Gaming Silent Hill 4: The Room

[Mitch]

[quote]


Silent Hill 4: The Room First Look


Hot on the heels of its announcement of the fourth entry in the Silent Hill series, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Konami gave a presentation on the game at its Gamers' Day today. Producer Akira Yamaoka led the presentation, which consisted of an overview of the game, a disturbing trailer, and a brief Q&A session. While Yamaoka was careful about what was revealed, it's pretty clear that the upcoming game matches, if not surpasses, the creepiness of the previous entries in the series.

As mentioned in its announcement, the game will revolve around a man named Henry Townsend who becomes trapped in his apartment. After a week or so, Townsend discovers a mysterious hole in his bathroom and convinces himself that it's the only way out. However, as you'd expect, mysterious holes that appear in the bathroom of your potentially cursed apartment rarely lead to anywhere you'd actually want to go.

The stylish trailer was made up of a collage of cinematics, gameplay, and assorted grainy black-and-white imagery that was just enough out of focus to creep you out. The bulk of the trailer was filled with a disturbing look at the menagerie of creatures and people you'll encounter who'll help and hinder you on your journey. We'll go out on a limb and say that the horribly deformed creatures that looked like torsos with two squealing baby heads, wheelchair-riding S&M-attired individuals, sluglike creatures, floating corpselike ghosts, and demonic doglike things will likely fall into the "hinder" category. In fact, outside of one or two reasonably normal-looking people who popped up in the footage, it doesn't look like Henry will be getting much assistance on his toilet portal-fueled adventures. The trailer was given an extra helping in the creepiness department thanks to an unnerving song, sung like a lullaby, that played toward the end of the trailer.

Following the trailer, Yamaoka shed some light on the gameplay, which will add some new elements to the expected features. The game will roughly divide your time between the interior of your apartment and the disturbing worlds you'll travel to via the portals you find in your bathroom. Your view will change, as you travel in the game, to fit your location. As a result, the game will use a first-person perspective when you're in Henry's apartment and will switch to third-person when you're exploring the environments you'll reach through the portals. While there wasn't much specific information discussed, Yamaoka said that some elements of gameplay were more in line with the original Silent Hill than with the more recent entries in the franchise. Puzzles in your exploration will once again be on hand for you to solve in order to progress. The game will feature a stronger emphasis on action than previous entries and will include real-time weapon and item selection. This change apparently came about as a result of the team's focus on pacing in Silent Hill 4.

As for the game's story, Silent Hill 4 won't share as direct a connection with the other entries in the franchise as Silent Hill 2 did, but there will be some ties to the series. Although specifics weren't mentioned, Yamaoka did say that the portals you'll use to get around will help make such connections.

Silent Hill 4: The Room is currently slated for a simultaneous launch in fall of 2004 on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. While the team is investigating ways to offer content unique to each platform, Yamaoka stated that their main goal was ensuring the simultaneous launch of the game. Look for more on Silent Hill 4: The Room in the coming months.
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[size=1] The official website for the game can be found [url=http://www.konami.com/silenthill4/]here.[/url][/size]

[img]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/919554_20040109_screen001.jpg[/img]

[url]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/919554_20040109_screen003.jpg[/url]

[img]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/919554_20040109_screen006.jpg[/img]

[size=1] Here you see the "alternate-looking" room of the image right above it.[/size]

[img]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/919554_20040109_screen007.jpg[/img]

[size=1] This looks like one of the spirits mentioned. Looks interesting to say the least. I'm sure the quality of the graphics will be better than this image serves to show.[/size]

[img]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2004/screen0/919554_20040109_screen011.jpg[/img]

[size=1] This is an interesting image. It looks like that floating "thing" is a monster, and in the distance we can see Henry. It also looks like this image is taken from "the forest," which was mentioned spot you'll go to. [/size]

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screens.html?page=14]Looks like one of the characters you'll meet. Might be something like in Silent Hill, with Harry and his daughter, etc. Too big to directly show here. Doesn't this kid have nice eyes and hair?[/url]

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screens.html?page=13]Looks like Henry. Again, too big to directly show here.[/url]

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screens.html?page=12]Yet another character. Not sure which is which. This might even be Henry, but I'm guessing the other one is.[/url]

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screens.html?page=11] One of the new slew of monsters. This one looks particularily awesome, if I don't say so myself. I can't wait to see this thing moving and alive.[/url]

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screens.html?page=10] Reminds me of twins, or maybe siamese twins. This thing looks awesome, even moreso than the other one.[/url]

[url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screens.html?page=9] Another character model. They look so life-like and real. It's amazing. This one's of a woman.[/url]

[size=1] That's about it for the images. You can go [url=http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/silenthill4theroom/screenindex.html]here[/url] if you'd like to look at them all by yourself. There's definitely some I missed.

Well, what do you all think? I'm pretty excited. The character models look awesome from what I see. Also, there's some new changes being made to the gameplay and so on. Maybe it's only subtle things, but from what I see, it's good they're making some new things. I don't want the series to get stale.

The new monsters look interesting too. Especially the "siamese twin" one lol.

So yeah. This game looks like it's going to be better. It better be too. Silent Hill 3 wasn't as good as it could've been from what I hear. I can tell that this one might do that. It might push the series to new limits. It's too early to say anything though.

It's coming out fall, as it said. I'm excited. I'll be buynig it.[/size]

[Zidargh]

[color=darkblue] Good research there Mitch, very good.

To be honest, I never really anticipated the Silent Hill series. The first one was innovative, but the other two just seemed dragged on and stretched so far that the plotlines were quite thin, with no depth at all. It just didn't make sense to me.

However, this game seems to counter that. There appears to be a bit of a mystery to it which would keep the player involved, longing to find out why this man has a 'cursed apartment' and that's what I look for in my games, some form of interest.

I can't really say that I'm overly-excited about this as the Silent Hill series isn't for me, but it definitely looks different. I know a friend of mine will most likely buy this, so I'll just get him to bring it round and see how it plays.

Graphics-wise I can't really judge yet but they seem to be [b]good[/b]. The models do look very real, and obviously motion-sensoring is at work so that's a bonus but I'm starting to wonder why the monsters are always mutilated versions of day-to-day things such as humans. *Shrugs* Possibly a technique to disturb the player.

But the developers seem very reclusive about the details so perhaps it will be something special. We'll just have to see.[/color]

[Semjaza]

[IMG]http://www.jeux-france.com/Webmasters/Images/1658620040508_103222_0_big.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://www.jeux-france.com/Webmasters/Images/1658620040508_103222_1_big.jpg[/IMG]
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[IMG]http://www.jeux-france.com/Webmasters/Images/1658620040508_103222_6_big.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://www.jeux-france.com/Webmasters/Images/1658620040508_103222_7_big.jpg[/IMG]

New screens from Jeux-France. Supposedly coming out in July in Europe. SH3 hit Europe first, so I wouldn't be surprised if SH4 did as well.

[BlueYoshi]

To tell the truth I never really saw Silent Hill as a survival horror, it's more of a thriller really, mainly due to the usual premises of the games. Monsters just happen to be in the way. Anyway, according to IGN SH4 is supposed to be more of an action-focused entry to the series, probably more like Dino Crisis 2 - not sure about the points system though.

New additions include more weapons (what could possibly top the SMG?), enemies, and minor upgrades to the controls. Also, players can now toggle between a first and third person perspective, although there's no news on how it will be applied to the general game play.

[quote name='Zidargh']To be honest, I never really anticipated the Silent Hill series. The first one was innovative, but the other two just seemed dragged on and stretched so far that the plotlines were quite thin, with no depth at all. It just didn't make sense to me.[/quote]

I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'thin'. The Silent Hill series revolves around mystery, in which you solve puzzles to find clues that lead from one thing to another. Unlike Resident Evil, the goal of Silent Hill is to solve the mystery at hand, so in terms of depth it'll have to leave the player in a state, and the multiple ending sequences in the SH series helps this, how the story ends depends entirely upon you.

[Dreamseer Oona]

I agree that the first Silent Hill had much more..."pazazz" I guess you could say then the rest of the ongoing series did. I didn't touch much on Silent Hill 2 but the only thing I found interesting about 3 was the fact that Harry Mason made another cameo. A very SHORT one lol. The ending, though interesting, was quite uncalled for in three as well. (You people who took the short time to beat it knows what I'm talking about)

But the graphics look great for 4, as usual. I hate to hear it will have less connections with Harry and the gang but I suppose they couldn't run on this forever. I just keep wondering why someone doesn't take out Silent Hill like Raccoon City. Surely once the excitement of the series has dwendled to nothing, the city will finally be wasted. Let us pray.

Thanks for all the info! I will definitely rent the game, but I don't think I'll be spending anymore money on a games that aren't atleast twelve or more hours long ^_^ (Long live RPG!)

[mononoke_man]

What exactly is this game thats coming out? I havn't really gotten that much info on it other that its a new sequel to the silent hill series(Well DUH! :p). So can someone give me a little more info on it? I really like the Silent Hill series. so i want to know as much as i can about this game.