Silent Hill: Homecoming

The majority of Silent Hill: Homecoming is based in Shepards Glen which is a very risky idea. I found it was more interesting discovering how a second town was rapidly descending to the nightmarish underworld of Silent Hill...

I bought this on PC format for the purpose of my new laptop and I have to say I really enjoyed playing it. Despite some very long loading times between levels & scenes it was quite easy to control, although as much enability you are given to explore the town its too freaky to go of wandering. The monsters are freaky as ever, there are many ways to attack, dodge and tackle them and as you progress through the game its more clear how they behave.

I know most people compare this to Resident Evil but this is what makes your skin crawl...

Yes, I was excited when I found out Silent Hill would be coming to the next generation consoles and I bought it soon after its release. I have now finished it and have to say while overall I liked it, I was also a bit disappointed by it too. Let's just say I like Silent Hill 2, 3, and Origins more than this one. I liked it a bit more than Room and I have never played one so I can not really say if I thought it was better or worse than that game. Even though I thought it was overall better than Room, its story is not quite as good as that game either. It does boast the best graphics of the series to date, the monster look good, and the characters do too, the problem is the story is not up to par with the other Silent Hill entries I have played. Also, the combat is not as good as the last game of the series Origins, as in that one the character was a lot tougher than Alex in this game, beating enemies with his fists. Alex has the ability to dodge, but this becomes annoying as you have to dodge to hit certain enemies and if you screw up your timing you are, well screwed. The story has Alex returning to his hometown of Shepard's Glen after a dream sequence involving a hospital. He quickly discovers the town is not as he remembers as citizens are apparently going missing. He could care less though as his main goal is to find his younger brother Joshua in the town that is slowly going to hell. You meet many denizens of the town and at times are warped to a hellish world where monsters eat those who seem to have some piece of the puzzle. Of course, in the end it leads back to the town of Silent Hill. A couple of plot points just did not really work for me, the game featured members of the order like those seen in the movie, I am not sure if they appeared in the first game, but I know I never saw them in any of the other games I played. It seems this one focuses a bit on the religious cult more than previous games, but a lot of stuff presented here just did not add up. So for the best looking of the Silent Hills play this one, story wise though it is a bit weak.

Oh my lord. I am possibly the biggest Silent Hill fan I know, I've managed to introduce several friends to the wonders of this series and many of them enjoy it too. I recently received an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and the main reason I wanted it was for this game. I waited months for this game to come out, and having adored all the previous titles (even 4!) I was eagerly anticipating this one's release. I always say that no matter how bad a Silent Hill game is I will always finish it. But I've decided not to finish this one. Honestly, this game is beyond terrible. The graphics were decent and the voice overs were pretty good but that's about all. Besides having a totally boring plot that hardly ties in with any of the previous games at all, the game is crawling with glitches. Just as I decided to give it another chance this morning I walked right into a glitch many others have been having problems with. Therefore I had to start over. Now I just can't be bothered to finish the game, having spent many frustrating hours screaming at the television screen because this game is so damn.. ugh, it basically takes the word frustration to a whole new goddamn level. What really sucks about this game is that they had the atmosphere just right; the town of Silent Hill, the fog, the whole atmosphere was pretty much perfect. Then they threw in the dumb ass combat and it all went to hell. What makes a Silent Hill game for me is not the constant fighting, but the wandering around in the fog, and that helpless feeling you get when you hear a strange noise in the distant. In this game they pretty much took out all of these things and threw in a bunch of extremely annoying enemies that take about fifty hits from the axe to actually kill, that is before they've already knocked you on your ass half a dozen times. Also, weapons and ammo are extremely limited. I'm not saying there was a bunch of ammo everywhere you looked in the previous games, but hell, this is like playing Resident Evil - only even goddamn harder, and you can imagine what that's like. I'm so disappointed at this game, it could have been amazing if the Japanese hadn't handed it to the Americans. That being said, Origins which was also made by the Americans was a lot better than this game, so maybe they just went wrong somewhere. It's a pity really, this could've been a really good game if they'd just fixed a few things. I'm sad that I wasted thirty eight pounds buying this game, but I don't really regret it. I would've bought it anyway at some point, so it's just bad luck really. I've never been so annoyed with a game in all my life, and this one is easily the most difficult SH game I've ever played. Anyone who enjoys action and combat should try this game, but if you're a true Silent Hill fan who still considers the second game the best of the bunch, I'd say rent it. It's certainly not worth wasting any of your hard earned money on. 1/5

After my game in Silent Hill 1999 at the age of 7, where I did not bother to go further than a dark alley, this part, about which I will write, is the first game in the series that I completed to the end already in my teens. I remember that my friend liked this game, and I only nodded in the hope of not losing him, so my opinion did not matter to me. It so happened that now all the previous games have been completed by me, and the gaming experience has disintegrated to give a personal opinion. And I would like to return those wonderful carefree youthful memories, long lost about those times, thereby finally understand for myself: "Was Silent Hill: Homecoming so good?" The developers are the American Double Helix Games, which, as I understand, has not played any part of Silent Hill. Not only do they use most of the monsters from previous parts, where they were projections of individual personalities created by their sick minds filled with grief and suffering, but also the main character in this game becomes a killing machine against enemies such as occultists. How does Alex Shepard react to the murder of several people? No way! The facial animation here is so lousy that sometimes you really cringe from what is happening, and those familiar with the series will be completely... The combat is clumsy and inconvenient. They wanted to follow in the footsteps of Resident Evil, providing third-person action, but ended up on the road to HELL! What I liked about this part is the bosses. Each of them has a story behind them, and each of them looks decent in design.

In general, the result is that I did not return the warm memories of my youth by replaying this game, but only spoiled my mood. There are games that you play as a child, and replay them as an adult, where this time you begin to see many interesting nuances that you are only able to understand as an adult. And these are called immortal classics, which will never bore you, but will only continue to expand your narrow horizons on many things that happen outside of our lives. And this, unfortunately, is not that game. It may be a good horror movie of the "B" category, but a pretty lousy Silent Hill.

The game itself is a huge leap as it changes the combat system entirely from 1 and 2 (I didn't play 3 or 4 I'm assuming they're the same). For starters the game is more combat oriented with the introduction of using various combos and finishing moves to kill your enemies, you can also aim the gun yourself giving you the freedom to place a few pellets in certain monsters critical zones which can be really handy when your conserving those last 4 bullets that you 'wasted' 2 minutes ago fighting another creature.

The horror factor stands up to the silent hill name, really gory, really twisted and leaves you feeling cold due to the attention paid to certain details. The characters are likable and are great to interact with due to the new speech system allowing you to take complete control over certain dialogues. It's also great how you can have a combat buddy fighting alongside you, blasting monsters back to back.

My only complaint is the fact that the game is really anti-climatic towards the end, in many cases it feels that the designers just got bored and didn't bother with some greater in depth story line unlike in SH2 where you get two bosses and a scene explaining more of the story.

Overall the game is good and I give it 8 stars for the reason that the ending wasn't as good as it could have been, but it is definitely worth the look.