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SILENT HILL 4

first half's the perfect set-up. henry the head trauma hedgehog drifts thru a series of jaundiced platformer worlds in a fugue state, fetching chocolate milk & collecting chaos emeralds. the navigation's subdued, there are few meaningful obstacles, resource management doesn't exist, and you can return to your adult baby autoheal sanctuary whenever you please to engage in astonishing acts of first person voyeurism

second half's the perfect knockdown. a lever clicks & the mode shifts to reveal the hand it's been dying to play from the start. after conditioning you into complacency it sends you back to hop thru each world a second time, now with tails in tow. areas are recontextualized & repopulated, and your cozy little fortress is host to interlopers & has its amenities cut. the homebrewed yokai that burped & slid & triggered stock jungle cat sounds are now a credible threat & you're currently being stalked by a serial killer who currently happens to be a ghost. the run gets more & more oppressive, but somehow still finds time for slapstick gags as good as three-nurses-on-a-staircase in between doling out some of the best imagery & storytelling in the series. inexplicably, this is commonly referred to as "the bad half"