by: John Olin

October 19, 2008

The developers seemed kind of lazy at times, as nearly every damn door in the game has a broken lock. Who the hell is walking around breaking all these locks? Why are all the locks in your own house broke? I guess all the locks in the game were made out of silly putty. What this accomplishes though is it makes sure you never are lost, and the only way you could get lost in the game is not being able to see where you are because of how dark it is. The only time you really stray off the path is to do a simple little puzzle to acquire a rifle. The entire side quest you do for the rifle is kind of annoying though, and the items required for it force you to travel far more than what should have been needed. The puzzles throughout the game aren’t really special either, and the answers are either right there in front of you, or a frustrating game of trial and error. Something else that takes away from the terror of the game is that you will now occasionally get help from friends you find along the way, and the friends in many cases can be used as bait for the monsters. So while the pink axe dildo monster is pummeling your idiot friend, you can stand off to the side beating the hell out of it with an axe, or pumping it full of lead. Even worse, is that in some cases the game will have incredibly horrible glitches. At one point the entire screen turned gray other than my character, and I appeared to be flying in the air. There was no way out of it, and I had to restart my Xbox 360.

Visually the game is hit or miss, but it mostly captures the feel of the previous titles in incredible detail. Alex’s face is incredibly detailed, and the expressions are well done, with the decent voice acting complimenting it well. Some of the characters aren’t as nicely detailed, and some of the environments, especially when it gets more open can be kind of bland, but overall they did a good job. The complete lack of a lot of details and light leaves something to be desired however. Typically while going through town, the game will be too gray, not really showing off any kind of real detail. When inside a building the game will go from incredibly stark bright with weird lighting effects, to so pitch black, that you will blindly fiddle around corridors. The game’s soundtrack done by Akira Yamoka also leaves something to be desired. If one thing could have made the games many shortcomings forgivable, it would have been a better soundtrack by him. In the past games the soundtrack went from sober, to wicked industrial sounds, all the way to incredibly beautiful fully orchestrated melodies. Throughout most of Homecoming however, you are only treated to faint ambience that doesn’t really set the mood right. The biggest stars visually in the game are the monsters though, from the faceless, and grotesque nurses that you are afraid to admit are a tad sexy, all the way to the bulking and incredibly awesome Pyramid Head scrapping his sword across the floor letting you know he’s in town.

Pyramid Head, as any Silent Hill fan will tell you, is probably the best part of Silent Hill 2, and was the whole reason I watched the Silent Hill movie. The entire Silent Hill movie could have just been about a day in the life of Pyramid Head and his running around ruining people’s lives and it would have been a great movie to me. So imagine my disappointment when I went through the entire game, only to really see Pyramid Head all together for about five minutes all the way through and not even get to fight him! Depending on your actions, you can see the pointy head butcher a little bit more, and even better have the honor to go through the game a second time wearing his trademark helmet, but it is almost like the developer is taunting the fans.

Of course, like any Silent Hill, you have plenty of endings, five in all in this game. You have your UFO ending, where the town’s fate is explained by extra terrestrial means, a few happy endings, and a few sad and depressing endings. This time around however, the choices you make throughout the game will affect the ending. The choices you make will not change the course of the game, as I have mentioned before, it is incredibly linear, but it adds a bit more replay all the same. The game is worth going through a second time just so you can use a laser gun and chainsaw that you find when you visit your house. Still, Silent Hill fans will be glad to get this game done with and appreciate the few nods it gives you, other people would be best to pass this one up. This is without a doubt a fan game, even though they tried hard to make it more accessible, and your money would be better spent somewhere else to get your scares this Halloween month.

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Silent Hill: Homecoming doesn’t really add anything to the mythos of the game, even falling short of Silent Hill 4. At least SH4 decided to mix it up a bit with a first person mode that added something to the story. This game is nothing more than fan service, and even with the fan service the game can fall short at times. If you aren’t a fan of the series already you probably would just do best to check out something like Condemned, otherwise if you are a fan you might want to give it a shot.

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