Ahead of the Silent Hill 2 remake, I can’t help but wonder: When will there be justice for Silent Hill 4?

Silent Hill will be on most horror fans’ minds next month, obviously due to the fact that the highly anticipated remake of the second game in the series is set to release in a week. I can’t blame anyone, I’ll think about it too, I love Silent Hill 2 – it’s a classic for good reason, and I’m curious to see what the wider consensus on its remake will be. Will people look back on the original and think “we didn’t know how good we had it”? Maybe people will say that Silent Hill 2 “was always bad, actually.” I, however, will be here thinking, “OK, can we stop talking about 2 now and start talking about Silent Hill 4: The Room?”

Compared to other fans, I arrived at Silent Hill a little late, and I also did things in the wrong order. In 2020, at the height of the first lockdown, with not much to do, I decided to play Silent Hill 4: The Room for the first time, a move that in retrospect seems a bit self-sadistic given that the everything is stuck inside your house. thing, but on the other hand, maybe it was the perfect choice.

Playing Silent Hill 4 so long after its release, two whole decades, also meant that I had the luxury of not being predisposed to annoying forum posters saying crap like “uh, gee, this one isn’t going well.” Not even in Silent Hill. a bunch of garbage”. This meant I could come into the game fresh, without opinions split just for the sake of being correct rather than questioning what the game actually was. Because of this, I found that I loved it, but only found out from my partner, who has been a fan of the show for many years, that people really didn’t like it.

That’s not to say that I’m easily swayed by public opinion, I’m not, I’m a Final Fantasy 13 advocate after all, and I’ve heard a lot about how much people hated that particular game . I really didn’t understand why people didn’t like it? Some people hated the story, others didn’t like the gameplay, and there were many who didn’t like the fact that you had to return to every area of ​​the game a second time. Personally, I was the opposite of all of those things.

Silent Hill 4, in my opinion, is still a game about Silent Hill, but it’s about how it can affect those connected to it. It’s also a game about voyeurism, child neglect, the birth certificate, and survival in the face of total uncertainty. On that last point, I always think of a comment made by one of the game’s supporting players, Eileen, who is your main charge during the second half of the game, more focused on escort missions, where she says “Count Given the circumstances, I guess we’re doing pretty well, huh…”

Sure, escort missions are notoriously boring, and Eileen’s AI can be a bit of a pain, but, I couldn’t help but be won over by her with that phrase. I haven’t stopped thinking about it in the four years since I first played it, because it’s a hopeful character in the most unimaginably horrific setting. A point that made things even more difficult when I failed to save her from a bloody fate in the ending I received.

I also find it interesting to have to revisit previous places and see how they have changed, often for the worse – places I had gained some confidence in, only to have to relearn them entirely. Not to mention the many completely invincible ghosts that haunt you throughout each of the nightmarish landscapes you visit.

Most effective of all is the way the game’s safest location, the titular room, protagonist Henry Townshend’s apartment, slowly becomes less and less of a place for rest and relaxation, as various hauntings begin to happen. These appear more and more quickly if you frequent the apartment too often, forcing you to return to the different sub-worlds of the game. It is then a game about places, and about the discomfort that arises when they change, and about not knowing how to deal with that – you can see why this was perhaps a great game to play in 2020.

In the title I ask when the game will get justice, and I want to make it clear that I don’t think The Room should also get a remake, I would just rather it get a new port, although you can play it. on PC too. I just want it to get another look from the Silent Hill fans who have sworn to abandon it, the same ones who probably don’t realize how boring the environments are in Silent Hill 3 (a game I love the story), and how unfairly confusing Silent Hill 2 can be to play (a game whose puzzles I respect but hate the harder difficulties). When you free yourself from the idea that 2 is the only one best, you will find more peace than you can imagine.