Survival horror games don't get the recognition they deserve in the wider world. Whereas CGI effects have done nothing but make horror movies less and less scary, ironically video games, particularly the Silent Hill series, have been showing filmmakers just how it should be done for years.

Irritatingly though the original PS one title remains the best of the series with the last two PS2 titles being little more than hi-res rehashes. The Room manages to shake things up a bit though, ditching the radio and flashlight gimmicks and adding twice the normal amount of side characters and a more involved fighting system. There's also a number of completely invincible bad guys and a new Resident Evil style limited slot inventory system.

The room in question, as you're no doubt wondering, is in fact the toilet. Playing yet another everyman character you wake up from a rather disturbing dream to find out that you're locked inside your flat and the only way out is through a gateway to hell next to the privy. Which almost sounds like a BlackAdder joke, but is unlikely to have you laughing after your first trip.

Within your flat the game uses a first person view, with the series' more traditional third person viewpoint taking over when you go through the portal. A series of weird lens filters and excellent (i.e. very unpleasant) sound lends a real otherworldly feel to proceedings, so that when things do choose to go bump in the night at you, you end up being very scared indeed. --David Jenkins

As an avid fan of the Silent Hill series I decided to get this game. I wish I hadn't the game was a complete letdown, very repetitive and not the slightest bit scary. The idea of visiting different worlds was ok but to visit them and then having to revist all of them (minus the hospital world) was just lunacy and a bore.

This game could have been so much better in many ways and the gameplay could have been extended in many other ways too. The characters I felt weren't as developed as in previous Silent Hill games. The plot was also far too staight-forward and lacked depth.

The only good aspects of this game are the soundtrack, which I found rather pleasent to listen too and the end boss fight. Overall though I didn't enjoy this game as much as the previous ones in the series. Roll on Silent Hill orgins for the PS2.

total mayhem. scarier than the others. a new style of gameplay where you get to see alot more creepy horrors than just hear them. silent hill 4 provides a more unsettling story than the rest and pretty much sums up the links between each silent hill title. the storyline in this title is actually quite sick and very very strange. something that isnt typical in horror games or movies. the best part of the game is when it reaches night time and your apartment starts to maninfest some very strange sounds and objects. everytime you go back you dont know what to expect. the only contact with the real world is the fisheye on you chained up apartment door. even thats unsafe! i highly recommend this title for anyone who hasnt entered the realm of SH.

Silent Hill 4: The Room is the most unusual entry in a most unusual video game franchise. While earlier installments in the series have focused on stories designed to evoke spine- chilling horror, this fourth chapter in the saga causes much deeper feelings of anxiety and unease. I remember being more traditionally scared playing Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, but the underlying, more psychological sensation of existential dread I felt playing this game was something altogether new.

The Silent Hill games have shown a narrative progression by which the nature of the town is expanded upon in each game. In the first two games, your character went to Silent Hill and had his horrific adventure. In the third, Silent Hill itself "came to" the main character of Heather, who merely wanted to have a nice day at the mall. In Silent Hill 4, the town has now invaded your last refuge of security, your home.

You play Henry Townshend, who lives alone in a small apartment in the bustling town of South Ashfield, half a day's drive from Silent Hill. After suffering from inexplicable nightmares, Harry awakens to find that his apartment door has been chained and padlocked shut from the INSIDE. He can't open his windows, and no one, even people standing directly outside his front door, can hear him when he pounds on the door and cries for help.

The game expertly evokes the desperate confusion and lurking fear you would feel if you simply couldn't get out of your house. The strangeness of Henry's situation is underscored by the fact that, tantalizingly, he can see the real world right outside his window, with cars and pedestrians zipping by on a street only fifty yards away. Neighbors in the apartment building opposite his can be seen going about their business (one guy, amusingly, is playing air guitar). The banality of day to day life takes on a whole new meaning when one person is suddenly set apart from it by horrific circumstances he can't understand or control. The next time you're taking a walk down the block, imagine if something terrifyingly Silent Hill-ish was happening to someone in the very house you're walking past, and you're safe outside with no way of knowing. The whole character of the neighborhood will change. That's the kind of thing the Silent Hill series does so well: conveying the deep terror that can result when what is normal and commonplace suddenly and without warning goes all WRONG.

The action begins when Henry discovers that a large hole has emerged in his bathroom wall. As it's the only way out, he must crawl through it, and doing so, finds himself in the decaying, blood-spattered environments of Silent Hill with which the series' fans have become so familiar. But this game offers alarming differences. Some of the creatures that menace you -- like the ghosts that look more like floating paralyzed corpses -- can't be killed, and others -- like the two-headed babies that walk on adult arms -- are so bizarre they beggar imagination. You're also limited in what you can carry, and the only place you can save your game is in your apartment, a safe haven you can return to through holes in walls spread throughout the levels. But even that safe haven isn't safe for long.

In earlier games, the horror, while nightmarish, was still rooted in a sense of realism that, in turn, created realistic horror. You'd walk down dark corridors or misty deserted streets armed with a flashlight and your weapon. But here, the environments are more outrageously surreal, as if you're literally wandering through a bad dream. Spiral staircases seem to float in thin air. A enormous woman's face peers at you from a hospital wall. Living tendrils of no discernible biology dangle upwards from the floor to bar your way. Wheelchairs zoom down corridors by themselves, as if it were a freeway for paraplegic ghosts. It's as if the game designers just decided to let Salvador Dali loose with 3D rendering software and instructions that he was to exercise no restraint at all in coming up with ways to freak people out.

Sometimes it gets a little TOO weird. At times I found myself less frightened by this game than morbidly intrigued; I was actually interested in getting to certain rooms just to see what kind of crazy thing I'd encounter next. In that sense, I'd have to say the earlier games work a little better as pure, edge of your seat, bloodcurdling horror. But Silent Hill 4 still does a bang-up job of generating an entirely different kind of fear, one that doesn't so much leap out at you from the dark as crawl deep into the back of your mind and lurk there.

I leave you with two pieces of advice. One: if you're new to the series, don't start here, start with 2 and 3. Two: don't take the doll.

this game taints the good name that is silent hill!!!
there is very little to actually do with or in silnt hill....yes it looks like a silent hill game(therfore amazing...hence the 2 stars...the other is for sounding like a silent hill game)....sounds ;like a silent hill game...nice and atmospheric and creepy but it plays terribly
the beasties are very annoying...especially the ghosts that dont die...considering the amount of times you have to revisit areas it makes the game slow,frustrating and repetitive
the only other saving grace this game has is a very engaging plot....that is the only reason i played it through to the end....and when you get there the sense of acheivement is pretty poor
this game feels lazily put together by a team that was out of ideas
it doesnt do what silent hill is supposed to do....scare and confuse you...there are very few shocks/scares and there are NO puzzles
it is a very linear game...get x at point a and take to point b where it tells you to get y and then bring that back to then continue....far too much looking for things and no solving of things
if you are a fan of the series and want something eerie and scary and puzzling try alone in the dark:the new nightmare before buying this
very diappointed

First lets get things straight by giving this game its original title Room 342.

Room 342 was never intended to be a Silent Hill game. It was supposed to be a stand alone game with a more action orientated theme. As a standalone game it would have deserved 3 stars as it is not a truly awful game, merely an average one.

However, when Konami realised that they had a hit on their hands with the Silent Hill series they reconditioned Room 342 with small Silent Hill references to get a game out as quick as possible as creating a brand new game is time consuming and costly. It has been said that Konami now regrets this decision.

Room 342 just doesn't have the qualities that make an SH game. If only Konami had released this as intended or spent more time reconditioning it into a full Silent Hill game we could have had a much better game.