My reluctance to throw things away — my propensity to collect: it has to do with evidence. Evidence to whom; to myself? Evidence of the links between the world within me and that without. Evidence that the things I know of did, at least once, exist. Once those physical tokens are gone, there is no more certainty. I can’t be sure of anything anymore.

I have played the first hour of Silent Hill 4: The Room. Yes, it arrived today (alongside Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda); I am not allowed to play much further until all accountable women have returned to roost.

Nevertheless. The game is supposed to have been principally inspired by Being John Malkovich. That is quickly obvious, now that I have the chance to inspect it more well than before. This knowledge also offers some possible, if incomplete, clues regarding just what’s happening in the game.

Before the opening credits disseminate (another addition to the series, and not an unwelcome one), the game provides a short introduction in the first-person perspective that will later be common to scenes transpiring in The Room in question. In this sequence, however, the room is different: bloodied, rusted over, dirty, abandoned-looking; it resembles the “dark world” from the earlier Silent Hill games. Henry, the main character, is understandably surprised — or, should I say, alarmed. He does not seem to recognize anything. He also, I noticed, fails to cast a reflection in the picture frames scattered around his apartment — frames which reflect everything else around him. I pinpointed this as intentional, especially given that only minutes later, once the credits play and Henry wakes up again in a “normal” version of his bedroom, he no longer seems at all confused by the room’s (clean, yet otherwise mostly-identical) furnishings.

Henry still does not have a reflection, however. In cutscenes, he does; just not in the game proper.

So. Never mind that.

The people on the street outside the window walk like robots. Most of them wear the exact same clothes, and walk in synchronization. A polygonal edge to the hole behind the cabinet flickers into and out of existence as the camera rotates past it. The effect is hard to ignore, given the size of the area in question, its prominent location, and how important this hole is supposed to be.

The soundtrack comes on a separate disc, in a little paper sleeve. Luckily, it does slide easily into the game case. Still, considering that the previous game in the series made space for its soundtrack by default, this all could have been a little prettier.

Although I yet again am not allowed to remap the controls at will, at least the default scheme works for me. For some reason, as minor as the changes were from the previous games, I had real problems playing Silent Hill 3 with any of its predesigned setups. Everything felt like it was in the wrong place; it made me feel a little ill, even. Strange, the psychological effect of control design. I wonder if it could be put to real use, rather than ignored or made as invisible (or as “realistic”) as possible, as are the current strategies.

There’s… something here. Maybe.

Tonally, the game reminds me more of Silent Hill 2 than of the other two. This is not a bad thing. Perhaps it is an intentional thing, even. It also feels tangibly different — more like a mystery than a horror story — and is so far intriguing in that.

EDIT: Naoto Ohshima is involved again, as a camera programmer. I noticed his name flash by in the credits to the first Silent Hill, I believe as some kind of graphics programmer; did he do anything in the middle two games?

Artoon is owned by Konami now, yes? Or involved with them somehow?

EDIT 2: And I like the way the camera works. Mostly. I don’t think I’ve seen quite this technique before.