bloomer's Silent Hill 4: The Room review

Great work as always Wade. And, as always, I found a passage I found particularly salient and well-written: the entire second-to-last paragraph.

I take issue only with your scoring, as this line seems to be indicative of the recurring theme of your review of the game: It's all really unhappy-making.

Twas a good review. Pretty much said about everything I felt about the game, in that it's horribly flawed in many ways, but still does have the cool, haunting, atmosphere that's made the series so memorable. Your paragraph about that atmosphere where you were talking about the structure of the levels and how it's set up to make you wonder if you're actually making progress gave me a flashback to that part late in SH2 where your character spends a little while dropping down one hole after another. Nothing much in that area as far as opposition. You're just falling down one hole after another......and something about the vibe that little section of the game gave me made it probably the most memorable part of the game for me.

I'm pleased to read this review. I haven't played any SH games except for SH2 (which I disliked heartily). I was thinking about getting the room, but the reviews in general for this game are poorly written. Most of them say the game is bad, but then say nothing really about why, except vague references to the rest of the series being better. Sometime, if you're lucky, the reviewer will pick some little thing that bothered him to focus on, but it's rarely something universally annoying, or if it is, it isn't explained well.

You, on the other hand, take very specific examples of gameplay which would be annoying to any player and fairly, without going into SH's history, discuss why no developer should do these things.

My one complaint with your review is that you get into spoiler territory. You could've told us, for instance, that you team up with someone later on without revealing that the person is Eileen. You certainly didn't have to go into any of her history. I was shocked that you even mentioned it. That could really piss some people off, no matter how early in the game it's discovered. It certainly took some of the oomph out of me.

Hey -- one of those 'poorly written' reviews is mine!

There can never be enough negative SH4 reviews -- even if I think 6 is rather generous. Nice review that reflect a lot of my views on the game. I remember beating the game and getting the 'worst' ending, then just watching the better ones on youtube.

Don't feel too bad Emp -- one of them is mine too.

But not me!

I might have poorly written ones for 226 other games, but never touched this one!

Suffice it to say that I probably won't be playing The Room, since it get almost unanimously negative reviews.

What I give credit to Bloomer for is providing me with something beyond the setting and departure from the style of old to sink my teeth into (and immediately spit). I just really appreciated the focus on gameplay, and particularly the element of poor design. I'm a firm believer that in most games it's the little things which ruin everything, and I had suspected as much about The Room, but most reviews were too steeped in seething hatred (much of it fan boy hatred) to ever ascertain the truth.

You're right on that one: Emp is nothing if not a seething, hating fanboy. ^_^

I kid, but that just hurts, man.

Thanks for all the comments. And in a true nerd story interlude, a guy came to the door and delivered a Silent Hill 3 shirt I ordered while I was typing in this box :)

Marc, I apologise as I kinda know what you mean about the score! I was very tempted to 5 it but my brain kept saying '50%! You can't 50% this game!' But then 6 immediately like too much. I erred the generous way as I usually do, but I felt like no integer number was going to satisfy me.

About spoilerdom - I dunno, I mean even the screenshots show Eileen. Isn't it touched in in most reviews? But you are right, in general when I review horror games, they probably lean this way 'cos I often write them well after the event of the game and they tend to be long ones for fans. But, if you've played the game, I actually thought I was pretty crafting explaining why Eileen was a pain in the butt re: the finale of the game, without actually saying what happens there.

In the light of this new day, I'm gonna change it to 5.

It reads much better with the 5 attached. I'm thinking of changing my Silent Hill: Homecoming review to a 6 from a 5. We'll see how I feel later today.

I love how the score has been silently downgraded further still to a 4 -- which is, of course, the correct score.

What an awful, awful game The Room was. I always liked this review for telling us so.

Quite honestly, it's the only one that did. ;)

Silent Hill 4: Silent Downgrade

Haha!