Silent Hill: Homecoming (PS3, X360) (2008)
Developer: Double Helix

Review by Faididi and Co.

At least Contra 4 has controls that don't suck this hard

Story: Average

A young man, Alex, gets one hell of a reception when he returns home to Shepherd's Glen, a town located right next to Silent Hill. Encountering nightmarish creatures who are suddenly on the loose, he soon finds himself delving deeper into his town's sordid roots in his mission to rescue his much younger brother and escape.

For a story that's based more on the film than on the original games, it still manages to emulate the series' characteristically awkward dialogue. The greater focus on the cultists can be a nice change of pace for some, but anyone with a brain can easily suspect Alex's true nature within the first act and draw a good idea of his brother's fate long before the end of the game.

Gameplay: Average

Developed by Double Helix, Silent Hill: Homecoming feels like an utterly generic action adventure that happens to have the looks of the previous installments slapped onto it. That's because this dreary sequel is actually more linear than Silent Hill 3, contains unchallenging and uncreative puzzles, and tosses the series' trademark horror completely out the window.

We're not joking here; Alex is encouraged to charge up to the monsters and aggressively hack away at them, the subtlety and creeping fear of the earlier games be damned. Homecoming emphasizes lots of combo-excessive, in-your-face combat, replete with tons of finishing moves and cheesy button-prompt challenges. The bad guys themselves are neither dreadful nor unsettling, instead resembling a bunch of mutant rejects from Biohazard. That is not a compliment. Homecoming is also predictable to the point where every single flooded area always hides a monster, without fail and without surprise.

The level and puzzle designs won't be winning awards any time soon. Like in the third installment, there are no true overworld-like areas here, and Alex will find himself forced through narrowly constrained corridors much more frequently. A good example of this is the cemetery area, a place through which our hero must traverse three bloody times, using virtually the same damn route in every instance. The puzzles seldom amount to more than simple fetching tasks and tile-sliding minigames that annoy you rather than stretch your serious analytical skills. Contrast all of this to Silent Hill Origins (Silent Hill Zero), which, despite being made for a handheld system, manages to offer puzzles that require careful reading and thinking to solve, enemies who are horrifying and not all worth fighting, and a mirror-warping aspect that adds complexity to the level design instead of subtracting it.

Controls: Sucks All Ass

Perhaps Homecoming would be more bearable if not for its infuriatingly idiotic controls. The awkward button scheme effectively prevents Alex from turning while checking objects, and the severely restricted customization options are useless. For some inexplicable reason, the vertical orientation can be inversed for gun-aiming but not for normal looking, and the turning sensitivity can't be adjusted at all. The hero auto-aims only with melee weapons, yet when he fights near walls, the camera can leave you stuck with obstructed views. Furthermore, Alex tends to catch against objects in cluttered areas. Fallen chairs and buckets can suddenly stop him cold, which is fatal when he's trying to back away from enemies.

Hell, the game can't even get the menu interface right. Why the weapons, items, and maps are broken apart into separate menus that must be accessed via different buttons makes little sense, and their grossly flawed layout can cause Alex to unintentionally equip a different weapon or allow a certain stamina-restoring item to be easily wasted.

Graphics: Average

The visuals are mediocre, and seeing why isn't difficult. The bodies of defeated enemies simply fade away after a while, and the water in flooded rooms appear more like flat, glossy oil.

Audio: Average

The sound effects and the music are the only things in this game that capture the classic Silent Hill mood, minus any feelings of horror. The voice acting will make you wish for the far more natural-sounding speech in Silent Hill Origins.

Overall: Below Average

Silent Hill: Homecoming is a weak, unimpressive action adventure that is inferior to every installment before it. Its ho-hum, dreadfully unimaginative story and its disappointingly stale gameplay are bad enough, but nothing drags it down so low as its absolutely retarded controls, which do everything to piss the fuck out of you. Silent Hill fans wouldn't be sorry if they skipped this mistake of an addition to the series.