Silent Hill: Homecoming

"The game is ok, but staring at a black screen is simply not scary."

I'm a long time Silent Hill fan. I got the first game for my eighth birthday back in 1998, and kept faithful to the series, beating every game in every possible way to get every possible ending. Silent Hill 4 was an alright game on it's own, but as a Silent Hill I just couldn't get into it like the first 3, and I figured that the series had probably peaked and didn't have anywhere to go from there.

That said, I picked up Silent Hill 5 as soon as it came out, and to my surprise it was actually pretty good at first. The original atmosphere and non-linear gameplay was back in full force. However as the game went on, the combat, monsters, and lighting really made the game fall flat. It's well worth playing, especially for fans of the series, but this is no Silent Hill 2.

I'm not sure how much the new developers affected the differences.

The Good:

This game captures the look and feel of Silent Hill perfectly, though like the movie, something still doesn't feel 'right.'

The environments are complex and non-linear, which is rare to see these days and VERY refreshing after all the games that can be explained by simply saying "walk forward." (Tomb Raider, I'm talking to you!)

The weapons are what you would expect from a Silent Hill. Nothing fancy, and only a few guns, with more emphasis on things like pipes and axes.

The Nurses, which are cloned from the movie (rather than the previous games), are actually pretty cool. I have to admit, I didn't like the 'sexy' stylization they've had since SH2 (I preferred the hunch-back nurses of SH1), but these nurses make up for their ridiculously sexed up looks with their creepy AI. Turning off your flashlight and walking through a group of them, as they twitch and pop, is truly creepy.

The storyline is unoriginal (looking for a young child in Silent Hill - sound familiar?) but well delivered.

The Bad:

The darkness. Every Silent Hill game has been dark, but it's never gotten in the way of gameplay until now. It isn't scary, it's annoying. Sometimes it just simply isn't possible to see what you're doing, which again, is not scary, so much as irritating. If you want to scare me, you have to show me that there is something worth being afraid of because, personally, I don't get scared of TV's with blank screens. I get scared of truly horrific (rather than gross or strange) images.

The monsters are so uninspired and boring that I couldn't be afraid of them if I tried. The only thing in this game that scared me was Pyramid Head and, occasionally, the Nurses - both of which are from previous games. I do have to give some credit to Scarlet though - she was designed very well, unfortunately the actual fight with her is challenging due to poor design, rather than player skill (The main character will attack parts of her that have already been destroyed, wasting time and giving her more opportunity to kill you. Then, when you die, you'll have to watch the entire cutscene that plays before her fight again and again - there is no way to skip it). Some of the monsters look more like Aliens than Silent Hill creatures, and one even glows.

The movie was good, but this game seems to take more inspiration from it than it does from the actual games in the series. Key scenes from the movie, like cutting open a painting to reveal a door in the hotel, are replicated in the game. This seems really cheap to me.

The combat is bad. The developers really tried to make it work, but the constant dodging really just adds another button to the same boring old pattern. The dodge also isn't timed to go along with the enemies attacks, so you'll find yourself getting hit a lot until you're really forced to get the timing down. When the player is knocked down, they loose control of the character completely. It's really irritating that you can't press a button to stand up, and makes you remember that you're just playing a game. In real life, I wouldn't just lay there and do absolutely nothing for as long as this guy does.

The lack of ammo. In a game were they tried to implement fast combat and an over-the-shoulder aiming system, you really should have had more opportunity to use the guns.

The puzzles are just boring. There is no thinking involved - you usually just slide blocks around.

The voice-over volume. I actually turned the settings for every other sound down really low, because I just couldn't hear what people were saying. The voice acting was actually alright (especially for a Silent Hill game), but when it's this hard to understand what people are saying, I'd almost rather just read the subtitles.

--- All and all, I think the game is alright, but there are some things that the new team needs to work out. Namely, they need to find the line between scary darkness and annoying darkness, as well as learn the difference between scary and gross. Once they do that, they might actually pull off the best Silent Hill since the first game.

This game feels like a transition to me, like it was a learning experience for the new development team (Double Helix). I think that they'll turn out an absolutely fantastic, thrilling, and truly horrifying Silent Hill 6 if they just stay away from the reused material and fix the issues that hurt this game.

If I had to pick, I would say the darkness is the biggest issue. Make things that are scary enough we can actually see them and not laugh at, rather than hiding them in the pitch black. This will make the monsters more interesting, and the gameplay less frustrating (I can't tell you how horrible Dr. Fitch's office was - I literally just had to run around pressing A repeatedly because I could NOT SEE ANYTHING, even with my flashlight on, TV brightness maxed, and in-game brightness as far up as it would go).

Play the game, but don't expect it to be your favorite thing ever. If you're new to the series, pick up any of the original three games first.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/05/09

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