Welcome home! Silent Hill is back with a vengeance in the newest installment of the franchise, Silent Hill Homecoming. There was always something a little different about Silent Hill compared to other survival horror games. The atmosphere, the psychological tension and the constant fear all contributed to the absolute horror of these great games. Now with new American developer, Double Helix, let me be the first to tell you, it's all here.
TNS: “With the recent release of the incredible Silent Hill 2 remake, we reflect on the most underrated game in the series, Silent Hill: Homecoming.”
I didn’t hate it, in fact, I think the hate is unwarranted. It doesn’t have anywhere near the same feel of a Team Silent game, but if this were PTSD fake army man in spooky town: The Game, I think people would have really liked it more.
Now all I want to play is PTSD Fake Army Man in Spooky Town: The Game.... that sounds like a helluva game, lol
Conceptually, Homecoming works. On its surface the narrative is interesting and adds a lot of depth to the lore of the town. The misfire was in its execution i.e aping way too much of its visual cues from the feature film and themes from Silent Hill 2. The developers treated the game as a series of bullet points and checklists of what a Silent Hill game is supposed to be: Cult? Check. Otherworld? Check. Pyramid Head? Check. Trauma? Check. Sexy Nurses? Check. It felt forced instead of genuine and organic. It's a real shame because at its core there was a lot of great material to work with: a fraction of cult members branching off to do their own thing, Alex being a supposed military man, blood pacts and child sacrifice. This is all great stuff. It's just a shame that it never really came together.
Short story: it was mediocre with fun combat.
No memorable characters, no memorable atmospheric set pieces or visuals, lots of in-your-face gore, fucking around with lore by putting PH where he doesn't belong ...
And the ending where Alex also becomes PH and makes a roar was funnier(i remember laughing from disbelief) than the UFO ending in this instalment.
It wasn't terrible. It's one of those "if it didn't have this title" sort of games. It's actually pretty solid, but doesn't live up to the rest of the mainline franchise.
Downpour, however, and I'll die on this hill, is a highly underrated game.
I didn't hate Homecoming. It wasn't as good as 1-4, but it definitely wasn't bad. Downpour I think was just bad. But Homecoming was fine, and the music was really good. It was the game that came out after the movie, so they Americanized it. Pyramid Head was misused and was based on the movie design, not the classic Silent Hill 2 design. The town as well was not consistent with the other games, but rather the movie. The green Welcome to Silent Hill sign from the movie was even in Homecoming.
The sirens are sounding again, beckoning you back to the foggy ghost town as we rank all the Silent Hill games, from the chilling classics to the misguided missteps.
I mostly disagree with Downpour's position. Yeah, the game is not amazing by any stretch of the imagination but is much better than the HD Collection and Homecoming. The main issue is the performance, but that was mitigated by the patches, especially on the PS3. Personally, I put it a little behind Origins and The Room.
Having Restless Dreams as a different entry from Silent Hill 2 is also a choice.
Normally, we would not consider it a different game (Restless Dreams), but since it had a very different critical reception and had new content, it was allowed. As for Downpour, I would agree, but since that one is subjective, we let him make his case for the placement.
silent hill 2 is definitely the best one out of those.
for me personally, the whole ritual/cult stuff was always so weird to me in all the other games.
No disrespect but I put SH2 over 1. 1 is fantastic, but 2 took it all up a level.
Twinfinite: "They said it couldn't be done, be we've tried our best to rank all the monsters in Silent Hill according to their fear factor. Let's go!"
Pyramid Head is my #1 too, despite the fact you don't actually fight him much - and the few times you do are actually super easy. It's all in the presentation & close encounters.
I never thought the monsters themselves were very scary. It was the tension and the unknown, the silent moments that got under your skin that were the most scary to me.
Silent Hill has always been about the psychological horror more than it's gore.
Played it, finished it and loved it. Lent it to a buddy and he's going to have a go at it now.
Ok, I got it - only because SH2 pulled me in, and hope springs eternal; because SH4 pissed me off with how stupid it was, and got traded in.
I'm liking it better than #4. So it's already off to a good start. Very creepy, great music, better controls, a similarly compelling storyline with plenty of gruesome ambience. But I find myself increasingly frustrated with the lack of an 'Easy' difficulty setting, one which perhaps would offer more than a single ammo drop every 2 hours.
I get it, of course - the developers want you to use the new hand-to-hand fighting system, primarily. Which would be fine, except it's too damn clunky to use effectively. Works ok until you're facing off against 5 enemies at the same time, or a boss.
Classic game design mistake: games are supposed to be FUN, not work. If I end up throwing the controller at the TV in frustration because your game is too damn hard to play...you fail.
To be fair, I haven't finished the game. If I do, that's a passing grade in itself. But I'm getting increasingly frustrated with it... >_<