068: The Staycation From Hell, or SoraRabbit Revisits Silent Hill

Yes folks, it’s that time again… time for us to leave our cozy, safe homes and venture back to our annual Halloween vacation spot, the peaceful and calm tourist town named Silent Hill! How another year has passed by so quickly is something I don’t want to think about, but at least we have this to comfort us. In case you missed any of our previous visits to our favorite town, here they are, in a handy list format:

Bring it on! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

For my regular readers, this post should come as no surprise, seeing as how it’s the fifth Halloween in a row that I’ve released a Silent Hill post. Still, periodically I get newer readers wandering into my Silent Hill posts, so for those of you who are new to the SoraRabbit Hole, Silent Hill is a long-running survivor horror franchise that I count among my favorite video games. I always enjoy replaying these and reviewing them for you all, so I decided early on to make this an annual feature on the blog. I started with my favorite entry, Part 2, and then played Shattered Memories for the first time. For the third and fourth years, I went back to play Part 1 and then 3, respectively. This time around I went back to an entry I have only ever played once, Silent Hill 4: The Room.

This is the image I associate with the game. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

First a little history, and then we’ll talk about this games unusual mechanics. I first played Silent Hill 4 maybe a year after it came out. (It was after it had dropped in price at least.) While I enjoyed it, I did not like it as much as the previous three games (more on that later) and so I have not revisited it until now. In fact, when I went to fetch the game and start playing it for this post, I could not find it. I looked everywhere (even though I’m actually pretty well-organized and know where all my video games are) and it was nowhere to be found. It occurred to me that the one and only time I had played it was likely before my regretful video game purge… see, back when I was younger I ran into some hard times and ended up selling most of my extensive video game collection. Over the years I have been rebuying everything, leaning towards digital and remasters when possible. Silent Hill 4 has so far never been rereleased, so it slipped through the cracks.

I went to look for it online and was shocked to see most places have it listed for $75 - $163. I really didn’t have time to search the used game stores for it, and figured it would be terribly marked up even if I could find it. Thankfully I was able to find the PC version on GOG for $10 so I grabbed it. (Hey, this also means I don’t have to dust off my PS2, although I did get a new adapter so I could hook it to my big TV.) So yeah, Past SoraRabbit screwed up, but GOG saved Halloween. (If you’re a fan of older games, definitely check them out, they’re awesome.)

This game is pretty artistic. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Silent Hill 4: The Room was developed by Team Silent and Konami, and released in 2004 for PlayStation 2, XBox, and Windows. Unlike previous entries into the series, this one focuses less on puzzles and more on combat and escort missions, and it does change things up a bit from the traditional Silent Hill mechanics. While at first it seems disconnected to the rest of the series, as you advance you find deep connections to previous games and the Silent Hill lore.

For years there was a rumor circulating online that this was originally a completely separate game called Room 302 and it was tied to Silent Hill at the last minute before release. Per my research, this isn’t true. This was always meant to be a Silent Hill game and was intentionally designed to be different from the three installments that preceded it. I mean, it’s pretty obvious as you play that it’s Silent Hill through and through… the monsters, the claustrophobic but empty locales, the creeping decay that comes over the world at various times. There’s several references to specific characters from previous games. No, this game is Silent Hill down to its DNA.

The most obvious change as you play is the limited inventory, which is reminiscent of the early Resident Evil games. (If you’ve been a long-time reader you know I’m not a fan of limited inventory.) The other most noticeable change is that there is a hub area, or a home base in your apartment. While in the apartment, the view changes to first person, which was not done previously. (Sure, it was done later in Shattered Memories for the Doctor Kaufmann sequences, but not in the first three games.) When you finally get to leave your apartment, it switches to the more familiar third person view.

Home sweet home. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

I say that the apartment is your home base, but that does not mean it’s entirely safe. Sure, in the beginning it’s the place you flee to… you can save the game here, you can store your items, any damage you take in your jaunts to Silent Hill is quickly healed when back in your room. This doesn’t continue as the game advances. As you proceed, your home becomes less and less safe, until it’s scarier to be locked in your “safe space” than it is to be wandering around Silent Hill.

The main mechanic and difference between this game and the others in the series, is that you are not actually connected to Silent Hill in any way. The main character is named Henry Townshend and he lives in a ratty little apartment in the far-away city of Ashfield. From what I have been able to dig up, Ashfield appears to be 168 miles south of Silent Hill. You travel to and from the cursed town using spontaneously generating holes that appear in your apartment. Travelling through these holes lead you to various locations in Silent Hill. These holes lead to small, enclosed areas. So there’s less exploring and at no time do you wander the empty streets of the town.

Yeah, that’s the good stuff. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Much of the game is familiar to long-time players of the series. The Health Drinks we love to joke about have been renamed to Nutrition Drinks, but I doubt they taste any better. (They also renamed the First Aid Kit to Portable Medical Kit. Just wanting to be different, I guess.) You have a variety of melee weapons to help you out, including your handy-dandy steel pipe… and also an entire golf bag worth of golf clubs. Some of the melee weapons break with repeated use. There are only two ranged weapons, the pistol and the revolver.

A very important category of item are the ghost-hunting tools. See, ghosts can be knocked down, but not killed… they keep coming back. And they exude a damaging aura when they get close to you. With some tools, however, you can guard against them. There are Holy Candles, which clear the area of ghosts. (Best used for hauntings.) Saint Medallions prevent damage from ghosts, but break after too much damage has been absorbed. Silver Bullets will knock a ghost out for several minutes, but there are only two in the game. The best item, in my opinion, is the Sword of Obedience, which will pin a knocked out ghost to the ground, preventing it from rising. It also suppresses the damaging aura. There are only five, and they can be pulled out and taken with you if needed, so there is some strategy on deciding the best places to use these. Each area has a “boss ghost” who continue to antagonize you, and so I found those are the best ones to use the swords on.

As always, there are weapons obtainable on your second play-through, and one of these is the chainsaw, just like in Part 2. There is also a submachine gun like with Part 3. (But you can’t use that, only Eileen. More on her later.) I will tell you right now that there are no laser guns or UFO ending in this one, which is sad. I wonder why they broke with tradition there?

Ahh, Silent Hill maps. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Another returning staple is the map. This one is a hand-drawn map, which we’ve seen at various times in the series when actual maps are not available. As always you can keep track of where the doors are, which doors haven’t been entered, and which are locked. (Depicted by a solid line.) Scratched out areas are impassable. The bulls-eye symbols on the map are holes you can use to return to your home.

In the menu is a scrap book that the clues you gather are stored in. I didn’t find this very useful, but it’s a pretty common mechanic.

A strange side note, in the settings you have the option to change the blood color from red to purple or green. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s interesting.

Another interesting choice is that you cannot save at various places on the map anymore. (In Part 1 there were notepads, Part 2 and 3 had red symbols.) In this game, you can only save using the notepad in your apartment, so that makes the holes of vital importance as you continue on.

Last housekeeping bits which should be familiar to long-time readers. I go back and forth in this post referring to “Henry” and “you” because you take the role of Henry in the game. Also, this is not a walkthrough, so I’m not going to go into a lot of the particulars of the navigation and item pickups. This post is more geared towards the plot, my impressions, and creepy moments. (Of which this game has a lot.)

And finally, as always, while I tone it down, Silent Hill games typically involve scary entities, murder, violence, gruesome subject matter, psychological horror, and the occasional escort quest. If any of those bother you, this may not be the post for you. Also, it goes without saying (which is precisely why I’m saying it) but full spoilers for Silent Hill 4 follow, including the endings.

Is this one of those magic eye things? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

As the game begins, you start out in the bedroom and hear a scream. When you go to investigate, you can see the apartment is run-down looking. The door is covered in rust and blood and cannot be opened. There is static on the TV and nothing is where Henry remembers it being. There is a picture book on the coffee table with references to a place called Wish House. Henry displays confusion as to what has happened to his home, indicating it hasn’t always been this dilapidated and gross. He also complains about having a headache.

Okay, now this is a magic eye. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Henry’s attention is drawn to what looks like a face growing on his wall. After making a circuit of the room, the air gets wavy. Cracks appear on the walls and a patch of corruption spreads. A twisted man crawls from the wall, seeming to be in pain. He collapses on the floor and the opening credits start.

When the game proper starts, you again wake up in the bedroom, but you can see the apartment in a more normal light. It seems the prologue was Henry’s recurring nightmare he’s been having for five days. Exiting the room you see what else happened five days ago… the front door was chained and padlocked by an unknown party from the inside. He can’t get out no matter how hard he tries. The windows are sealed and won’t open. The phone doesn’t work either. It still rings, though (even though the cord has been cut) and a woman says “Help me.”

Above Henry’s bed is our first indication that this is a Silent Hill game… a framed photograph of Toluca Lake, which he’d visited a few years ago while sightseeing. He’d enjoyed Silent Hill, finding it tranquil. (Haha that’s one word for it.)

There isn’t much that can be done in the apartment aside from finding a bottle of wine and some chocolate milk in the fridge. (The wine is a weapon and breaks when you use it, becoming a broken bottle melee weapon. The milk is for Jasper. Keep reading… you’ll like Jasper.) You can look out the window and see lots of passerby and cars, which is pretty cool for a game this old… lots of moving parts for a PlayStation 2 game. You also see a young woman enter the subway entrance.

Back at the door, Henry explains that the chains just appeared five days ago and he can’t get out. No one can hear him yell. Written on the door in what looks like blood are the words “Don’t go out.” and the message is signed “Walter”. (Hmm, do we know a Walter from a previous game? Maaaaaybe…) Looking through the keyhole, you can see Henry’s neighbor, a young woman named Eileen. She’s talking about getting ready for a party. Straight across from the door are two rows of creepy handprints that look like they may have been long-dried blood. There are fifteen of them. A note has been slid under the door which says “Mom, why won’t you wake up?”

The other notable fixtures in the apartment are a trunk that you can use to store your items. (And it is very much needed given the low inventory space. You can only carry ten items at once.) There’s also a notepad to save the game. (No commentary this time when you use it, but the screen does go to red.)

Near the bookcase is a scrap from a book that references the “Ritual of the Holy Assumption”. This ritual is meant to create a world separate from that of God. A world in extreme flux filled with odd creatures and architecture. (Sound familiar?)

Don’t be a wimp Henry, climb in that hell hole. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

After inspecting the trunk there is a crash from the other room. You now find a massive hole in the wall of the bathroom, and naturally Henry immediately thinks it’s a way to escape. Weird creepy noises that sound like children playing come from the hole. Here is also where you get your handy-dandy steel pipe. (Which is another staple of the series.) I used this thing through the first part of the game.

Great, now I’ve got to make someone else play this game within 7 days. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Ain’t nothing more Silent Hill than entering a mysterious hole without knowing where it leads, so in we go! The tunnel is very long and the first time you have to manually crawl through it, watching the light at the end grow bigger and bigger. This was a very cool sequence… it was all grainy like an old filmstrip. Reminded me of the first Ringu movie. (Every later time the trip through the tunnel speeds up and can be skipped like any cut scene.)

Henry makes a new friend. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

After the long crawl you find yourself with no transition sitting on a long escalator descending into a grimy and dimly-lit subway. This is where the game changes to the usual third person over the shoulder view and it starts to feel more like a Silent Hill game. You soon meet the young woman you spotted entering the subway entrance outside your window. Her name is Cynthia and she’s very flirty and entirely convinced this is a dream. She asks Henry to help her find the exit, but before long she gets sick and runs into the ladies room.

More new friends! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

While she’s in there, the men’s room door opens and a twisted cat-monster flies out, dead. Two more come out and start eating it. (These are called Sniffers.) Since they’re distracted, it’s a pretty easy battle and this is also where you see one of the other notable differences in this game— there is a hit point bar. (Usually you can only gauge your health by looking at the color of your portrait in the inventory screen.) Another interesting difference: when monsters are near, static still plays even though you don’t get a portable radio in this game.

Is it really a Silent Hill game without a creepy mannequin? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

After the battle, you can enter the ladies room to check on your new friend. She’s gone, but there is a big hole in the wall that you can use to return to your apartment. Any damage you took in the subway is quickly healed. Henry assumes he was just dreaming again. Or was it Cynthia’s dream?

Some things have changed while you were gone. There is now a pistol on the floor and a hole in the living room wall (smaller than the one in the bathroom) which you can use to peek in on Eileen’s room. She’s in her room looking bored and on her bed is a very familiar stuffed pink bunny. Looking out the front door keyhole, I saw Eileen sweeping the hallway. (I think the things you see through the peepholes are random for the most part. Some are story-related, so those happen at certain times.)

The bedroom phone rings and it’s Cynthia, sounding like she’s in trouble. Henry rushes back through the handy bathroom hole and comes out in the ladies room. There is now a mannequin sitting on one of the toilets. Outside as you explore the subway you come across a very common new monster called Ghosts. They all look different and they float after you. When they get near, their aura damages you and they also attack you. You can knock them down, but you cannot kill them. They keep getting back up, so the best option is to run from them. They usually stay in set areas that they’re haunting.

To get to Cynthia, who is now locked in a subway car, you have to navigate a maze of subway cars and open the door. After continuing with her through the maze and avoiding more ghosts and fighting Sniffers, you get separated from her again. As you explore you find your first golf club (there are a lot of them) and a good old fashioned Nutrition Drink! Mmmm. There are a ton of Sniffers here, and I managed to fight them off without taking too much damage. Cynthia speaks over the intercom, saying she found the exit but she’s in danger again.

Yup, she was in trouble. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

After the horde of Sniffers was a very difficult part. There was a super-long escalator I had to ride up. New monsters aptly called Wallmen kept popping out of the wall and bitch-slapping me, knocking me back down a ways. It’s all about timing, but I could have shot them if I’d thought about it.

When you get to where Cynthia should be, she’s gone but all her stuff is scattered on the floor. This is where you pick up the first placard. These don’t come into play until way later in the game, but you get one near the end of every world. (Oh, by the way, this is labelled in the save file as Subway World. Each area is a world.)

Inside the office, Cynthia is covered in blood and dying. Henry comforts her, reminding her that it’s “Just a dream.” The number “16121“ is carved in her chest. (This comes back later.) After this you can return to your apartment. After playing with the Wallmen I was down to just a sliver of health, so this was very much welcome. (Way too early to use a Nutrition Drink. I’m a supply hoarder.) Through the TV static you hear paramedics talking about a body with numbers carved in her chest. “Like the other ones.“ When you look out the window you see an ambulance and police car parked at the subway entrance.

This is a good place to note that also outside the window you can see the other wing of the apartment building and various people through their windows. Some of the people seem as though they’re looking back. One guy watching TV gets up and appears to dance spastically or play air guitar, but it’s hard to make out what he’s doing. One person appears to be naked all the time. One woman stands at the window like she’s about to jump. The images are unclear and I don’t think they have any bearing on the game, but it’s interesting to people watch.

Looking through the peephole shows a 16th handprint has been added. The hole is bigger now and this time it twists and turns and leads to a different area called Forest World. There’s bloody writing on stones and a tree stump that Henry can’t read and trees loom to either side. A rusty building that looks like a factory or a warehouse is nearby with a hole back to your apartment.

Richard has no idea what Silent Hill is all about. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Back in your apartment the doorbell is buzzing. It’s Eileen and another neighbor named Richard Braintree. They think something weird is going on in your place but they can’t hear Henry yelling and pounding on the door. Creepy. Well, back in the hole!

Yeah, let’s enter this abandoned building in the woods. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Inside the building is a new monster that looks like overgrown mosquitos called Hummers. It was pretty satisfying to knock them out of the air with my pipe. Outside the building is a car with a note in it confirming we’re in Silent Hill. (Finally!) Someone named Jasper Gein was coming to Silent Hill hoping to see the devil this time. (Any relation to Ed Gein?) Another note says that if you bring the dug-up key, you can’t go back so you have to put it somewhere before returning. (Hmm… it’s a clumsy riddle but still a riddle.)

Further along is a huge scratched up stone with a nervous stuttering guy sitting nearby. He calls it the “Mother Stone” and says the cult in the building up ahead worships it. They used to collect orphans and do things to them. A nosy guy was creeping around asking a bunch of questions. This stuttering guy, as you suspect, is Jasper. The nosy guy? We’ll find out later.

On the way to visit the orphan-killing cult are more Sniffers and a literal trap— a structure that drops spikes onto you if you’re not paying attention. It was easy to avoid, but just goes to show that this cult doesn’t like visitors. At the end of the path is the Silent Hill Smile Support Society Wish House, which was mentioned in the kid’s book back in Henry’s nightmare. (This was also mentioned in Silent Hill 3. We have a connection!) For another nice connection, as you explore you find that you’re actually on the shore of Toluca Lake. (Well known from Silent Hill 2.)

Jasper is way too happy about all this. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

At one point you find a scared little boy (an orphan?) and Jasper appears, spouting crazy talk and talking about the nosy guy. He references something called the “third revelation” and that it’s finally gonna happen. (He doesn’t clue you in on what it is, but this is a dude on a road trip to visit a cult and meet the devil, so it’s probably not a good thing.) He laughs like a loon and runs off. The little boy also runs off.

Back at Wish House, (which is locked by the way) you give Jasper the chocolate milk from your fridge at home (because Silent Hill makes him thirsty… no really, he says that) and he enjoys it a little too much. (Jasper, that milk’s been in my pocket since the beginning of the game…) In return, he hands over a blood-inscribed spade. This is used to dig up the key that was mentioned earlier. Trying to return to Wish House with the key leaves you stuck in one area, which explains the earlier riddle. The solution is easy— use the nearby hole to return to your house, stash the key in the trunk, return to Forest World, run to Wish House and use that hole to fetch the key. You can finally enter. Jasper follows you.

Inside, the house looks like it’s been ransacked. You can read a note asking if they’ve found Alessa yet (the child from Part 1 that grows up to be Heather in Part 3). This strengthens the connections to the previous games and proves this is the same demon-worshipping cult we’ve tangled with on previous Halloweens. (Which is good to know… I wouldn’t put it past Silent Hill to have multiple evil apocalyptic cults.) You gather another placard and read some cultish gibberish about sinners and signs and whatnot.

Smoke is coming from one room and here you find Jasper in front of an altar, holding a candle. He’s also very much on fire.

RIP Jasper… he loved his chocolate milk. And the devil. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

You can see a five-digit number sequence on his chest like Cynthia had. (Similar numbers were found on a grave earlier in this world.) He screams that he found the one the nosy guy was talking about— the devil.

Henry awakens in Room 302, hearing a news report about the police finding a burned body in a forest near Silent Hill. They suspect links to murders committed by Walter Sullivan 10 years ago. Boom— direct connection. Sullivan was first mentioned in Silent Hill 2. After being convicted for the murder of two children, he committed suicide in his cell by stabbing himself in the throat with a soup spoon. We’re going to learn a lot more about Walter in this game.

The superintendent pounds on the front door, but he doesn’t hear Henry either. Another handprint is on the wall, starting the third row. The super tries his key but it doesn’t work, so he leaves. He’d heard a sound that reminded him of another incident in the past. The super’s name… get ready for this… is Frank Sunderland. Hey, that sounds familiar… yup. He’s James Sunderland’s dad. (James, of course, was the protagonist/villain of Part 2.) Looking at a photo above Henry’s couch definitively states that James and his wife Mary disappeared in Silent Hill, shedding a little light on what happened after the game without contradicting any of the possible endings. (I loved these call-backs to Part 2. I also love that Parts 1 and 3 are linked story-wise and so are Parts 2 and 4.)

She’s watching me watching her. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Another thing I can mention here is that you can peek in at Eileen any time. Sometimes she’s gone, other times she’s hanging out, shaving her armpits, reacting weirdly to something like she’s shocked or disgusted (maybe watching a gruesome horror movie?), or talking on the phone. One particularly creepy scene is where she sits on the edge of her bed, seeming to look right at me. Then she turns her head and looks shocked like she heard something off-screen. She gets up and runs off in the direction she was facing.

Yeah, probably. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Inspecting the bathroom, you find the hole is even bigger now, and the noises coming from it are louder. This hole leads to Water Prison World. This is a damp, circular prison with cells lining the walls. Later you learn that the design is like the Panopticon prison, in which there is surveillance in the center monitoring the prisoners. Someone is screaming and you soon find a man locked in a cell begging to be let out. He claims that Walter is going to kill him.

Henry explores the prison and gets some items. In one hallway is a really creepy crunching noise that sounds like monsters eating tacos, but no monsters appear. No tacos either. Returning back to the apartment here you find a page from a red diary slipped under the door and we get a plot dump.

The scrap of diary comes from the previous tenant of Room 302. He was a reporter investigating a mass murder that happened seven years ago. Ten people were killed in 10 days, all in different ways. Each had a number on their chests in the order of their deaths. (Basically the victim number followed by “121”. The last two we saw were 16 and 17, so it appears the killer is still at work. Hmm, there’s 17 handprints outside the door now… ) The killer’s name was also carved: Walter Sullivan. (I guess he stopped signing his work.) The other thing that’s different is that the TV is on and it’s playing static. It continues to play even when Henry turns it off.

Returning to the prison I got really lost for a bit, going in circles. When I finally found my way, what followed was a lot of tedious ladder climbing, Hummer swatting, and valve turning. There’s a lot of diaries and notes to read here, but it’s mostly just flavor. The only notable part was where one prisoner said the beef stew was rumored to come from dead prisoners. Later we find out that you can rotate the prison so holes open up in the cells and the bodies can be dropped down to the basement, where we find a slaughterhouse-looking area. So that rumor appears to be confirmed.

In another circular area you come across two massive monsters that rush at you. They’re called Twin Victims and look like twisted two-headed chimeras. They’re creepy as hell but do very little damage with their swats and were easy to take down with the pistol. (That was the first time I’d used it in the game.) They only took two shots each and then I stomped on them. Anticlimactic. Of course, I’m on easy. (They likely take more shots on higher difficulties.)

A scary hole in the floor? I’m there! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

After this came another classic Silent Hill pastime: jumping down mysterious holes. Now we’re talkin’! So this leads us to another valve which finally frees the prisoner, whose name turns out to be Andrew DeSalvo. (Fun trivia: he was named for Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler.) Henry climbs down the ladder and finds Andrew talking indistinctly to the little boy from Forest World. After the boy scuttles off, he reveals the lad is Walter Sullivan, which you probably would have guessed by now. Andrew explains he worked at the orphanage and Walter believed a little too much in the cult that runs the town. The man wanders off, traumatized.

Another little hole jump scored me a stun gun, which I found pretty helpful as the game went on. There was more valve turning using the clues found before to get into the kitchen. (Where the stew is made, as they say.) All I can say is it’s nice you can skip the valve-turning cutscenes. It would have been so much worse to have to sit through them each time. (And, actually, all the cut scenes. I had to reload after every screenshot. More on this later.) I’m leaving out a lot of the annoyance of this world… you needed a code in the kitchen, you had to line up the holes using the peepholes and valves. Every time you jumped down holes, you had to run around the prison to get back to where you were and climb up several sets of ladders. Ugh I hated this world, no joke. I’m gonna be honest, I had a walkthrough for this part simply for times sake as my deadline was fast approaching. But the first time I played, I muddled through it all on my own and remember it taking hours. (The internet was still pretty new back then. GameFaqs was the shit, though.)

Why do all my friends end up like this? Is it me? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Anyway, all that annoyance past, I got my next placard and in a room connected to the kitchen we found a horrid room filled with chains, hooks, and buzz saws. Likely where they made their famous stew. As expected, on the floor is the dead body of Andrew DeSalvo with the numbers 18121 carved in his chest.

I don’t think a bath is going to help. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Upon waking up in the apartment some new developments have happened. The bathtub is now stained with foul-smelling blood. Under the door is a diary entry explaining the Sword of Obedience.

Frank! Oh, and Eileen is there too. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Outside the peephole there’s another bloody handprint on the wall. Eileen and Frank are discussing your predicament. Frank can’t get the door open even with the key. He states the guy who lived here before had the same sort of thing happen and there’s always been something wrong with this room. Also the umbilical cord he keeps in a box under his bed has started to smell terrible. Eileen is understandably creeped out by all this but Frank won’t explain. He slips a note under the door and leaves. The note is covered in blood and can’t be read.

It’s my party and I’ll die if I want to… (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Next up, Building World! The hole in the bathroom is gaping even more and leads to a place that looks like rooftops although the map refers to the floors as basement levels. So I guess it’s an underground building? Sure, it’s Silent Hill so yeah. I buy it. You start out in a dimly-lit alley strewn with garbage and patrolled by new monsters. They’re freaky ape-men called Gumheads. This is where the stungun shines. One zap, stomp on them, problem solved!

This world feels more like Silent Hill… Grimy walls, lots of metal gratings, stuck doors, and aggressive monsters in cramped spaces. It’s like coming home. Interestingly enough, even though this place looks and feels like Silent Hill, it’s not. Early on you see the neon sign for South Ashfield Heights Apartment, which is where Henry lives. So we’re still in Ashfield, and somehow Otherworld has spread. There is precedent for that… the subway earlier in this game, the mall in Part 3. Otherworld can reach outside Silent Hill in some cases.

Soon we encounter our neighbor from earlier, Richard Braintree. He falls from somewhere up above, draws a revolver on Henry, and doesn’t shoot when he realizes Henry’s real. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but since he’s not the only one here, he deduces it’s the apartment building that’s gone weird. He wanders off to figure it out.

You can wander through apartments that look a lot like Henry’s. In one it’s set up for what looks like a birthday party and someone’s dying on the floor making wet choking noises. Actually it turns out to be a ghost, and its aura doesn’t hurt you. The reason it’s making those pained noises and not trying to put its fist in your chest is because it’s pinned to the ground with the first of the five swords. Of course I took it and ran from the ghost.

Uncle Fester? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Returning to the apartment here there was a knocking on the door but when I checked, no one was there. Over the handprints, also seemingly written in blood was the words “Better check on your neighbor soon!” Uh oh. (That message is gone later, by the way.) When I peeked in on Eileen, she immediately got up from her bed and ran across the room like she was scared of something we couldn’t see. (Probably one of her random scenes, but it was weird it happened right there.) I peeked again and she was on the phone with someone talking about how she wanted to find a new place to live. “I dunno, just something about this place… “ she trails off.

This is also where I had my first glimpse of the impending hauntings. Outside the window, a blue-tinged head floated up one pane and then down the other. This repeated a couple of times. It was never seen again. Weird.

A guh-guh-ghost. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Back in Building World, we see Richard threatening little kid Walter with his revolver, saying he looks like a little punk who he caught sneaking around the apartment. He asks if the kid knows what’s going on, but the frightened boy runs off. I basically just shrugged and went back to picking up items.

In one tense moment, ghosts climbed out of the walls and chased me around. The animation for this is awesome, it’s like they’re bugs burrowing out of a corpse or something.

Well, Richard wasn’t really a friend, so this doesn’t bother me much. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

This was actually a pretty easy world, which was a relief after the annoying prison. More enemies and items later, we reach the very bottom and then the very top of the massive building, get a new placard, and enter Richard’s apartment for a cut scene where the unexpected happens!

No just kidding, Richard’s dead. We all expected that. Richard is strapped to an electric chair, frying, the number 19121 carved in his forehead. Little Walter is behind him, placidly staring out the window. Richard is having trouble talking, but manages to stammer out, “That’s no kid! That’s the 11121 man!” (Hmm, we did see that carved on a casket in the Forest World. Interesting…)

Back in the apartment I noticed someone in an apartment across the way was pointing over at Eileen’s window. I checked on her and she was fine. She was pacing around, finally dressed up for the party she’s been talking about all game.

Richard, however, is not fine. We can hear the police radio saying that they have another one. Looks like the Sullivan case, but Sullivan’s dead. Is it a copycat? Also Frank was pacing outside the room in the hall, looking over at the door. Another time I saw him standing off to the side, staring and looking like he may have been drunk and about to pass out.

Frank isn’t a good super if the place looks like this. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

The hole is now reshaped to be circular, with red symbols around it, like the portals in the worlds. This time the hole leads to Apartment World. It’s the Otherworld version of the interior of Henry’s apartment building, much like the nightmare in the intro. As we enter the world, we see a grown-up Walter with stringy blonde hair and a long coat knocking on Eileen’s door. We see her look up, as though she were expecting someone. He walks away though.

Yeah, I spoiled it… the game seems to think we’d be shocked when they later reveal the guy is Walter, but I can’t imagine anyone playing this wouldn’t think “Walter” the second he shows up.

Right away we find out that Little Walter is the one who’s been slipping the notes under our door, since he slips one under and fades out like a ghost. We can’t enter Room 302 of course, because how would it be that easy?

Sure creepy stranger, I’ll take your creepy doll. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

The strange man who definitely is “not Walter” is sitting on the stairs. He talks fondly about a Miss Galvin giving him a doll long ago and offers it to you. I considered not taking the Shabby Doll this time because I took it on my first playthrough and it later haunted my trunk. I wanted to get a screenshot of this haunting for the post because it’s really cool. Sadly, the haunting did not happen for me so if you’re curious just google “Shabby Doll haunting”. (But yeah, if it will lead to content or is really cool, I will make a terrible choice every time.)

This world is great. It’s the most classic Silent Hill area of all (excluding the next world… wait for it) with its red bloody walls, dead monsters lying around, peeling floor exposing metal grates… it checks all the boxes. Love it.

Have you ever wondered about Henry’s other neighbor? Eileen is in Room 303 (which is also locked, of course) but who’s in Room 301? Well, that one you can go into and there’s a diary there from a guy named Mike who talks about the guy next door, Joseph. (The previous tenant of Room 302.) It seems Joseph gave Mike a rare porno magazine and promised to find him more, but he hasn’t been around as much lately. He’s a journalist and weird noises come from his place. He also talks about a woman named Rachael who he’s in love with.

Long stories short, to save on space… you gradually learn that this guy Mike was Rachael’s stalker. He was unwittingly aided by Frank, who assumed the guy was Rachael’s boyfriend. Her actual boyfriend was an artist who lived in the same apartment building. More on him later. Rachael, in another fantastic callback, is the kindly nurse who was referenced in Silent Hill 2 as helping Mary and Laura while they were sick. Joseph Schreiber is the previous tenant and the reporter who wrote about the cult and Wish House whose article you found in Silent Hill 3. It’s also his diary you keep getting pages of under your door. So there’s more of the plot and general Silent Hill lore for you!

Ghost pinned with sword. Also pictured: some of Mike’s porn collection. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

In Mike’s apartment (and various other places in this world) you find a blank red sheet of paper that you can slip under your own door to read later. There are also stacks and stacks of porno magazines. Mike knew what he liked. (Bet there were some strange noises coming from that apartment too! Wakka wakka.) He has the Schreiber article from Part 3 for those who hadn’t read it already… to refresh your memory it talks about the cult and that they operate out of Wish House, the orphanage. Mike also has the super’s key and a photo of Rachael in her nurse’s uniform with “I love you” written on it. Yikes.

Back in your apartment, Eileen is still fine. She’s still dressed up for the party and pacing back and forth. The page you slipped under the door yourself is important. It reveals that the middle “1” in the victim’s numbers is actually a slash. So 16121 is actually 16/21. So this means Walter was planning on killing 21 people but only made it to ten before committing suicide. Joseph can’t even speculate at this point on his motives and why he offed himself before he was done. (Aside from being in prison, of course.) I mentioned you get more red pages as you travel through the apartment. A couple of those were clues to help you navigate and one of them mentions that seven years after Walter’s suicide a 12th victim showed up. (Wait, what about number 11?)

Back in Apartment World, this is where I first used a sword since there was a lady ghost who kept following me around. (I fetched it later.) In Frank’s room we get to read his diary where he reveals the origins of the umbilical cord he mentioned earlier. It was left by a couple who lived in Room 302 about 30 years earlier. They abandoned their newborn baby there. Years later he kept seeing a young boy hanging around the apartments. Frank took the umbilical cord for reasons unspecified and couldn’t get himself to throw it away. Lately it’s been smelling really bad. (Yeah, I think you’re supposed to keep those in the freezer, man.) You do find the box on his bookcase, but you can’t take it yet. (Frank’s kind of weird huh? Taking body parts left behind, refusing to keep strangers away from the building he runs. I wouldn’t rent from this guy, is all I’m saying.)

In Rachael’s room is a portable medical kit— first one I found! (Now we’re really Silent Hilling!) Elsewhere you can find the apartment of Rachael’s actual boyfriend, who was a painter. He painted portraits of his neighbors, so you get to learn a bit more about them. (No painting of Joseph though. Before his time?) He really didn’t like Richard, and the description of his painting says that Mr. Braintree took Mike into his apartment and peeled his skin off. Yow. Later you can find a cassette tape that a creepy neighbor made of this event. You can listen to this tape in your radio back at home. The cassette shows that while Richard was the ringleader, also present were a lady and a drunk man, both of whom had paintings of their own. Nice place to live. It seems he wasn’t really skinned, though, jus beaten and stripped of his clothes. You find his bloody clothes in Richard’s apartment and there is a diary entry written by Mike after the event. I doubt he’d be in much of a mood to write in his diary sans skin.

After more exploring I found Richard’s revolver. The clues I mentioned earlier lead you to check under your own bed in the real world for Eileen’s missing key. (A headache from the haunting prevented Joseph from returning it to her after he found it.) And finally we’re able to get into Eileen’s apartment where I’m sure everything is just fine.

No, not Eileen! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Kidding again. You hear your neighbor scream and Little Walter is standing over a bloody and dying Eileen. 20/21 is carved in her back. She thanks the little boy and asks if he’s found his mommy yet. She warns him to get out of here… this place is dangerous.

That’s it for Apartment World for now. Upon waking up in your bedroom (you wake up every time you travel back to the real world) you can see an ambulance parked outside. Peeking into Eileen’s room, you hear two cops talking about her attack and how they’re just like the others. They say it’s like she was attacked by a ghost. Also the pink bunny’s head is now turned so it’s looking directly at the peephole. It stays in that position for the rest of the game.

There is an indentation in the wall where the ghost crawled out in the opening nightmare. Something called a Succubus Talisman has been slipped under the door. It looks like a tarot card. The bathroom hole appears to have been filled in with concrete, so we can’t get out that way anymore. A red diary page leads you to the storage/laundry room where you place the Succubus Talisman on the wall. This creates indentations where you can place the four placards you obtained in previous worlds. A note on the wall says that after he did the Ritual of the Holy Assumption other worlds forced their way into his universe (the world he created) and it began to swell. His universe has limits, but he rules as king. At the deepest part of his kingdom is his Mother.

Henry, get away from there. You’re no doctor! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

The new hole created by placing the placards leads to the final original world of the game, Hospital World. (Are you surprised there’s a hospital? Then you must be new to Silent Hill. There’s always a hospital.) Here Henry awakens on the floor and we see a smiling, blood-soaked Walter seemingly giving a woman an autopsy. (This is one of the Patients, a monster we’ll meet soon.) He approaches Henry, who darts into the hall.

I really liked this level. Wandering a dark, deserted, monster-infested hospital and looking at creepy things… it really brought me back. There are no evil nurses this time, but there is a new monster called Patients. They’re insanely tall Frankensteined corpses like the one Walter was tinkering with. They’re not too tough, but they are quite intimidating. I used my pistol on them every time I saw them, just like with the Twin Victims.

I’ll gloss over most of this since it’s actually pretty straight-forward and similar to the previous levels. You gather items, fight monsters, and get some scraps of plot. In one room you see photos and x-rays of Eileen, leading Henry to wonder if she’s still alive. (This makes him seem to be in denial since he saw her near death and heard the police seemingly discussing her murder.) But a memo hints that she may have just been badly injured. He learns he’s in St Jerome’s Hospital, which is close to his apartment. This is also where Baby Walter was rushed to after being discovered abandoned. We also learn Eileen’s last name is Galvin, the same name as the person who gave Walter the Shabby Doll. Hmm…

This is one of the most Silent Hill things I have ever seen. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

On the second floor are rows of animated wheelchairs that roll back and forth. If they hit you, Henry is thrown to the floor and takes damage. They also have a damaging aura like the ghosts. Interestingly enough, I read that the order of the rooms on this floor is randomly generated when you start the game. I’m not sure why they made that choice… maybe to add to the creep factor on future playthroughs? My favorite room here is one that was mostly dominated by an enormous scarred version of Eileen’s face with vibrating eyes. You cannot interact with it in any way, but if you walk too close, she goes cross-eyed, which was amusing.

Cute date idea. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Finally, after all the searching, Henry finds Eileen. She is indeed alive, but scratched and bruised. The number is still on her back. One arm is in a sling, one eye bandaged. At first she doesn’t believe Henry’s story, but then she remembers the little boy protected her from the man in the coat. (The plot thickens!) She agrees to come along to find a way out of this nightmare world.

This is where the game changes. For one thing, Eileen is with Henry for the remainder of the game. (Except in Room 302.) The worst side effect is now Room 302 no longer heals your damage. The hauntings begin and everything that happens impacts the ending. See, we’re now essentially babysitting Eileen. You can give her a weapon (a handbag, a length of chain, etc.) but this just changes her AI from defensive to aggressive and puts her in harm’s way. Leaving Eileen behind for too long causes her to become possessed. This, letting monsters hit her, or “friendly fire” from your own weapons causes her hidden sanity meter to go down. Her condition impacts which ending you get. Also, leaving the hauntings alone in your room impacts your ending. (More on that later.) When an area of your apartment is haunted, it lets off a ghost aura that damages you, and since your apartment no longer heals you the only options are healing items and playing defensively. To dispel hauntings you have Spirit Candles and to a lesser effect Saint Medallions. (I learned early on that those break before most hauntings are cleared, so it’s better to keep them to get past wandering ghosts.)

After dodging wheelchairs and fighting several Patients, you bring Eileen to the room with the portal back home. Although you try to go through with her, you’re alone back in your apartment. Henry notes that the air is heavy and the room seems a bit grainy now. Notes are everywhere and the ceiling fan has fallen to the floor in the living room. Looking outside, the 20th handprint is faded, likely because Eileen survived. The notes are red diary pages. One says to use the enclosed key to get to “the deepest part of him”. Another stated that when Walter’s grave was exhumed, his coffin was empty. Written on it was 11/21, which means Walter himself was the missing 11th victim. We also learn the “nosy guy” our buddy Jasper mentioned was Joseph.

Returning through the hole, Eileen says that you just disappeared. She also can’t see the hole. She warns you that she shouldn’t be left alone because she’s cursed. She also mentions that Joseph disappeared six months before Henry moved in. After a bit more wandering you use the key to enter a long staircase filled with Patients and then a long circular staircase. This is the area that is in between worlds from here on out, always descending to the next door with a portal back home just before the exit. I jumped in there to save and the clock was ticking wildly, signifying my first haunting. I didn’t realize it was a haunting at first since I didn’t walk within the damaging aura, but I did cleanse it with a candle later.

Oh, now we’re doing the Grudge? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

The door at the bottom of the staircase leads back to Subway World. Yep, we’re revisiting the previous worlds now, which is why I said the Hospital World was the last original one. (It’s also the only one we don’t go back to.) Anyway, in the Subway poor Cynthia is reborn as a ghost with murderous hair tendrils. She was being a pest as I explored, so I used a sword on her. She didn’t go down easy, though. I actually had to reload while trying because she got up before I could plunge in the sword and ended up doing more damage to me than I was willing to take. She was no joke and was the closest to a boss battle that I’d seen in the game thus far.

This area involved a lot of subway car navigating (freaking maze) and at one point I had to leave Eileen behind since she couldn’t go down a ladder with her arm injured. I took this opportunity to explore and get the ticket Cynthia left behind since I needed it to progress. But then I had to backtrack all the way back to fetch Eileen and take her the long way back, past the Wallmen on the crazy-long escalator. (I had to use my pistol on them since I was protecting Eileen this time.) It was annoying, but nowhere near as bad as Water Prison World. I also really felt the inventory limitation— I needed to lug around both a subway token and a commuter ticket to get us through the turnstiles, along with all the items I found along the way. I had to take two pitstops to my apartment to drop things off.

After getting out of there, Walter appears with a gun and started shooting. We fled him and found ourselves back on the circular staircase. This time the door led back to Forest World.

Yay puzzles. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Early on you find out that Eileen (due to the trauma of nearly dying?) can read the weird writing on the stones and in spots around the level. They were clearly written from Walter’s point of view as he was growing up in the cult. They reference someone named Bob and playing some sort of game with him. He went too far and someone got mad. This part was vague and I honestly have no idea what it means. The etchings also reference the 21 sacraments of the Descent of the Holy Mother. He was told by the cult that his mother was asleep in Ashfield and so the boy started travelling there on the weekends.

This area is all about running from Walter and ghosts, and using a torch on wells to find doll parts. At one point Jasper’s ghost appears, still on fire. I did not use a sword on him and later regretted it. (I can’t recall if I had more than one at this point, so that may be why.) On the shores of Toluca Lake Henry finally gets to talk with Little Walter. He says that he’s going to see his mom soon. She’s where he was born and the scriptures say he’ll be with her. He runs off.

Wish House has been burned down after Jasper’s… ahem… incident. There is a torso in a wheelchair that the doll parts can be placed into. Once that’s done, it rolls backwards jerkily and then falls over, revealing it was covering a hole the pair can climb into.

Yeah this evil cult altar under the orphanage seems fine. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

The hole leads to an altar with a bible open to the pages about the 21 sacraments. I’m not going to go over it all here, but it involves four signs, ten sinners sacrificed, and ultimately the rebirth of the Mother which will cause the world to be redeemed from sin. Sounds legit. Note that the symbol above the altar is a very familiar one in Silent Hill.

This room leads back to the circular staircase. I visited Room 302 using the handy portal and this was when I had a difficult haunting. I couldn’t find it at first and wasted too many Saint Medallions and candles, so I reloaded once I figured it out. It sounded like a cat meowing and standing near the door hurt me, but I couldn’t seem to clear it. I had to look it up and found that it was actually in the refrigerator, which is near the door. Upside to this, I also learned that turning Henry’s radio on would emit static when there was a haunting in the apartment, much like the portable radios in the previous games.

Back at the circular staircase, this door leads to… you guessed it, Water Prison World. And it’s no better this time around, mainly because Walter likes to chase you on the walkway outside of the tower with his guns. That guy’s a pest. He takes three hits (and a stomp) to knock down and he gets up after a minute or so. Since there was a lot of climbing ladders and jumping down holes here, neither of which Eileen can do, I risked leaving her alone in the tower and gathering items solo. A red diary entry back in the apartment around this time revealed that Young Walter was visiting the apartment every week and had started to think of the apartment itself as his mother.

Andrew’s ghost showed up and chased me. This was a really tough part of the game for me since I didn’t think to bring a Saint’s Medallion. I took a lot of damage and had to empty two full clips of ammo into him before I could manage to pin him with a sword I’d found elsewhere in the prison.

Finally I reunited with Eileen (who was not possessed, so I guess I was quick enough) and made the slow way down to the basement and the return to the circular staircase. First I had to fight six Twin Victims. That was not fun.

GASP. Oh wait, it was obvious. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

This door, as expected, leads back to Building World and a reunion with the charming Richard Braintree. (He’s back, in ghost form!) I used a sword on him too since he has a history of skinning people. Allegedly.

This world was all about gathering items that serve as memories and putting them into specific places. (Birthday candles on a cake, stuffed cat in a cage, etc.) I left Eileen in an elevator for a bit just to take a break from babysitting. Plus I was afraid the monkeys would eat her before I could do the ol’ stun and stomp.

At one point we see Adult Walter talking with Little Walter. After introducing himself, the elder Walter says it’s time to complete the 21 sacraments. “Let’s go and see Mother!“ he says, snatching the boy forcefully and walking off with him. “Damn,” says Henry helpfully. The next diary entry continues Little Walter’s origin story. Someone was living in 302 so he couldn’t get in. Since he was always hanging around, the other tenants started to treat him bad, making him see them as obstacles to his parental reunion. This, and his obsession with his absent mother, caused him to resent the outside world, while the teachings of the cult influenced him more and more. He was particularly interested in the 21 Sacraments. When he grew up he moved to Pleasant River, which apparently is Silent Hill’s neighbor. (There’s some tasty lore for you!)

We reunite with Eileen (after clearing the path as much as we can of monsters) and make our long way down to the lowest level where the circular staircase awaits.

This is what modern art is like, right? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

But first there’s a boss battle! These are a new type of upgraded Wallmen who look like paintings. They rise and fall, swiping out at whoever is close. It was impossible to prevent Eileen from getting damaged here, so I had to work fast. The trick was to find the right one (when you damage it, it damages all of them at once) and kill it. I needed a tasty Nutritional Drink after this fight!

Henry admires the vibrating doll. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

In the circular staircase, on the right are occasional dioramas of rooms showing creepy stuff. Typically chains, bodies, sometimes wagons filled with baby doll heads. You know the sort of aesthetic I mean. (Silent Hillcore?) The weirdest was a quivering babydoll. There is also a trail of blood leading all the way down to the bottom and towards each portal.

Speaking of portal, I visited my room and the next diary entry is a list of all the victims. We find out here that Victim 15 was Joseph Schreiber, so now we know what happened to him. RIP. The following victims are the ones we’ve met during the course of the game. And the final, 21st victim? Well that one is… wait for it… Henry Townshend. Uh oh.

At the bottom of the circular staircase is a broken area showing we’ve finally reached the very bottom. Set into the decaying wall is the door to Room 302. Just before that door is Frank Sunderland’s diary which says he saw the man in the coat (Walter) going upstairs with a heavy tool, an old bowl, and a bag that was dripping blood. After that visit, strange noises started coming from Room 302. (Frank really isn’t a good super. I guess he just shrugged and went on sweeping the hall and sniffing umbilical cords.)

Oh, hello Joe. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Through that door is a gray, empty version of Henry’s apartment. In layout it resembles the room from the opening nightmare, down to the record player that he said should have been where the TV is. Candles are set up all around and there are two books on the coffee table. One is a children’s book that tells the story of a baby and mother connected by a magical cord. When it was cut, the mother went to sleep. The nice people at Wish House told the baby how to wake her, but they’d tricked him. He was actually trying to wake the Devil. The other book is called the Crimson Tome and it shows the inverse of what we’ve read already. The Holy Mother is the Devil and the 21 Sacraments are the 21 Hearsays. Creating a wicked realm in God’s world is evil. To stop the Devil you have to bury a part of the Mother’s flesh in the Conjurer’s true body, and then pierce the Conjurer with the 8 spears. (Representing the final eight victims judging by the names given to them by the placards and the list we got earlier.) Hey, this all sounds like a final boss battle to me!

In the bedroom is the typewriter Joseph used to write and more red diary entries depicting the beginning of Schreiber’s hauntings. Returning to the living room we see Joseph Schreiber himself… he’s just a dark head and shoulders sticking out of the ceiling. He talks in a creepy deep hollow voice without emotion and congratulates Henry on making it this far. (He does not, incidentally, offer us rare porn, so that was a let-down.) He recaps Walter’s life and reveals that the last two victims are the most important. Eileen is “the Mother Reborn” which explains her possession and the fact that Walter only started coming after you when she joined you. Henry is “the Receiver of Wisdom”, which is why he’s been gathering all these notes in his scrap book. After this long speech in which Joseph repeatedly tells us to follow the crimson tome and “kill him”, he goes away, never to be seen again.

After this we find the Pickaxe of Hope buried in the hallway wall. (This is an awesome name for an item. There was a weapon earlier called the Pickaxe of Despair, but it was too slow for me to use accurately.) You can’t break the wall here in Otherworld, though. Joseph has a handy dandy bathroom hole and you can use this to return to the real world where you can break the wall.

Oh hai Walter! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Inside is a storage room where Walter’s corpse is crucified. 11/21 is carved into his feet. Well, that explains the hauntings. You were sleeping a few feet away from a serial killer’s corpse. Neat. Black feathers are attached over his head and on the arms of the cross making it look like he has black angel wings. With his body are the “Keys of Liberation“. That’s right, they’re the keys to Henry’s front door!

Bro, do you even Silent Hill? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Before I left I took one last look around, but there weren’t any new hauntings. Peering out the window, all of Henry’s neighbors appeared to be gone. Creepy! Seeing the locks come open and the chains fall away was satisfying. We can finally leave our apartment, but we see that there is now no difference between Otherworld and the real world. The corruption has seeped in. The walls are pulsating flesh and blood and the building is in a state of decay. Eileen comes limping up, so we get to keep babysitting… um, I meant protecting her.

The Otherworld apartment is full of monsters. The ambient scary noises ramp up, sounding like a woman moaning and gasping. In the various rooms are also where the ghosts that weren’t previously pinned by the Swords of Obedience come back to haunt you. I did all but Jasper, so I was in good shape. Once I got him out of the way it was smooth sailing. Well, except for all the monsters.

This world is pretty straightforward. It herds you along one path for the most part, obstacles preventing you from wandering away from the set path. The only other problem in this level is the appearance of Walter with his pesky guns. He pops up in a few rooms, usually getting a couple of shots in before I could take him out. The worst part about this world was the irritating layout. You had to keep crisscrossing apartments, climbing through holes in the wall and up and down stairs. There were no more portals, so whenever my inventory was full, I had to go all the way back through the roundabout path to my room to stash items.

By “we” you mean “me”, right? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Later in the exploration you come across a chained man in a straight jacket hanging from the ceiling. From his snippets of dialog you can glean this is Walter’s father. You also learn he hated his infant son, referring to him as a crybaby. He told Walter’s mother they shouldn’t have a kid and he was the reason they left, ditching the baby in Room 302. Locating Walter’s pop in various rooms in the second floor is the key to removing the chains that are barring the way into Frank’s apartment.

During this portion, Eileen stayed behind in the lobby to read Little Walter’s sketchbook and when you return to her she says we have to help him and stop Adult Walter. In my research I learned that this cutscene changes depending on how cursed she is. So I knew I was in good shape. I could recall that at this point in my first playthrough, Eileen was bloody, walking slowly, and talking nonsense.

Now that the chains were removed, the way into Frank’s apartment was clear. Inside is the red box with the umbilical cord in it, which you may have guessed is the piece of his mother needed for the ritual. When you take the vile thing, Henry doubles over in pain, holding his head. When he recovers, Eileen declares they’re the only ones that can stop Walter and save the little boy. (I’m assuming this cut scene is different based on her condition too, but I can’t recall what it was in my first playthrough.) She heads back to Room 302 on her own, leaving Henry to fight his way to her. (I’m assuming taking too long here causes her damage because the hallways are filled with fresh monsters.)

And so I was back in Room 302 for the final time. No hauntings, so I prepared myself. Luckily I saved up all my revolver bullets and the two rare ampoules, anticipating I would need them at the end. I also remembered to leave four open slots in my inventory… I did not do this this first playthrough and it makes the boss battle exponentially worse. You’ll see.

To get to Walter and Eileen, you climb through the hole into the storage room. Walter’s body is gone and in its place is a shimmering puddle that you can climb into. Below this is a red room taken up by a massive hole. And what do we do when we see a floor hole in Silent Hill children? That’s right, we jump right in!

BOSS BATTLE! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

The final boss battle takes place in a large room where Eileen is walking slowly towards spinning blades. She walks faster when she’s more cursed, which is why we took good care of her this time. This serves as a timer of sorts because while you don’t lose if Eileen gets chopped up in the blades, you cannot get the good endings.

Shadow Walter, who is invulnerable, walks around shooting at you and teleporting. What you have to do here is use the umbilical cord on the big white monster in the center of the room. (The Conjurer’s true body.) After this you can remove the spears on either side of him in portraits of the victims. (They can’t be budged before the cord is used due to magic.) You have to run and fetch each spear, plunging them into the Conjurer, which is why I left open spaces. The first time I played I stocked up on ammo and healing items and so only had one space (the one the cord took up) in order to carry a spear. (I died several times.)

After all the spears are in place, Walter is now vulnerable. I unloaded my revolver ammo into him and it didn’t even take the 12 bullets I had with me! (Easy mode, y’all.)

Outside Little Walter is pounding on the door of Room 302, then he suddenly falls over, seemingly dead. The door slowly creaks open. Cut to a scene of Henry stepping out into the fresh air of a shockingly normal-looking world. (You know you’ve been in Silent Hill too long when the bright blue sky looks unnatural to you. Pray for me.) He staggers and holds his arm, saying “Eileen…”

Have I made a “The Room” joke yet? Oh, I have. Damn. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

And here’s the ending I received. A caption says “The Day After”. Henry walks into Eileen’s hospital room and hands her a bouquet of flowers. She looks completely healed, which was weird… maybe a side effect of successfully completing the ritual? She thanks him and laughs, saying “I guess we’ll need to find a new place to live, huh?” Roll ending credits.

This was the good ending, entitled “Escape”. I got this ending this time because I took good care of Eileen and my room.

As is traditional in Silent Hill games, there are four endings, all of them contingent on the condition of Eileen and your apartment. The first time I played, I got the worst possible ending because I was a terrible babysitter and didn’t know at first how to clear the hauntings.

In the “Mother” ending you favor Eileen over your room. She still survives, but instead of talking about moving she says that she’s ready to go back to South Ashfield Heights. We see Room 302 completely covered in blood and rot, indicating that the apartment is still haunted and maybe always will be now.

The “Eileen’s Death” ending, you’ve taken good care of your room but neglected Eileen and let her become cursed. She dies in the final battle. In this one Henry does not leave the apartment. He awakens in his room. Room 302 is dimly lit but otherwise fine. The news plays stating five dead bodies were discovered in various places. Eileen was taken to the hospital but died from her injuries. Henry cried out her name in anguish.

The final and worst ending is also the most extensive. (This is the one that I got on my first playthrough.) This one is called the “21 Sacraments” ending. In this one Eileen dies in the final battle and you clear less than 80% of the hauntings. In this one when Walter falls he says “Mom” as he dies. Henry gets another sharp pain in his head and then stands as though in a trance. (To walk into the blades himself, I assume.) We see Little Walter finally in Room 302, lying on the couch. He’s happy to be home and promises to stay with mom forever. The news report states that there were six victims found. Eileen still dies in the hospital. The sixth body was Henry Townshend. He was found in his apartment, horribly disfigured. Also five police and Frank Sunderland were found dead. Every other tenant was rushed to the hospital complaining of chest pain. (Presumably to due later.) We see Adult Walter levitating in the apartment, possibly hung. Maybe killed by Little Walter? Hard to say. What is clear in this ending is that he was successful in his ritual and the ghost aura is spreading out, probably to envelope the entire world.

Always a valid question, Henry. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

So that was Silent Hill 4: The Room! So what did all that mean? How does it fit in with the other games? Here’s my analysis: As I see it, The Room is really more Walter’s story than Henry’s. Henry is more a vessel for the wisdom we accumulate. Just as with Harry in Part 1 we know very little about Henry, aside from the fact that he has a crush on his neighbor and he likes scrapbooking. (Not just the one in the menu… he also has scrapbooks on his desk that he comments on, but you can’t look at.)

No, this story is about a baby who was abandoned in an apartment which he came to think as the mother he never really met. He was raised in the woods by a cult, influenced to do their bidding, and then merged their beliefs with his own. He grew into a bitter, angry man who wore the mask of a peaceful smile at all times. (Even when shooting you.) His anger and bitterness was expressed outward to the rest of the world, as he would do anything for his “mother”. The worlds that Henry travels to, and later descends past, are places of import to Walter, worlds he created to complete his Sacraments.

Joseph Schreiber plays the role of prophet, feeding you the information you need to complete the quest he could not finish. He has visions realizing that someone is coming to the apartment after him and will have to be the final victim and the only one who can stop Walter. The nightmare that Henry has in the beginning is actually Joseph’s vision, which is why he wonders why there’s a TV where his record player should be.

Clearing the hauntings impacts the endings because this is Henry taking good care of Mother while Little Walter can’t get in. He falls in the good ending because he’s finally at peace and can never reach his mom. The hauntings are lifted, Henry and Eileen get to be happy in the real world, and Walter Sullivan’s reign of terror and personal hell are finally at an end.

As for how it fits in, we get to see more of the beliefs of the Silent Hill cult and their corruption of others. Walter was a lingering effect that took the efforts of Joseph Schreiber and Henry Townshend to stop, continuing where previous heroes Harry and Heather Mason left off.

I wonder how I missed a memo? Weird. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

So what did I think? Honestly, the first time I played this game, I didn’t like it nearly as much as the other games in the series. Granted, Parts 2 and 3 are really hard acts to follow. (Call them overrated if you want, but I imprinted on them at a time in my life when I really needed them and I will always love those games. Part 1 also, for all its clunkiness.) Part 3 was fun, intense, and short. Part 2 is seriously one of the best video games ever made in my humble opinion. Part 1, while crude and a bit primitive, set the stage for the series and was integral to the plot of Part 3. Those games were amazing and almost anything that follows the initial trilogy would be a let down. I hated the limited inventory, the escort mechanic, the uneven pacing— stuck in the room and then travelling… it was like going from a haunted house to a survival game and back again. And of course there was the purgatory of Water Prison World. So, yes, I only played this game once prior to this year’s playthrough. I did not try for another ending using what I’d learned about the game the first time through. Plus there was the fact that when I got to the end, Eileen and I were both in pretty rough shape and so it took several tries to get through the final world and beat the final boss. (Hell, she was messed up by the time we got out of Water Prison World 2!) By the time I managed to get through the boss, I was content with the ending I got and didn’t have the patience to go through it all again.

Although I didn’t much care for the game in the past, some of it always stuck with me. The imagery of the door chained and locked from the inside… the creepy hauntings… the amazing monster designs. I knew I’d have to play this game again for this series of posts and while I was not necessarily looking forward to it, I had hopes I would find value in it that I had missed.

And I really did! I had fun with it on this playthrough, for all the annoyance of some areas and the trouble I had getting screenshots. (I’ll explain soon. It’s why I had so many saves in the screenshot above.) Maybe it’s the more grounded, more positive man I’ve become in the past few years that let me be able to see the game with fresh eyes, and really appreciate it for what it is… a fresh take on a franchise that took a gamble and played with the fan’s expectations. It wasn’t afraid to step outside tradition at times, it used a creative framing device, and upped the usual creepy factor of Silent Hill by a huge degree. The gradual possession of your apartment, the fates of your companions regardless of how you try to protect them, the isolation of being unable to communicate with anyone outside your apartment but able to view them through the window and peepholes… it all combines to create an unnerving and unsettling experience that leaves you unprepared for where the game inevitably takes you. The good ending slaps you in the face with that blue sky and Henry being out in the real world because it’s not something you expected to ever see within the context of the game.

Find a piece of a previous tenant? Put it on your mantle! (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

It wasn’t all good though. I’m not the best at keyboard controls. (No matter how excited I was to play Rogue Legacy 2, I couldn’t master the controls on PC and so had to wait for the console release to play it.) This port did not have controller support, so that was awkward to get used to. I was able to customize the controls to buttons that felt a little more natural to me, but for a lifelong controller player, it was still clumsy. (I am not ashamed. It takes all sorts of gamers, and I am just not wired for PC.) The worst part is that every time I force minimized the game to create a screenshot, the game would go to a gray screen or glitch out so that I would need to reload from my last save point. Every single time. Count the number of screenshots in this post and you’ll get an idea of how frustrating that was to lose my progress and replay sections of the game multiple times. (Especially at the final boss and the ending.) So yeah… that was no fun.

You can tell they were really pushing the limits of what the PS2 could do, hardware-wise. The multiple moving characters outside the window and the haunting effects were excellent. But the more cinematic cut scenes were overly dark and hard to make out. They looked awful, honestly. I feel like the smaller scale of the game and the lack of a city to wander through were more space and programming choices than design choices. Either way, it works with the game’s motif. Even though Henry escapes his cramped little apartment, the areas he wanders in are all small and confining too… a subway, an overgrown forest, an underground prison, an underground building… they definitely had a theme going. Pretty strange choice that only two of the areas were actually in Silent Hill, though.

I don’t know why, but this made me laugh. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

I already mentioned that it was frustrating to not be able to fully kill the ghosts, although I understand why they did it. I also understand the reasoning behind the limited inventory from a strategic standpoint, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. (It occurred to me as I played that the likeliest reason is to ensure you return to your apartment repeatedly and have to keep taking care of the hauntings and getting diary entries.) The fact that you can’t kill the ghosts is something I can respect it as a design choice. It just means you have to be more careful about what items you use to dispatch them and more careful about navigating. It’s the same old conundrum that comes with survival horror— is it better to run from danger or use your rapidly dwindling supply of ammo and healing items? Do you run from monsters or face them down with your steel pipe, risking taking damage for potentially no reward? (I can’t count the number of times in the first three games when I had to use a health drink and my rewards for killing the monsters was another health drink.) Conserving healing items, of course, becomes more important as the game progresses and your home no longer heals your wounds. Also, it works well with the inventory limitations— you won’t always have the space to bring your ghost talismans, ammo, or healing items. You have to think strategically and dart back to home base to prepare for what the game throws at you. This does add to the strategy, making this game more difficult than the previous three installments.

When IS the right time Henry? (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

I still have mixed feelings about the game, but my second impressions are much more positive. The slow progression (degradation) of Room 302 from safe space to haunted chamber of horrors really ramps up the psychological horror aspect of the game. The place you used to flee to now hurts you… the haven has become a hell. The closer you get to the end, the more you see you aren’t really safe anywhere.

The music, as always, was good. No real bangers like in the past games, but good nonetheless. Lots of creepy ambient noises because it wouldn’t be Silent Hill without the spooky sounds. The voice acting is top notch. No one’s line reads made me laugh like some lines in the previous games.

I like the peeping mechanics… seeing Eileen in her room, occasionally looking right at you. Frank standing unsteadily outside your door, staring at it. The odd occupants of the building across from you… the spastic dancer, the old lady who stares back at you, the woman who stands at her window looking like she’s about to jump. These are Henry’s only means of seeing the world outside his apartment (aside from trips to Walter’s worlds of course) and it’s more unsettling than not seeing anyone. Still, you can’t help but look… it’s human nature to want connection of some sort.

The random nature of the hauntings was a nice choice too, making you unsure what would happen to your room next. Although the randomness did hurt me in one way… I didn’t get to see the doll heads this time. Alas, my one regret!

I actually did much better this time around, partly from knowing what to expect and partly from playing on Easy mode instead of Normal. I don’t think I missed any hauntings and I kept Eileen safe for the most part. She didn’t get possessed at all and I only hit her with my axe twice. (Accidentally, I swear.) All in all, it was an enjoyable experience despite the clumsy controls, the screenshot problems, and my deadline pressure.

Me too, Jasper. Me too. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

So yeah, I had a lot going against me for this post. For one thing, not having the PS2 copy and no controller support on the GOG port. I’m not a PC gamer, so it was a little difficult playing this on keyboard. The main problem was that I was running even more behind than usual. I had to play this in marathon sessions and on Easy mode, and really raced to get it all down in the post, typing it up as I went and in a day-long session at my laptop after finishing the game. I have a lot of stuff going on right now and was not on top of things, but I couldn’t bear to skip my annual trip to Silent Hill. (More on why in an upcoming SoraRabbit Update.)

Still, even though I was rushed, I did enjoy this game much more than the first time I played it. The new mechanics and the disconnection with the town and the traditional format lent Silent Hill 4 its own distinct feel, its own essence that was refreshing and new. I can appreciate what they tried to do with this game, although the results were mixed. Still, I have a higher opinion of Part 4 than I used to, and that’s really valuable to me. I got to visit Silent Hill in a new way, learn more of the lore from different angles, and I had fun, which above all is something that I really needed right now.

Good idea, Richard. I’ve gone on long enough. (Credit: Team Silent, Konami)

Thank you so much for joining me on this year’s jaunt to Silent Hill. I feel like this one was a bit longer than the other posts, but I found I had a lot to say. Like I said earlier, I really didn’t think I was going to get this one done in time, and it was down to the wire, but I pushed through. I had fun, I gained new appreciation for the Silent Hill installment I liked the least, and I got to share my experiences with you all.

I think next year I’ll probably continue on to Part 5, Homecoming. Unless I can figure out how to get screenshots from my Vita, in which case I’ll play Origins for the first time. We’ll see which way I can go with it. Until then, there will be plenty more posts (and hopefully videos) coming up to while away the months until next October. Thank you again, I appreciate you all, and I’ll see you back in Silent Hill this time next year!