Silent Hill: Homecoming - Review

Added October 9th, 2008 by Adam

The Silent Hill franchise has always been an outlier of sorts when it comes to the survival horror genre. Most North Americans relate “scary” to some dude (who may or may not be called Nemesis) busting through a wall just as you are walking by, then stopping and staring at you menacingly for a few seconds before charging.  Now, don’t go taking this as a bash against Resident Evil games, because they’re pretty sweet in their own right. Unfortunately, when you are continually bombarded with such tactics from our culture’s media, you begin to become desensitized to the effect. This is where Silent Hill and its Japanese style of “scare you crapless-fu” comes to play. Whether you’ve been a super diehard fan of the series since the dawn of time or you’re a newcomer and want to see what this Asian form of fright has to offer, you might have a good time with Homecoming -- if getting scared is your idea of fun, that is.

If you haven’t been following the series since it’s been around, let me define what Silent Hill actually is…sorry, bad joke. You see, Silent Hill has never truly been explained or defined.  This is one of its greatest assets, as it lets your own mind create a warped definition. Even with a plethora of games based on the eerie little town, it has never been fully comprehendible. Some believe it’s a place where people are sent to suffer for their wrongdoings, regrets, or “sins.” You can research the town for days on end, reading long arduous walls of text philosophically explaining everything in great detail. However, if you want the simple and to the point version, it’s this: the place is all sorts of messed up.

In this installment of Silent Hill, you are placed in the shoes of Alex Shepherd -- a soldier who was relieved of duty after some unknown injury. Alex returns to his home of Shepherd’s Glen to find his father and younger brother missing, and his mother in a less than ideal state of mind. Alex tells his mother he will find Joshua (the little brother) and heads off on his journey. After a romp in Shepherd’s Glen, fate takes hold of Alex, and after a brief revelation, he wakes up on the streets of Silent Hill. I’ll be honest with you: I will not go into vast details of the story past what I’ve just said because any spoilers to a Silent Hill game is blasphemy and punishable by horrific flaming. I will say this though: Homecoming delivers a very satisfying story that, even with its oddities (such as why the heck nobody really inquires into what the hell is actually happening in Shepherd’s Glen) serves its purpose well in that it gives a base for the meat of the game to scare you to death.

While the story will set up some nice scares, it isn’t what will really grab your heart and play basketball with it. What truly grants Silent Hill games their ability to make you want to sleep with a nightlight is the atmosphere, and Homecoming is no slouch in this department. Whether it’s the series’ signature fog that hangs over the streets of the small town, the way the radio slowly builds up into a scream as grossly deformed creatures approach, or the fact that you’re carrying the world’s worst flashlight, the game is sure to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Of course, all of this ties into the game’s visuals and audio, which are both good and bad, although not necessarily in that order.

Visually speaking, Homecoming is a pretty good looking game. It’s one of those games that provide an overall visually appealing experience, but if you break it up and look at the individual parts, you might be a little disappointed. The visual style itself is stunning, and draws heavily upon the older games in the series. As mentioned before, the fog makes a return, and the creatures are as messed up and disturbing to look at as ever. The biggest visual change in Homecoming is how the transition from the “normal” Silent Hill and the “really messed up” Silent Hill is made. In previous games, the character had to pass out, or some accident had to occur before you awoke to find you were in the “really messed up” version. In Homecoming this is all done in real time. That means when the horn sounds, the paint starts peeling off the walls, rust encroaches on everything, some walls become pulsating, living things and stuff in general just get really bad. However, as awesome as all that is, there are some problems with the visuals. Textures are muddy and ugly in some cases, and the whole game is too dark in general. The camera is also a bit clunky in tight spaces and facial animations of the characters are brutal, but other than that, the game looks pretty good.

The game sounds good too, thanks to Akira Yamaoka’s brilliant soundtrack, and a great set of sound effects. The score fits the mood perfectly, and in most cases doesn’t stand out so much that all you can think about is the music, which helps it intensify the fear instead of detract from it. Sound effects are also really well done and the plethora of small noises and big ones all work together to have you so paranoid you won’t want to leave your fighting stance.

Speaking of fighting stance, the game goes off on a bit of a tangent from previous Silent Hill titles when it comes to combat. In older titles, the fighting was so clunky and your character was so useless that running was almost always your best option. Homecoming gives the old ways the boot, and instead we’re given a battle-hardened soldier who knows no fear and understands how to use that steel pipe to its maximum potential. This means not only can you link weak and strong attacks together for combos, you can also dodge! Don’t become overly excited though, because as sorely needed an option this may be, the mechanic is regrettably a bit hit or miss… so to speak. It generally works well when facing a single opponent, but if you throw multiple foes at our good buddy Alex, his dodging just ends up getting him pounded into submission in many cases. However, combat is actually pretty intuitive and easy overall.  Although your mastery of the controls will still occasionally see you lose more health than acceptable, you’ll still have fun beating down those abominations…oh, and the disturbingly sexy, faceless, knife wielding, spastic walking nurses too.

Even with the abilities of a soldier, running is still sometimes the best option and may even be necessary on harder difficulties. With the game set to normal, you’ll find lots of health sprays, medical kits, and ammunition to keep you going at a good pace (although by “lots” of ammo, I mean you can use a gun to kill about twenty dudes all game). If you jack the difficulty though, you’re going to be relying much more heavily on your melee skills to see you through to the end.

When you’re not hacking, clubbing, or occasionally shooting your way through dark hallways and foggy streets, you’ll be solving the odd puzzle to progress. You’ll see the standard fair of survival horror genre puzzles, and nothing should come as much of a brain shock for veterans of the series or the genre itself. There might be a couple of puzzles that may be hard to wrap your mind around, but as with many such puzzles, there’s nothing some good old fashion trial and error can’t overcome.

All in all, Silent Hill: Homecoming is a successful entry to the series. Even though it doesn’t do anything spectacularly new in terms of the franchise or the genre, it does do the old ways justice. Homecoming also comes with the series’ trademark multiple endings for you to discover, which adds a nice chunk of content if you’re a completion freak. A lot of folks were very concerned when they heard a North American developer was going to develop the next installment in the franchise, but thankfully they did a good job. If you have ever wanted to check out a Silent Hill game, or you’re a returning fan, Homecoming is a great place to both start, and continue your journey walking (but more likely running) the foggy streets of Silent Hill.