Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 79: Silent Hill 4: The Room

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Todays game is Silent Hill 4: The Room. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

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Previous Results:
Planescape: Torment - 9.83 (12 votes)
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.6 (21 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (33 votes)
The House in Fata Morgana - 9.14 (7 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Red Dead Redemption 2 - 9 (8 votes)
Steins;Gate - 8.94 (9 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.85 (10 votes)
Umineko When They Cry - 8.82 (11 votes)
Persona 3 - 8.78 (17 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask - 8.56 (27 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.56 (16 votes)
Undertale - 8.44 (41 votes)
What Remains of Edith Finch - 8.41 (19 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.38 (54 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.38 (28 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Final Fantasy VII - 8.26 (36 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.13 (39 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.13 (35 votes)
The Walking Dead Season 1 - 8.13 (20 votes)
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 8.06 (18 votes)
The Wolf Among Us - 8 (12 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles - 7.94 (27 votes)
Spec Ops: The Line - 7.9 (17 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.88 (20 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (31 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.81 (25 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 7.7 (30 votes)
Celeste - 7.62 (25 votes)
Skies of Arcadia - 7.62 (13 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.46 (28 votes)
Mortal Kombat (2011) - 7.46 (13 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Red Dead Redemption - 7.23 (11 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (23 votes)
Mass Effect 3 - 7.16 (21 votes)
To the Moon - 7.07 (7 votes)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 7 (5 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7 (21 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (21 votes)
INSIDE - 6.93 (15 votes)
Gone Home - 6.91 (17 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.69 (16 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.66 (30 votes)
Firewatch - 6.65 (10 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.6 (27 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 6.5 (13 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 6.31 (35 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.15 (13 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.1 (13 votes)
Star Fox 64 - 5.79 (24 votes)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 5.72 (9 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.82 (28 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.83 (12 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4.72 (9 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.43 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy - 4.14 (18 votes)
Resident Evil 6 - 3.74 (17 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.46 (15 votes)
Starcraft II (overall) - 3.4 (5 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.32 (11 votes)
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void - 2.83 (6 votes)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - 2.77 (15 votes)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm - 2.57 (7 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.33 (9 votes)
Tales of Zestiria - 2.14 (7 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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Nominate Mega Man X4

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Whoever nominated this get in here.

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Need snake to remind me what this story was about.


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As soon as I saw this my first thought was "great, another game that will fail to get 5 votes"
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Never played this game, but I would be curious to see what people think of it.

Nominate:
Silent Hill 2
Mother 3

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Nah but for real I played this game.

From what I remember it had a lot more lore intrigue than most SH stories, and that's not exactly their strong suit. The main protagonist's biggest contribution is that he's a really nice guy? Kind of weird for a horror story, but I liked the feeling of empowerment he and the player kind of get in the end.

7/10, a lot more interesting than most stories, great atmosphere as usual, but my memory is kind of hazy.

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9/10

I'm going to preface this but saying that it's almost impossible to separate the story from the admittedly tedious gameplay, even for a survival horror vet like me. And it's not tedious in a way like MGS4's Microwave Hall which emphasizes the game's themes and Old Snake's character development, but rather tedious because the game attempted to be more like the survival horror games it was competing against, i.e. the Resident Evil series, which for one thing had ironically already dumped the item box in its latest main entry and Outbreak series games at the time. Two series going through identity crises and which one is still going strong today? I digress.

But you have to separate them, because this is a fantastic story, one that doesn't quite reach the highs of Team Silent's masterpieces before it, but it comes damn close with one of the most shocking and scariest ideas in any video game. Before the Silent Hill series would enter the mediocre loop of rehashing Silent Hill 2's plot beats to diminishing returns and effectiveness, Team Silent's last hurrah proved their chops at once again providing a story with rich detail full of symbolism, well-fleshed out characters all with unique, memorable and vibrant personalities, and twisted, heinous locations that even the hellish nature of the Otherworld couldn't compare to.

There are two parallel stories on display in Silent Hill 4: at the forefront, you have Walter Sullivan, attempting to fulfill the ritual of the 21 Sacraments, and concurrently, you have Henry Townshend, seemingly trapped in his apartment, door chained from the inside, windows all shut and unable to opened, when a mysterious hole suddenly opens up in his bathroom.

I usually consider the main character of Silent Hill games to be the one behind the creation of the manifestations and Otherworld seen throughout your explorations. In SH2 & 3, the monsters are a reflection of the player character, but in 1 & 4, things are arguably made even stranger because you are seeing another character's psyche reflected through monsters you don't and possibly couldn't ever truly understand. All of Sullivan's monsters and Otherworlds reflect his tragic upbringing, with one of the darkest aspects being his torture at the hands of the Order while at the Wish House Orphanage, connected to a Water Prison where children were routinely beaten, killed and disposed of, and also possibly used for meat by the cooks there. It's the type of place where you can understand why Walter ended up being how he was, brainwashed and left unwanted and unforgotten by, to him at least, the whole of humanity. There's a bit of Se7en here influence with Walter's slayings, and there's always a sense you never quite get the whole picture, with some parts of Walter's murders being purposefully muddy, like his questionable suicide. I will admit here it gets TOO convoluted in supernatural bullshit for its own good I think, but it paints the complete picture of Walter's entire character and that's the most important quality of it, at least to me.

Now, I like the Walter plot, but Henry's side of the story ends up being the most interesting to me. One thing Team Silent always did well was craft compelling, realistic characters. You might consider Henry "boring" or "plain", and that's because it's true, he's designed that way to reflect the average, ordinary person, from his demeanor to his fashion sense. There's nothing to call attention to him, and this can be traced to the chained room representing Henry's intense agoraphobia and social anxiety. This was used to some effect with James in SH2, but Henry is really the poster child for this type of character angle. There's more to it though; the holes that continually open up in Henry's apartment calls to mind voyeuristic tendencies, peep holes into others lives that seem far more interesting than yours. Perhaps, even representing sexual repression in the case of Eileen, your next door neighbor. As the game continues, your apartment even becomes victim to "haunting", destroying even your own notion of safety and comfort as your inner anxieties become reflected in your very surroundings. He's also the perfect foil to Walter as despite all his insecurities, Henry remains a kind and generous, helpful person throughout the entire ordeal of the game.

Silent Hill 4 is dense and layered with even more complex symbolism on top of all this, much more than I can and probably should get across in a simple ratings post, yet for some reason it just doesn't hit the same sweet spot as Silent Hill 2 & 3 do for me. I think those games are just more tightly designed and paced over all, like the average player will notice most symbolism in those games if they're paying attention, but Silent Hill 4 makes you work for it to mixed results. Either way, the effort here deserves to be experienced as both a terrifying work of original horror fiction, and as just a damn good video game story too.

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9/10

Just finished this game two weeks ago, so there may be some recency bias here.

The plot is engaging and mysterious, and I love the concept of Henry being trapped in his apartment and having to escape via the dream world. The setting is strong here, which is ironic because it abandons the foggy town that defined the first three games.

The first half of the game is an absolute masterpiece, but it's a shame that one you finish the hospital, everything is all backtracking. Oddly enough, the story remained interesting despite the gameplay being a slog, so I won't dock points here. I will forever wonder how amazing this game could've been with a larger budget (or maybe just some extra time to design an additional 3 or 4 areas).

I wasn't crazy about the cult in Silent Hill 1 and 3, but the cult's influence on Walter made it chilling in SH4. Walter in general is chilling, whether he's a boy slaughtering his victims or a man who is born again after killing himself and becoming his own 11th victim (probably the most terrifying piece of lore in the game).

Would've given this a 10 if the characters had a little more meat to them. While I'm fine with Henry as an everyman hero, I wish he factored more into the story than simply being the 21st victim. I also think they whiffed on a potentially awesome ending: had Henry and Eileen been Walter Sullivan's parents, and SH4 was punishing them for abandoning them, I would've given this story an automatic 10. Then again, maybe that ending would've been too much of a thematic of SH2's guilt theme.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Whoever nominated this get in here.

Present!!

Nominate Batman Arkham Asylum

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Snake5555555555 posted...

I usually consider the main character of Silent Hill games to be the one behind the creation of the manifestations and Otherworld seen throughout your explorations. In SH2 & 3, the monsters are a reflection of the player character, but in 1 & 4, things are arguably made even stranger because you are seeing another character's psyche reflected through monsters you don't and possibly couldn't ever truly understand. All of Sullivan's monsters and Otherworlds reflect his tragic upbringing, with one of the darkest aspects being his torture at the hands of the Order while at the Wish House Orphanage, connected to a Water Prison where children were routinely beaten, killed and disposed of, and also possibly used for meat by the cooks there. It's the type of place where you can understand why Walter ended up being how he was, brainwashed and left unwanted and unforgotten by, to him at least, the whole of humanity. There's a bit of Se7en here influence with Walter's slayings, and there's always a sense you never quite get the whole picture, with some parts of Walter's murders being purposefully muddy, like his questionable suicide. I will admit here it gets TOO convoluted in supernatural bullshit for its own good I think, but it paints the complete picture of Walter's entire character and that's the most important quality of it, at least to me.

The water prison was such an arresting location. I also loved the "downward spiral" theme that kept popping up in the level design, and the idea of dumping children down garbage chutes (and possibly eating them) is downright harrowing.

Now, I like the Walter plot, but Henry's side of the story ends up being the most interesting to me. One thing Team Silent always did well was craft compelling, realistic characters. You might consider Henry "boring" or "plain", and that's because it's true, he's designed that way to reflect the average, ordinary person, from his demeanor to his fashion sense. There's nothing to call attention to him, and this can be traced to the chained room representing Henry's intense agoraphobia and social anxiety. This was used to some effect with James in SH2, but Henry is really the poster child for this type of character angle. There's more to it though; the holes that continually open up in Henry's apartment calls to mind voyeuristic tendencies, peep holes into others lives that seem far more interesting than yours. Perhaps, even representing sexual repression in the case of Eileen, your next door neighbor. As the game continues, your apartment even becomes victim to "haunting", destroying even your own notion of safety and comfort as your inner anxieties become reflected in your very surroundings. He's also the perfect foil to Walter as despite all his insecurities, Henry remains a kind and generous, helpful person throughout the entire ordeal of the game.

Your assessment of Henry is awesome. Made me appreciate him and the story even more. As someone who struggles with social anxiety, I now understand why the setting and Henry's first-person POV) clicked with me so much.

Ever watch Max Derrat's YouTube videos? He analyzes Silent Hill 1-4 and a number of other story-heavy games. Your insights are sharp like his. Thanks for the writeup.

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Now I really want to play this game again. How did Konami just leave it off the HD collection like that man...

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Snake, very well done.

It gets a 9/10 from me. It's very interesting to have the antagonist be the main character.

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9

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8

Snake's post reminded me that this is some good stuff

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plasmabeam posted...

had Henry and Eileen been Walter Sullivan's parents, and SH4 was punishing them for abandoning them, I would've given this story an automatic 10. Then again, maybe that ending would've been too much of a thematic of SH2's guilt theme.

Damn this ending would've been awesome, at the very least it could've been one of the many that are in the game already.

plasmabeam posted...

Ever watch Max Derrat's YouTube videos? He analyzes Silent Hill 1-4 and a number of other story-heavy games. Your insights are sharp like his. Thanks for the writeup.

No but I love game analysis so I'll definitely check him out! And you're welcome, and I appreciate you (and everyone else) all the same for reading it!

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Damn, Snake coming in with a great analysis post

Wish I'd played the game back in the day now

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9

Silent Hill 4 had one of the most underrated horror stories. The moments in the apartment was one of the most terrifying experiences in a video game. It is such a shame that the game had this huge emphasis on combat which made gameplay tedious and revisiting areas in the 2nd half which made the game have major pacing issues.

In my opinion The Room had a better story than Silent Hill 3 but wasn't nearly as good as a whole package.

Persona 3 - 10

Well now I want to play this game!

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Axl_Rose_85 posted...

Silent Hill 4 had one of the most underrated horror stories. The moments in the apartment was one of the most terrifying experiences in a video game. It is such a shame that the game had this huge emphasis on combat which made gameplay tedious and revisiting areas in the 2nd half which made the game have major pacing issues.

SH4's apartment might be one of my favorite settings in a videogame.

I actually liked the heavier focus on combat. The obtuse puzzles in SH1-3 always killed the pacing IMO. With SH4 I didn't have to check a guide for the first half, and that worked wonders for the pacing and atmosphere.

Where SH4 fell short (in terms of gameplay) was the 2nd half's retread-fest, like you mentioned.

In my opinion The Room had a better story than Silent Hill 3 but wasn't nearly as good as a whole package.

100% agree. SH3's story is IMO the weakest of the original four, but SH4's 2nd half is so awful/lazy that it drags down the game overall.

andylt posted...

Well now I want to play this game!

Go for it! They re-released it on PC last year, I believe. The story is unique and well worth it.

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pjbasis posted...

Now I really want to play this game again. How did Konami just leave it off the HD collection like that man...

Considering the quality of the HD collection, they probably did everyone a favor.

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Konami are absolutely terrible at letting you play their old library. Aside from MGS1+2 and Silent Hill 4s PC versions being on gog (Silent Hill 2 and 3 nowhere to be seen even though they gave PC versions), MGS HD collection on Xbox and PSNow (no PC version and lacking Peace Walker HD), the bad Silent Hill 2&3 HD ports on Xbox, and like two Castlevanias, the vast majority of their library from earlier than the last decade cannot be played on new devices. I dont like MGS4, but it is laughable that a game that big from a franchise that big is literally unplayable now. They are even worse than Square and that is saying a fair amount.

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yeah I need some playable MGS again

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Konami are absolutely terrible at letting you play their old library. Aside from MGS1+2 and Silent Hill 4s PC versions being on gog (Silent Hill 2 and 3 nowhere to be seen even though they gave PC versions), MGS HD collection on Xbox and PSNow (no PC version and lacking Peace Walker HD), the bad Silent Hill 2&3 HD ports on Xbox, and like two Castlevanias, the vast majority of their library from earlier than the last decade cannot be played on new devices. I dont like MGS4, but it is laughable that a game that big from a franchise that big is literally unplayable now. They are even worse than Square and that is saying a fair amount.

MGS4 rotting on PS3 is indeed hilarious. It's been 13 years, man.

The GBA/DS Castlevanias being unavailable digitally is a horrendous business move considering how Vania's popularity exploded with the Netflix show.

Other bad news: Silent Hill 1 and Suikoden 1/2 will soon be lost when the Vita/PS3 stores disappear.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, the GBA Vanias might be available on the Wii U eShop.

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The failure of the Wii U is genuinely one of the worst things to happen to game preservation and accessibility at least as far as Nintendo is concerned, if you had a Wii U and 3DS you had full access to almost Nintendos entire library only missing a few Gamecube games and licensed or peripheral required games, as well as access to a huge amount of third party games on those systems. These days only Xbox really care in terms of platform holders and they have the shallowest library by quite a long distance really, oh well!

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