Silent Hill: Homecoming

"A solid addition to the Silent Hill franchise"

The first Silent Hill game for the PlayStation 3 is here with not only system changes, but development changes. Unlike the previous 4 games, Silent Hill: Homecoming was not produced by Team Silent but by an American company, Double Helix Games. Obviously Double Helix Games had very large shoes to fill being the first Silent Hill game to appear on the PlayStation 3 and making sure the game stays true to the original games. I am a casual fan of the Silent Hill series but I would not consider myself diehard and know the storyline inside out, but I have played all the Silent Hill games with the exception of Origins.

Story
You play as Alex Shepherd, a war veteran recently discharged from the hospital for combat sustained wounds, and now is discharged and returns home to his hometown, Shepherd's Glen. He has a disturbing dream in which his brother, Joshua, has run away and seemingly lost. He arrives to find the town nearly deserted, a very foggy and desolate place. He returns home and finds his house also empty, except for his mother. His mother tells him that Joshua has disappeared and that their father has gone looking for him, but has not returned home. The mother looking very disturbed, seems to be hiding something. Alex then embarks on a nightmarish journey to locate his missing brother and father, which leads him to the accursed town of Silent Hill...

Graphics
As to be expected from any Silent Hill game, the graphics are top-notch and I would say rival games like Metal Gear Solid 4. In certain cutscenes and under the effect of certain lighting the characters almost looked photo realistic. The environments are also beautifully done between the 'normal' worlds and the 'nightmare' worlds, and the transition between the two is also nicely done, and reminiscent to the effect in the film 'Silent Hill'. The game supports up to 720P output on HDTVs, and as always, I would recommend playing the game with HDMI to really appreciate the graphics.

Music/Audio
As you'd come to expect with Silent Hill, let alone any horror game, atmospheric sounds and music make or break the entire feel of the game. Homecoming captures the creepy ambiance almost perfectly. I found myself more afraid of what lies ahead rather than the monster I can visually see in front of me. At times the ambiance almost seemed too realistic as I found myself looking over my shoulder numerous times in panic that a monster was behind me.

The music is composed by Akira Yamoka who did the music for all the previous Silent Hill games, so you'll get your fill of the depressing yet creepy piano themes throughout the game. Music is fairly uncommon most of the time, but at the times where there is music, it is at a good place to have it.

Controls
This is really what dipped the game down for me. Like most Silent Hill games before it, the controls are a bit clunky, and you'll still find yourself slowly rotating around to move in another direction. While Homecoming does improve on this from previous games, it still suffers from the problem in some form. The camera is controllable via the right analog stick but I felt the rotation speed was painfully slow, in ordinance with moving Alex in another direction in felt incredibly clunky. Some sort of sensitivity option would have helped a lot here.

In addition to the clunky movement controls, the weapon controls can have a pretty steep learning curve, in particular using firearms. Melee and firearms are both readied with the L2 button. With a melee weapon, X performs a light attack, square performs a heavy attack (I'll get into this more later). With firearms, you must press R2 to fire the weapon, while X is a weak melee attack with the firearm. Melee weapons are actually much more effective than firearms if you master the dodging and combo system, but sometimes firearms will need to be used for best effectiveness. I've had issues with the gun simply not firing off when I pressed R2, problems with the dodging system, and most noticeably frame rate drops when aiming the weapon, most noticeably against bosses. This makes getting the aiming cursor where you want quite difficult, and I found myself wasting ammo (which is not overly plentiful) and hitting air a lot.

My last complaint about the controls is their approach to a few puzzles. Sometimes puzzles that require you to select different puzzle pieces or whatever are mapped to the same button. Meaning moving the left analog stick down or up will switch pieces, and moving left or right will move the piece. I found myself moving pieces I didn't want to when I really just wanted to switch to another piece extremely often.

Gameplay
This section I will break into sub-sections as noted in Italics to address various gameplay features of the game.

Fear Factor
I think what everyone wants to know about this game is, "Is it scary?". Personally, I found the game more creepy and made me feel uneasy at times rather than being frightened. The game does play with your head very often, but most of the uneasiness comes from the ambiance of each area. The game does have a few attempts to physically scare you but for players of the previous games, you'll not find anything physically terrifying.

Melee Combat
This is really how you will conduct the bulk of your combat. You can receive up to four melee weapons: a Knife, Steel Pipe, Fire Axe and a Crowbar. Each weapon has varying degrees of quickness and damage. Though I found the knife to be one of the most effective weapons in the game due to its quick slashes that keep enemies at bay. Light attacks can be performed by pressing X but do not really flinch enemies and leave you open to counter attacks. Pressing Square will execute a heavy attack, which you can hold down for additional damage and higher stuns. Only heavy attacks can stun monsters. Fortunately, you can combine light attacks with heavy attacks to keep mobs on lockdown most of the time. If you've ever played Dynasty Warriors you'll remember being able to mix your regular hits with powerful hits after any number of swings, the same kind of system is in Homecoming.

In addition to combos, dodging is the second most key tactic in fighting with melee combat. Circle is the dodge button which can usually be executed at any time you see a monster's attack coming. A successful dodge will allow you to counter attack immediately and usually results in stunning the mob. I really enjoyed this new change to the melee system as I found it particularly bland in the previous games.

Boss/Enemy Fights
The game provides quite a few bosses fights, and I believe it's more than any of the previous games but don't quote me on that. While the boss fights are fun and you can expect numerous deaths on each one trying to figure out the boss's patterns, most of them boil down to hack-and-slashing away at the bosses with your melee weapon of choice, and learning when to dodge and counter their attacks. Every boss can be defeated quite easily using melee weapons if you are good at the system. In fact, most of the time you will not have enough firepower to bring down a boss on firearms alone.

The enemies in the game pretty much follow the same trend, I found the knife can keep almost any enemy at bay with the exception of a few. You will come to hate the 'Smog' and 'Slicer' enemies pretty quickly in the game, especially the Smog creature. I actually ran away from the monster more often than I fought it because I couldn't find a real solid way to beat it without taking a quarter or up to one half my health bar taking one down.

Other Gameplay Elements
The old pocket flashlight and radio alerting you to enemies make their return here as usual, but I have a small gripe with the flashlight in this game. The flashlight covers a ridiculously small range and you have to be nearly hitting a wall for it to illuminate the immediate area. During a few areas it provided so little light I actually had to check the menu a few times and make sure it was powered on! Not really a big deal, you will be able to find your way around most of the time, it still was a bit of a poor decision by the developers in hopes of making the game more dark and creepy.

The puzzles in the game are what you've come to expect of Silent Hill games: very freaking confusing. Many of them you'll probably find yourself consulting a guide for the solution. Some puzzles are just downright frustrating because of the controls as well.

One thing that also particularly bothered me was how random and sudden the ending came as well. I was actually a bit shocked to find the game ended where it did. It almost felt a bit rushed or forced. I was pretty disappointed in this.

Final Words
Silent Hill: Homecoming is a solid entry game for the SH for the PlayStation 3. It was definitely a big step for Double Helix Games to try to make the game true to the series, and I feel they nailed it in that sense. The problems here really lied in controls and a few gameplay flaws. I enjoyed this game much more than Silent Hill 4: The Room which I found utterly disappointing. So if that game turned you off a bit from Silent Hill, give it another shot with Homecoming. For people who have always enjoyed the Silent Hill series, you will enjoy Homecoming for what it is. Even for people who have not played the previous games, this is to date the best horror game you can find on the PS3 and I would highly recommend it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/06/08

Game Release: Silent Hill: Homecoming (US, 09/30/08)