Silent Hill: Homecoming

Silent Hill is one of those games that makes you shudder when you hear the name. When you hear the name Silent Hill, you expect to be disturbed, freaked out and distraught as you trudge through the mind boggling levels and encounter strange creatures.

Silent Hill Homecoming continues this tradition of survival horror with a new storyline, new characters and a new town. The story is that Alex Shepard, who recently got discharged from the military, is returning home. He finds out that is little brother, Josh is missing and that's all I'm going to give away. You really have to experience it yourself to be fully satisfied.

I will say this though. This Silent Hill is one of the more disturbing games in the series. You see some very violent scenes not seen in the other games. This game might take some time to get into. I know I wasn't that impressed with it for the first few hours, but then I was satisfied, because I was getting freaked out. That's what we expect from a Silent Hill game, to get freaked out of our minds at the disturbing alternate dimension, or the crazy creatures (or demons as some people like to call them). So, the game does start off slow, but keep playing, because you will encounter the things that fans of Silent Hill, such as myself, love about the Silent Hill games.

The creatures are fantastic in this game; some of the best creatures I have seen in a Silent Hill game, especially the bosses. The boss fights are really good, and there is one boss fight in particular that was unnerving for me, and I was happy that is was unnerving, because it is Silent Hill after all.

I do have a couple complaints. Have you seen the Silent Hill movie? If you have, you will recognize that Double Helix has taken some things directly from the movie and placed them into the game. Look at the nurses in the movie, how they move and walk, then look at them in this game. They are practically the same. You will notice other similarities as well, but I will only talk about the nurses, because I don't want to give anything important away. it's nice that they used some stuff from the movie, but just like games before this one, it would have been better for the developers to imagine their own horrors of Silent Hill, instead of copying something we had already seen (if you had seen the movie). My other complaint is the combat system. It feels clunky, and hard to get used to. This game puts you up against multiple enemies at once, and I died many times trying to fight some enemies. It is frustrating at first, but you should get the hang of it as you get used to the combat system.

At first I was skeptical. I am a big fan of the Silent Hill franchise, and I didn't want the series to lose it's feeling. It certainly has not lost anything. It still is scary and unnerving and their are points of the game, that make you think, "the rating board allowed this!?" Just like the last Silent Hill games, there are multiple endings, a total of 5 I believe. I will play this game again and try to get the good ending, because when I finished it, I got one of the bad endings. In the end it is a welcomed edition into the Silent Hill franchise and keep in mind this is Double Helix's first game to my knowledge. I thank Double Helix for making a great Silent Hill game. If your a fan of the Silent Hill game, you owe it to yourself to buy this game.