A survival horror game that drags down the legacy of it predecessors,but as a game itself, delivers a decent experience.
The story isn't nearly as strong as what we've seen in previous SH releases, but it still manages to do a fairly admirable job in holding interest until the end, even if that is done using false hope of plot building with little hints and seeming revelations that never really develop into full fledged story elements.
You start the game as Henry Townshend, a 20's something introvert who wakes up one morning to find that he has been trapped in his apartment by ominous crisscrossing padlocked chains over his front door. After a few days of being trapped within, a large hole mysteriously develops within the apartments bathroom that Henry trys to use to escape his prison. The hole doesn't lead him somewhere he wants to find himself, unfortunately, but rather to a network of tunnels all leading to disturbing, monster filled versions of places from his life, past or present.
Henry makes his way through a Silent Hill-ified subway before meeting up with Cynthia Velasquez but she is soon killed along with a handful of other victims. Through a series of Notebook scraps, Henry learns that the murders are the work of one Walter Sullivan (mentioned briefly as the murderer of twins in Silent Hill 2) who is attempting to finish a ritual requiring 21 victims. Walters past self appears and stops the murder of Henry's "Maria" - Eileen Galvin, and together they set out to figure out how to kill Walter and end his spree of madness for good.
Now, for the gameplay. Your Apartment is used as a sort of hub for storing weapons and ammo, or just in general as a safe house to gather your thoughts and read up on journal entries and clues you've found. Eventually though, after progressing through some of the story, your apartment becomes haunted. For example - Bloody slippers will pace the floor, creating a trail of blood and damaging Henry when he's near, and terrible ghosts will rip through certain areas of the wall. Luckily you can combat these hauntings with holy candles found throughout the game. I enjoyed this aspect, because nothing feels quite as bad as losing your one safe place you had to turn to when things got rough.
The combat of the game has a heavier focus then it has in previous SH entries, providing a health bar, powered up blows, and counters. I personally am not a fan of the emphasis on combat, because I feel it removes a large amount of scare factor from the game. I want each fight with a creature to be a struggle, not an over powered beat em up. However, the game does provide you with a large array of melee weapons and the standard assortment of fire arms, so it's decent for what it is.
One of my favorite additions was the ghosts. Ghosts look like something out of the ring, flowing along on waves of black hair, and are a very formidable enemy. You can't just bash them in the head and be done, you have to stake them to the ground using a sword (which has a fairly limited occurence in the the game I might add) which gives a very sort of scary strategic element. There may be a ghost ahead in another area you cant get past, so you have to go back and unstake a previous ghost, and deal with its horrors again just to proceed. It never feels nice being the one to unleash your enemy on yourself.
My second biggest complaint for this game is the back tracking, which forces you to go through every level again while attempting to solve the mystery of Walter Sullivan's past, and it becomes rather tedious and boring. This combined with the terribly lack luster excuses for puzzles is why the game scored so lowly for me.
The sound design of the game is top notch, done by the master Akira Yamaoka himself, and features some of the best single songs of the Silent Hill franchise such as "Room of Angel". Over all, sound effects, ambiant and atmospheric noise/music are all first rate. The graphics are decent of course, but you wouldn't really expect anything else of an SH game. The controls are just as good as any of the SH games, featuring no real changes to speak of.
Overall, the game is one of the better Survival Horror games out there for home consoles, just not as an SH game. If the publisher had decided not to try to make SH4 another cash cow, leaving it with its intended identity of simply Room 302, it would have met much more success with the survival horror fans rather than being the black sheep all of the Silent Hill fans have to be ashamed of.