First Impression: Silent Hill: Homecoming

I remember playing Silent Hill alone in my room, scared out of my mind. I was so terrified when my mom came home from work I had her come in my room and sit with me a second. She of course suggested if the game was scaring me I should stop playing it. But I was engrossed by then, I had to know the ending. Maybe some background will help, when I was a kid I had a lot of nightmares. Maybe this is because I'd go to sleep after watching horror movies and science fiction with my brother. For a long time after that I decided I didn't like scary film and actively avoided them. I liked video games, and video games could never really scare me. Then there was Resident Evil, a game that was unintentionally hilarious because of the voice acting. Then Resident Evil 2, which let you blast zombies into splinters with a shotgun. Resident Evil 2 had it's scares but you had the assurance that whatever horrors you faced enough shotgun shells or grenade rounds would bring it down. Resident Evil, in the end, was more fun for it's action than it's scares. I started

But then in 1999 Silent hill was released. It had the same game play as Resident Evil but had another layer. Instead of fighting zombies you were fighting weird children with knives, skinless dogs, skinless flying bat things, and zombie nurses. And the simple fact that you're in a town and basically given free reign to run where you want. And the story wasn't about zombies over running a town, it was about a town being swallowed by some type of eldritch evil. And the most important part, it had atmopshere. The atmosphere was usually what gave the scares. You were always getting this idea that there was something just beyond your view waiting and watching. That the town itself was out to get you. It scared the hell out of me, and taught me to like being scared.

Now it's four games later and the game is in the hands of a new developer. It's interesting, seeing a game come out that's basically been handed to it's fans. Silent Hill: Homecoming has all the atmosphere and uneasiness that the series is known for, but frustratingly brought along many of the kinks, while adding some of it's own for posterity.

First, the story is ridiculous. You are a marine, come home to your small quaint little town of Shepard City, no wait, Shepard's Gate, oh wait it's Shepard's Glen. Sorry it's Shepard's Glen, my mistake. Anyway you are brought home by a trucker, and find the town full of fog, with many of the roads ending in seemingly bottomless cliffs, and the first person you meet is the judge, Holloway. She tells you that things are bad (duh) and that people have stopped caring for the roads. Also she tells you to speak with Elle. First of all, when you don't do road maintenance there's just more cracks, the roads don't spill away into the abyss. Second of all, no duh things are bad the towns empty of people and full of creepy mist. Third of all, who is Elle, maybe you should explain. We're left to assume that Elle is an old friend of protangonist Alex's. It's lazy, she says "You should talk to Elle." not "You should talk to your old friend Elle." And the voice acting is bad. It's not like funny bad, it's just actors being lazy bad. Or maybe it's actors struggling with bad writing.

I should mention you get dialogue options, a first for the series. Maybe this is why I don't like them. They're always so transparent, a virtuous, slightly dopey response, or a hilariously shitty response. For example I was looking for the town doctor, and I found him at the bottom of a creepy steel mill/hospital cutting himself, muttering "have to bleed out the sin, but it grows back!" You get the response of "stop I can treat those wounds." To which he yells at you OR the hilarious "What the hell are you doing you crazy fool, you're gunna hurt yourself!" Who calls people fool, let along a crazy fool? It breaks up the game, and while it gives you more control, it means there's less awesome cut scenes.

Also, this being an American developed game they had to revamp the action. So of course you have a combo system with light and heavy attacks, heavy attacks stunning and light attacks being fast and doing damage. There's a dodge button but the game can be a real jerk about whether a dodge worked or didn't. The enemies as well are ridiculous, the all have silly one word names. Like the skinless dogs are more like skinless bull dogs, and drip blood as they run around, but they're called "Ferals". Seriously, Ferals? Every enemy has a shitty little name, that the game tells you about in the between area loading screens, like "hit lurkers in the head, they're very weak there!" Lurkers by the way are weird guys who lay down and have claws with big metal hooks on them, they're heads are just one big mouth. I would enjoy naming them myself. One thing they do right is atmosphere, the game is genuinely creepy. The music is just lifted right out of the other games with some new stuff added for kicks.

Overall the fact that the game didn't see release on Japanese shores should be down right telling. It's not very good, but it's serviceable. Take it or leave it.