “monsters” and more like “baddies.” In what feels like Team Silent’s desperate attempt to make this work, the game introduces new action mechanics such as melee weapon charging, item quick-change, and temporary status buffs. Among those buffs are the “anti-spirit effects” granted by the “Saint Medallion.” Such an artifact would have felt as awkward in the original Silent Hill as a flower which allowed you to shoot fireballs out of your fingertips. For good measure, this installment limits the number of items you can carry, introducing an annoying inventory management theme.

Just like the environments themselves, the gameplay and storytelling deteriorate from there.

Enemy encounters go beyond mundane and become annoying. Invincible “ghosts” pester you while you search for items, and enemies crowd some rooms to such an extent that they threaten the stability of the game engine. The preponderance of hostiles is sometimes the only remarkable development since the game marches you through every location twice. Even when the environments are fresh, the dumbed-down map mechanic ensures that you never feel the uncertainty or vertigo of the prior installments¹. And they’re bright; you never find a hallmark flashlight because you never need one (the signature enemy-detecting radio’s also gone, presumably because it would be emitting static constantly).

Protagonist Henry Townsend is about as flat as they come, only involved through his chance renting of room 302, and offering nothing in his own reflections on the events.

Image: Konami

Whereas male chauvinism was an integral aspect of Silent Hill 2’s story, the sexist undercurrent in Silent Hill 4² has no narrative justification. Similarly, where climbing into holes once held metaphorical value, in this game, it’s a routine event–a core component of exploration.

I’d be lying if I said the game doesn’t have some good tricks up its sleeve, though. It systematically subverts the video game trope of the “safe room” so effectively that even an unabashed save-scummer like myself was feeling claustrophobic. Because the game doesn’t explain how the transformation will progress, it subtly encourages you to make theories about the mystical event (in other words, it drives you to superstition). As Henry’s home becomes particularly chaotic, the atmosphere in the outside world grows especially unnerving. Distant gasps echo off the living walls of the apartment building, and the haunting track “Resting Comfortably” repeats incessantly.

Image: Mike Pennisi

A friend commented that he could see the shadow of a great psychological horror through all the action-game muck. That seemed apt to me, and it hit literally close-to-home as a construction crew coincidentally built a tower of trusses alongside my building. The sudden intrusion of rusty industrial equipment mimicked the nightmarish metamorphoses of Silent Hill (particularly Henry’s apartment in this case), and it creeped me right out. The game’s compelling experiences may not form a cohesive whole, but they’re still potent enough to capture the imagination and inspire a sense of dread. I like to think that these were the moments when the remnants of Team Silent were able to authentically express themselves.

Unfortunately, the disappointments of the conclusion overtake these small victories. Just like 1 through 3, Silent Hill 4’s ending is determined by the player’s actions. No spoilers, but the ending I earned is so empty that it undermines the whole concept. A negative or unsatisfying conclusion might be appropriate for folks who failed to play “correctly” (even given the game’s murky definition of “correct”), but the extreme nihilism of the “21 Sacraments” ending just feels punitive. Once again, Silent Hill 2 provides stark contrast: I received the darkest ending for that installment, and I never once questioned its appropriateness because it made a meaningful statement about human nature. This game punishes players with a Bronx cheer.

Despite some thrills, Silent Hill 4 failed to satisfy the creative team which established the series (it being their death knell), the marketing department which perverted it (it netted the least of the four³), and ultimately, the player.