Silent Hill Homecoming review
Silent Hill Homecoming is the newest in the Silent Hill Franchise. It is also the first one to be released on Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.
You assume the role of Alex Shepard. A soldier returning to his hometown of Shepard's Glen. However as things are not all puppy dogs and rainbows in Shepard's Glen as you will come to learn.
The game begins with you strapped to a gurney and dragged through what appears to be a dilapidated hospital. Where you eventually escape and end up in Shepard's Glen.
The graphics in this game are decent. However there is a grain filter over everything and when you enter the dark world, there is a red scratchy tint to everything like watching a movie from the 30's through a red lens. I wish you could turn it off, but there is no option.
The frame rate drops occasionally, but never often enough for it to destroy the game. You will notice it for a few seconds, but forget about it when it corrects itself. The world is also very dark. But your flashlight does a good job of allowing you to see. Unlike Sire Blood Curse, this game wants you to be able to see what is going on.
Combat in this game starts out very interesting. Enemies are scary. The bigger ones can kill you pretty quickly until you learn how to use the dodge button effectively. There are only 5 or 6 different enemies in the game, and you get achievements when you kill one for the first time.
However there is a secret to 90% of the enemy encounters. Do not waste ammo. Only use ammo on the Smoke gassing monsters and bosses. Every single in the game besides those are knife fodder. Once I learned this, I was at the last boss with about 6 health drinks and 4 first aid kits. The knife is just so quick, that most enemies will never hit you unless you get backed up into a corner and the camera locks into a place where you cant see whats going on. Just keep taping the attack button most enemies will go down before you know it. The Needlers are the only enemies that seem to have an effective block, so just dodge when they swipe at you and slash, slash, slash.
Also you can increase your life meter in the game by finding serum. But when you find one, do not immediately use them. Hold on to them until you are near death, they not only increase your health, but fully restore it. Early in the game first aid kits are rare.
Also this game has an annoying difficulty curve. Bosses are mostly push overs, while nurses can cut you to ribbons quick if you are having to switch weapons because you just had to hack down a door with an axe. Early on I lost 30 minutes of game play because save points are few and far between. There are checkpoints, but still when your last save was an hour ago it gets frustrating. And the last hour of the game there are only checkpoints it seems, and no save points.
The puzzles in this game are confusing and sometimes offer no clue what so ever. Some puzzles use symbols and the clues use words. SO tell me how you are supposed to solve a riddle where you know the answer is death, and there are 5 symbols on a wheel to choose. 3 of which look like skulls and another a coffin. Several times the puzzles just stumped me. And I hate that feeling.
The early game relies on cheap scare tactics that are awesome, and make you feel intense. When the radio crackles you feel like you did the first time you played Silent Hill on PS1. But as the game goes on it looses a lot of the scare. Enemies cease to jump out and scare you, and you start facing enemies from the Silent Hill movie. Which was craptastic in my opinion.
All in all I had a lot of fun, but still the at the end of the day I felt this game was missing something.It has 5 different endings, but I don't really feel like going to try to get another ending. The game is a decent length, but mostly because of the “try to open every door, until you find the right one style of game play. Maybe I would try to get the other endings if I owned the game, but there is nothing fantastic enough about this game to make me want to purchase it.
I give the game a B-
Feeling Robbed Moment: Going to every single door and having to read, “this door is jammed” or “this doors lock seems to be broken”. Just stack crap in front of doors I cant open. But this is a staple of the Silent Hill Franchise
