Silent Hill Homecoming (View comments)

Posted on Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 2:46AM

Platform: Playstation 3

Along the shores of Toluca Lake lies a sleepy resort town, famous for its amusement park, beautiful hotel, and even a strip club. The town of Silent Hill seems like the perfect place for a romantic get away or just to get away from work for a few days, but for a select few, the town is hell. Literally.
So far there have been six major games placed in the quaint town, starting with the aptly named ‘Silent Hill’ on the original Playstation. All of the games so far have had deeply thought provoking stories, grotesque graphics, disturbing creatures, and enough scares to keep me up for nights afterwards, but I’ve loved every moment of them. That is, at least up until the most recent entry in the series. Silent Hill: Homecoming marks the debut of the series onto the current generation of consoles, and also the first game in the series I didn’t like.

Homecoming follows the story of Alex Shepard, a soldier who is sent back home after a brief stay in a military hospital. Upon returning home to his hometown of Shepard’s Glen, he finds that things aren’t like they should be. The town is suddenly nearly empty, most of the inhabitants are either missing or dead, and an unnatural thick fog blankets everything. Sound familiar? Alex makes his way to his house, only to find his mom sitting alone in a near insane state as she informs him that his younger brother, Josh, is missing. Oh, and that there is a monster in the basement. You spend the majority of the game chasing your brother through abandoned and creepy environments, meeting several more characters, all of whom lack true personality.
For the most part, the locations in Silent Hill Homecoming are rather nice. All of them are greatly and grotesquely detailed, as always in Silent Hill games. Several new locations are featured in this game, such as the Grand Hotel from the movie, and even the full town of Shepard’s Glen. Most of the locations also have two versions: the foggy realm and the ‘alternate’ realm, which the game transitions between the two with a really awesome looking ‘peeling’ effect. Though this seems to change the way the Silent Hill universe used to be. In previous games, the town actually seemed alive. It would change based on the character, and be completely different and unexpected every time. However, in Homecoming, the town seems stuck with two basic worlds: fog and rust. The rusty ‘alternate’ world no longer feels as creepy as it used to in the previous games, most notably Silent Hill 3, where the alternate world seemed to be living.
Creature design has always been one of the best parts of Silent Hill games. The monsters are typically scary, gross, or just down right disturbing on multiple levels. Homecoming marks one of the first games in the series to re-use a monster, which is ok if you like that sort of unoriginality, but personally I found it kind of disappointing. The biggest of which was the bringing back of the red pyramid monster from Silent Hill 2, known by most as ‘Pyramid Head’. Though seeing him in high definition was quite cool, it was still more disappointing than having a new and original boss show up. But overall, the creature design in Homecoming keeps up the disturbing trends set by the previous games, introducing several new and kind of cool enemies. The most interesting thing about the enemies, however, was the fact that they now show damage from your attacks. Melee attacks now show up on enemies as bloody cuts and slashes, making attacking them all the more fun.
Now to talk about the actual attacking them. It’s long been a problem in Silent Hill games that the combat was way to difficult, not because of enemy strength, but because of camera angles and controls. Homecoming fixes this with a style much like Resident Evil 4. The camera now goes to a ‘over the shoulder’ view when attacking enemies, and even gives you a crosshair to aim with when using a firearm. While this does make it a lot less frustrating, it also makes it a lot less scary. Originally, Silent Hill games gave a lot of their fear out in the form of helplessness. Not being able to see an enemy or not being able to aim properly added a lot to the fear, but since that’s no longer a problem, the monsters become a whole lot less scary.
The story isn’t quite as much of a mind-twister as some of the previous ones, sticking to a similar ‘searching for a missing person’ story that has already been done several times. The game does toss out a few unexpected twists, but in the end it’s just not as good as it’s predecessors. Silent Hill games have long held a place in my heart as one of the only things truly capable of scaring me. Silent Hill 2 gave me nightmares for a week, and Silent Hill 3 made me terrified of mirrors for a whole day. This is the biggest disappointment of Silent Hill Homecoming: Complete lack of fear. Homecoming never once messed with my mind quite like the previous games, but relied more on surprise scares rather than disturbing scares. Have high hopes that they’ll learn from their mistakes with Silent Hill 6, but I’m worried the Silent Hill series is finally dead. Homecoming is worth a rent if you like the series, but probably not worth a buy.