Silent Hill, as is the case with the most striking of Japanese horror, is obsessed with victims. Though the worldwide genre is inherently fixated upon themes of penetration and submission, the East fosters a particular fetish for the trials and experiences of the abused. The Room – the series’ curious fourth instalment – depicts a grand and grisly intersection of such suffering; in good ways and bad, it extends a fair share of the pain onto its audience as well.

Ironically, series composer-turned-producer Akira Yamaoka reveals Westerners David Lynch and Stephen King as his inspirations; a key game location even name-checks them both. Originally conceived as an entirely different franchise, this game is a definite departure, tenuously linked to the Silent Hill mythos yet anxious to go elsewhere. The Room isn’t simply the claustrophobic prison of its main character – it’s a detached cell wherein the genre can confront, explore and reinvent itself.

This is a brave and dangerous endeavour; will the result claim exciting territory on the outskirts of survival horror, or will it lose itself en route?

Henry Townsend has been trapped in his apartment for five days, cursed by dreams that portray a corroded, distorted echo of the world immediately around him. Bloodied notes are slid beneath his door – a previous tenant’s chronicle of gruesome murders, seemingly the work of a supposedly dead killer. A dark hole is opening across his bathroom wall; if he climbs inside, another cryptic nightmare will suck him in. This is a great concept – a golden opportunity to create a disjointed, dreamlike melting pot of drama, character and, above all, intelligent horror.

For half of The Room’s eight or so hours, the ship is more or less on course. There are some disappointingly obvious environments but enough strokes of morbid flair to do the series proud. Above all, the story is both confident and capable, casting its themes and inspirations far and wide. Is Henry a natural voyeur or simply a man desperate for outside intervention? Is The Room a genuine supernatural prison or the corrupt construct of a crazed mind? As the nefarious motives and actions of the other residents become known, who are the victims and who the aggressors? Can such a distinction even be applied?

This is but a taste of The Room’s dense narrative, and by the halfway point every loose strand of it is compelling. Were he in control, David Lynch would happily take this opportunity to further confound the audience; he’d tangle and reshape those strands until a nightmarish collage emerged – one that even he would find hard to decipher. At this critical juncture, however, The Room loses its nerve and sinks into something far less interesting - a thinly veiled retread of its first half.

At no level of difficulty can the puzzles in The Room be described as thought-provoking; similarly, none of its enemies present much challenge. Given that the game features the widest range of weapons in the series, there are only three that actually warrant use, and only one of those is essential. The game’s episodic nature makes it easy to identify where the second half begins – it literally revisits all of the previously ‘completed’ locations in turn. While there’s nothing specifically wrong with this, the escalation of challenge and event as the game progresses is somewhat artificial. Initial efforts to cut out backtracking and repetition are discarded, much of the remaining four hours involving the avoidance of nuisance enemies, the negotiating of awkward geography and pixel-searching for obscure items.

The new inventory system is efficient in the short term, but makes the long-term management of objects a royal pain in the backside. Pick up too many items, for example, and you’ll have to return to your apartment via a ‘hole’ to store them. With a full inventory you can’t even identify an item let alone take it with you; dropping something else for convenience isn’t an option either. Ammo clips remain separate and further consume inventory space; any Resident Evil fan will testify to the virtues of aggregating identical clips into a single slot – why it doesn’t happen here is a mystery.

Interestingly, the game operates in first-person while in the apartment and in customary third-person the rest of the time. As a device by which to immerse the player in the claustrophobia and malevolence of this one location, the experiment is a complete success. It attempts very little with the new viewpoint, but this simplicity only adds to the effect.

Series stalwarts and Pyramid Head fans will certainly question the fact that the game has only one recurring boss. Not to say that games such as Clock Tower and Resident Evil Nemesis haven’t worked wonders with the concept, but then they didn’t feature a boss as ordinary and unimaginatively used as the one here.

It occurs that every time The Room takes a step towards its goal it falls two steps back. Combat, for instance, is better for having a power meter and evasive moves but is increasingly crippled by lazy collision detection and an easily distracted target lock. The game’s lacklustre second half is awash with unforeseen inadequacies that extend far beyond its flailing imagination and painfully linear puzzles. Without revealing too much, there is a ‘twist’ applied halfway in that curses the game with some truly infuriating moments (let’s just say that Ico does it better…). There are four separate endings that each offer a substantially different plot resolution; to see them all, however, demands bottomless enthusiasm and the patience of a saint.

For a series in which story is frequently prioritised over game, the fact that The Room can be so frustrating marks an intermittent breakdown of both. There is, however, much to praise elsewhere. Graphically, it’s astounding; even the forthcoming Xbox version will be hard pushed to match the crisp and detailed visuals provided here. Before they become repetitive, the game’s cast of creatures are typically intriguing and unnerving; better still, the human character models are some of the best ever seen. The trademark Silent Hill ‘noise’ filter has been improved, the camera being violently scratched, desaturated and displaced to reflect key events. All in all, this series can still push the envelope, even on an off-day. Yamaoka’s audio work is typically impressive, Silent Hill remaining the only game series that can induce real fear through sound alone. Mixing violent animal voices with blood-curdling industrial noise, the soundtrack is, as it always has been, bloody terrifying.

If it seems unfair to criticise Yamaoka and his team for essentially ‘playing it safe’, consider the raison d’etre of the Silent Hill franchise. Consider that, as a vehicle for the macabre creative talents of Masahiro Ito, Takayoshi Sato and, of course, Yamaoka’s own abrasive soundscapes, the series is driven by the ability to compel, shock and disturb. Familiarity is its most lethal adversary, and by the final act of The Room that adversary has truly grasped its hands around the throat.

Ultimately, The Room comes across as a game afraid of its own potential; not only afraid, in fact, but petrified. For what it achieves the game pays a heavy cost in bad calls, misjudgements and, above all, an uncharacteristically blunt edge. It opens with a vivid desire to brave an uncharted domain but on the brink it falls to its knees, fearful of turning a corner where the outcome is unknown – in a sense, it’s the final victim of its own tale.