Silent Hill 4: The Room

In just a few years Silent Hill has evolved from a spunky upstart tagging along in Resident Evil's shadow to the go-to series for scares on the PS2 and Xbox. Each sequel has improved on the previous, featuring subtle gameplay and graphics updates, with each iteration revolving around the bizarro town of Silent Hill, and each featuring a sense of lingering dread and perpetual terror unmatched in any other game series. Konami is at it again, with a fourth trip to Silent Hill on the books, and they've recently given us some more information to share.

Silent Hill 4 takes a bit of a different approach than the first three. This time you begin in an apartment of all places. You play as a character named Henry Townshend, who finds himself trapped in his apartment. We're not talking "Oops, the lock is stuck" trapped, this is supernatural padlocks and associated chains sealing his front door from entry or exit trapped. One might think this would result in a very short game, as your average apartment only provides 2-3 minutes worth of solid exploration. But, like most things in Silent Hill, things aren't always as they appear.

Over time, portals will open from the rooms in Henry's apartment, leading to various locales containing various mysterious horrors. It's only in exploring these locales (and confronting those horrors) that Henry will start to find out what's going on, and might even find the keys to unlock his door.

At first, an apartment doesn't seem like a great place for a horror game. But then again a mall doesn't seem like a very scary place either, and Silent Hill 3 turned out just fine. Also, the portal and hub concept opens the door for some new gameplay mechanics, like having to revisit previously explored areas multiple times as the game progresses.

When Henry roams his apartment the game will switch to a first-person view, a first for the Silent Hill series, though it remains third person elsewhere. Whether this serves an actual gameplay purpose or simply was a necessity thanks to the apartment's small rooms remains to be seen. Also, unlike the sudden changes from real to alternate move we've seen in previous Silent Hill games, environments here slowly evolve as you progress through the game. So, rather than stepping onto a normal elevator and stepping out into a maze of blood coated barbed wire, this time you can expect those blood stains to appear a little more gradually.

Of course, there will be a variety of new and horrifying enemies this time around. Most are better seen than described, so check out the screen shots and see for yourself. Expect not only enemies that crawl or shamble down the hall toward you this time, but look for flying baddies and ones that come right through the walls. And, weapon swapping will finally be possible without going through a menu, so we can expect for a bit more combat this time.