Put the kettle on and bolt the door. You're in for a long stay...

When you come to Silent Hill, you expect to be surprised. Where else can you experience strange locals, exciting fairground rides, mysterious fog and monsters made from sausage meat, all in one visit?

At least during the first five minutes of The Room, you'll be very surprised. Not just because the game doesn't actually take place in the lakeside resort, but for the first time in the series, you're seeing the action from the first-person perspective.

For the past five days, Henry Townshend has been trapped in Room 302 of the South Ashfield apartment building. It's drab and gloomy, with chains blocking the door, a broken radio (typical!) and a miserable view onto Ashfield's main street. Exploring the room in first-person introduces a genuine sense of claustrophobia, especially as there's so little to do or interact with. Henry's only source of entertainment is a peephole through to the room of his sexy neighbour, Eileen Galvin.

You'll occasionally get a cryptic message stuck under your door, but it's not too long before you're yearning for adventure. Fortunately, the hole in your bathroom wall isn't a result of shoddy DIY, but a portal to a sinister parallel dimension. Entering the hole puts you hot on the trail of Silent Hill's most notorious serial killer, Walter Sullivan, and the game returns to the familiar third-person perspective.

Over-familiarity can be a real tension killer though, and soon the 'seen it all before' feeling oozes through like the damp in the corner of your room. It's the same old formula of solving some brilliantly realised puzzles and intermittently beating up writhing kebab monsters with a steel pipe.

But there are some innovations. Instead of the usual save points, holes in each level allow you to return home to save and rearrange your inventory. In an unnecessary twist of Resi Evil-style artificial difficulty, you can only carry a limited number of weapons and must return home to store items. More positively, some of the best puzzles require you to find an item in the other dimension and teleport back to the room to interact with it using real-world devices like the phone or tape recorder.

Although the new locations are suitably surreal - a sinister orphanage, a cylindrical prison and a creepy forest - there aren't as many cool things to look at or hidden documents to read, making it all feel a bit 'empty', compared with Silent Hills 2 and 3. Tragically, the second half makes you replay the locations but with the added burden of protecting a partially crippled Ms. Galvin. Unlike Maria from Silent Hill 2, Eileen fights for herself, but dodgy AI means she attacks the monsters with a vengeance when you just want to escape. Watching her attack monsters with a handbag provides much-needed light relief though.

Sadly, it's during combat that the series' dated gameplay really begins to crack. The only tweaks are a quick weapon select menu and a power bar that lets you charge melee attacks. Like the previous games, what really holds Silent Hill 4 together is the story. It's fantastically disturbing and the monsters are much sicker. Best of all though, is the ambient audio, which can rip out your spine and play it like a xylophone. Sadly, it's not enough to plaster over the dated graphics and gameplay, making this the weakest in the series. It looks like were' going to go back to our room and locks the doors, waiting for a true next-generation sequel to materialise.

1. You're The Victim!
   Throughout the game, Henry and Eileen are pursued by ghostly 'victims'. Like Nemesis from Resi 3, they're indestructible and can only be slowed down using power-ups like the saint medallion.
2. The Killing Joke
   There are loads of in-jokes and very tight continuity. You can find Lisa Garland's nurse's uniform (SHI), a replica of Heather's flame thrower (SH3) and your landlord is related to James Sunderland (SH2). A pink bunny, Lakeside Amusement Park's mascot, Robby-Chan, shows up too.

1. A deliciously chilling audio experience. Ambient sounds create pure tension while the monster noises are absolutely surreal.
2. Monsters in this one are far more hideous than ever before. The baby-headed monsters and the floating victims are terrifying.
3. Puzzles are extremely original and challenging. Combat is far weaker because the controls and character movement are dated and clunky.
4. Being forced to replay the same locations twice over seems very lazy. It means there are few surprises during the second half of the game.
5. Too much artificial difficulty, from protecting Eileen to a restrictive inventory. Weapons that break are another unnecessary burden.

Good puzzles and great monsters save Silent Hill 4 from the depths of despair. Lacks the variety and emotional intrigue of Silent Hill 2 and 3.