I can't even remember why I fell in love with Silent Hill, I just know why I love it now. It's strange because I'm a bit of a baby when it comes to scary games, and lord knows I can only barely physically survive spending time with Konami's horror franchise. Or... practically any other to be honest, but few compell me to do so regardless the way Silent Hill does.
 
I could gush on about what's so good about Silent Hill, but I reckon if there's clicking on this topic it's by people who already know that, so let's look at what was always a bit off instead. There's an ever running debate over whether clunky controls amp up anxiety in horror games, and I'll admit I'm partially in the corner of yes that's true, but it's an irrefutable fact that the combat mechanics of Silent Hill have always been the subject of some criticism. Especially, perhaps, looking back on it. That's why, by and large, The Room was considered such a failure in gameplay terms with a bizarre emphasis on the most problematic aspect of the series and moving away from the puzzles - which I at least consider its foremost strength purely from a gameplay standpoint.
 
So in effect there are two games that are generally viewed as the stride of the Silent Hill series; 2 and 3. These hit the graphics marks splendidly, contained great stories (the greatest of which is also an ongoing debate) and hadn't messed with the puzzles/combat ratio. The Room marked the beginning of a decline in the Silent Hill series, chalked up to the mishandling of it by a different team when - aside from playing down the puzzles and up the combat - things essentially remained the same.
 
Origins re-intergrated the puzzles and along with Homecoming reviewed fairly well , and yet they're almost shunned by confessed Silent Hill lovers. I've played neither personally so I'm not fit to talk about them at great length, but I've heard people whisper that hey, Homecoming is pretty neat, and Origins is a cool portable Silent Hill experience.  So what actually happened?
 
Some people cite the handing the series over to other development teams as the reason for them "sucking", but the consequences of this aren't immediately recognizable. Homecoming cleaned up its controls act and in the process became a more reliable experience removing the vulnerability of the player, but going back to Silent Hill 2, dying - or even being in real danger - was rarely even part of that game in the first place and yet you were scared out of your mind. Origins - save for its dimension jumping antics - is more or less identical to a classic Silent Hill experience. Neither of these games, on paper, commit vices big enough to be outright dimissed the way they seem to be.
 
I really don't have any answers here, and I hope the responses will enlighten me. The way I see it, diminishing returns is a factor for any returning series, so couldn't it just be that Silent Hill, by iterating on itself, has played out regardless of developer? Maybe effectively turning nurses into a Goomba like "of course they're in there" element was always going to amount to games where familiarity is absolutely detrimental because the opposite was once its strength?
 
What would a new Silent Hill actually need to do to revitalise the series, and in what ways were Homecoming and Origins off the mark? OR... were they?