PS3 Review – Silent Hill: Homecoming
The Silent Hill series is known for its terrifying psychological situations, and the next-gen iteration of the series is no different. There have now been six games and one movie under the title, and all of them have been praised for their sheer creepiness. Silent Hill Homecoming came out in late 2008, and continued the series’ reputation for being devoted to upping the fear factor from prior installments.
In Silent Hill: Homecoming, you play as Alex Shepherd, a military man who returns home from a tour of duty only to find that his home town is almost completely deserted. And not only that, his brother and father have mysteriously vanished. The game’s story progresses fairly slowly, but toward the end the story picks up quickly and engrosses you. By the end of the game, it’s hard to ignore that the story is very compelling and unpredictable. The strong narrative really is a great addition to the series, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Silent Hill film is made based on this game.
Unfortunately, the same praise can’t be given to the gameplay. The game plays very similarly to previous Silent Hill games, which means that it hasn’t evolved with the times. Combat is centered around locking onto enemies and dodging at precise moments. While it is intense, it feels very limited and cumbersome. The menu system is also fairly difficult to navigate, and could’ve definitely used some touching up prior to release. Thankfully, the puzzle sequences throughout the game are very enjoyable, and a couple of them are arguably the best puzzles in a survival horror game. But the bosses are somewhat of a disappointment, and the same tactics used against normal enemies are also used for the majority of the bosses.
The controls in Silent Hill: Homecoming are hit and miss. Moving around feels great, and the gunplay is accurate and responsive. Since ammo is scarce, you are forced to melee for the majority of the game, and the melee combat is very difficult to master. To put it in perspective, the melee combat feels like a hybrid between both real-time and turn-based action games. In order to kill the majority of enemies, you are forced to wait for an attack in order to dodge said attack and perform a counter strike. The lock-on feature really restrains movement and makes for a very difficult, unpolished combat system.
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10 Responses to “PS3 Review – Silent Hill: Homecoming”
Played the first one – loved it. Played the second… liked it. Played the third… never finished it. It seems like the Silent Hill games found a formula with game one and tried to stick very close to it over the years,,, which worked in PSone days, but just doesn’t anymore. Its too bad… I wonder how the movie will be tho? The stories and environments were always genuinely creepy, for sure. Just the fun didn’t last.
great review Jonathan same cant be said for the actual game though, I love the silent hill series and ive high hopes for shattered memories but they really need to give it back to the original team in japan and start over
Siren is a better choice currently
Silent Hill 1 & 2 were great…10 years ago
Good review never played the game though.
Great review!
I’ve been wanting to pick this game. hhhmmmm…
I’ve heard this game isn’t making it to Japan, might wanna look that up PSLS(if you’d like)
But the reason this game wasn’t too amazing was, it drew too much away from the horrible movie and added stuff that didn’t need to be added….
The transitions looked cool at first, but the transitions were just bland and boring.
It didn’t actually add anything to the series at all, and I was thinking of soo much that could be done with the next-gen consoles for Silent Hill >.>
If only it was the original team.
l still haven’t got the chance to play this
I love silent hill, I have got to say – it look’s better then some of the game’s out there,
there have put work in to this game, just look at the photo’s at the top of the page,
Now if you say that’s bad, then your not playing game’s from 2009,
My review is not as big, as i am adding to the top review,
Signed,
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