Silent Hill: Homecoming

"Silent Hill. A nice place to visit."

Welcome to the world of Silent Hill; a fog covered town of horrifying monsters and even scarier people. In this installment you play as Alex Shepard, a war veteran returned home to find things terribly, terribly out of place. A missing brother and father, a mother teetering on the brink of catatonia, and a town devoid of almost all life.....well, human life anyway. This creepy set up is intriguing at first but save for a few exceptions it all begins to droop to a "play-for-sake-of-beating" monotony.

Like watching your favorite movie for the 86th time, the story in this game is predictable to the point you can almost guess at the conversation once the story starts to reach it's finale but for some reason you just can't turn away. The magnificent atmosphere in this game drives everything from the monotone characters (more on that later) to the somewhat uninspired environments and turns them into an unabashedly disturbing experience. This game is an aural delight, creating complex rhythms out of crushing industrial and drone, beautiful ambiance, and the distant howls and growls of creatures. EVERYTHING in this game makes a sound from the vase you bump into (and subsequently jump away from because the noise startled you) to your jacket as it rustles against your clothing. Even the sound of footsteps were given loving care by the sound producers as there's a noticeable difference between walking on dirt, stone, steel, wood, etc. Often was the time I was spared a rather bloody demise because I realized something was walking on cobblestones and it wasn't me. Silent Hill is, for the most part, not a pop out and go boo game. You can run right past where an enemy was waiting to be triggered and you'd never notice until you got hurt or you had to go back the way you came. This is why Silent Hills' audio isn't just a nice touch it's necessary. Speaking of necessary, you have NOT played this game until you've done it with surround sound.

The lighting in this game is no less awe inspiring. The way shadows grow and shrink as you run past them, the way the light hits the fog and disperses only inches in front of you, the way objects seem to loom over you as your flashlight casts the only light in the room. Combined with the sound these effects create what I call a "hyper realism" where everything acts as it would in real life but yet it's exaggerated ever so masterfully to keep your pants thoroughly moist.

It comes as a real shame then, that the rest of the game didn't receive a fraction of the time and dedication spent in the AV department. The long line of apathetic voice acting in Silent Hill seems to have affected this installment the greatest and seeing how this is one of the most disturbing entries yet it really confuses me how some characters can be so nonchalant. None more so than the lead character Alex, and like Harry before him, his rather lackluster demeanor left me with a rather disconnected feeling towards my protagonist. Sometimes, either through luck or the situation at hand this omnipresent apathy becomes a part of the disturbing counter culture of Silent Hill, but these situations are too sparse to be called purposeful.

The environments, though they have pretty textures are really only carried by the lighting and sound effects. Everything in the world is gray. Gray tombstones, gray streets covered with gray fog, into the wouldn't you guess it gray sewers, broken up occasionally by the blood red and rust brown "reverse world." Fortunately the shadowing gives everything a bit of character and an unbearably scary aesthetic making you wish someone, anyone would turn the lights on. The lights never do come on however, nor do the hallways or tunnels get any wider, nor does the game give you a break to the madness. Silent Hill is dark. Silent Hill is claustrophobic. Silent Hill is unnerving. To sometimes wonderful (sometimes woeful) effect this never changes. Those of you used to Resident Evil's occasional safe room with calming toy box melodies can stand in the RE5 line because that doesn't exist here. No matter how far you run or which room you hide in you'll never feel safe, and in most cases you never are. Until you finish the game your only respite is the power button.

Fortunately due to Alex's military training, you can face your foes with some semblance of confidence. The controls, though technically still have the "tank handling" from previous games, benefit from the addition of a behind the shoulder camera and a dodge button which alleviates many of the problems it caused in its early days. All these new moves are balanced nicely by multiple enemies and the fact that once they get the chance, they really press the attack. If you don't use your new skills effectively you're going to be slapped around quite ferociously. Due some occasionally spotty collision detection however, even rolling away at the right time might still lead to being struck, and against tougher enemies like Siams, that usually turns out fatal.

Aside from all this though, Silent Hill is pretty standard survival horror fare. Run when you can, DO NOT use that ammo as soon as you find it, and repeat to yourself how you're sure you're sure this boss is going to kill you. If not for the hallmark set by its sound and lighting design and just the down right disturbing moments Silent Hill is famous for, this would be a fairly run of the mill title. It's well worth the time to any Silent Hill junkie or fans of horror games in general but for those just looking for something to occupy their times till RE5 I suggest a rental, or a buy of any of the other Silent Hill titles.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/08

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