Konami's undead chickens come home to roost, and Kikizo is right there with a roasting tin.
The Verdict: "Not so much Silent Hill returning home as Silent Hill rooting through its own garbage. A polished but utterly complacent slab of survival horror."
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.
Shame about this one - they had long enough to make it, but then I suppose there were all those studio switches/mergers...
Polished? Really?
So according to kikizo, monsters that respawn right after you kill them (Literally), a dodging mechanic that doesn't work, walking around with no ammo for most of the game (Because there's barely any ammo at all) and monsters that take nearly all your health with only one hit, makes a polished game?
IMO, this game could've used another year in development. Oh, and it didn't need all those SH movie references either.
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot about the torch that can barely light up a room.
The respawning happens **SPOILER** on the street where you fight the Smog for the first time **END SPOILER**, but it happens, non-stop, **SPOILERS** in Silent Hill, when you're going to switch off the power to the prison gate. **END SPOILER**
About the dodging mechanic, I'm on my fourth playthrough (Reason being: the story is amazing, that's why I keep playing the game.) and I can honestly say that it does not work at all. No matter what I do or how I've dodged, I still get hit.
The torches in the previous games were a lot brighter then the one in SH:H. Hell, the area would get darker when you turned it on in the other games (And get brighter when you turned it off - characters eyes adjusting to the dark, LOL!), but at least you could still see were you are going! In SH:H, the area would be pitch black even if you had the damn thing turned on! The hotel and the sewers are good examples of places were the torch doesn't work.
Also, you can't pick an easier difficulty. Only Normal and Hard. It doesn't matter what you pick, the gameplay is still the same. Having limited ammo and enemies that take a load of health from you does NOT make a game scary.
IMO, you must have had some sort of super Reviewer build of the game because the SH:H I've been playing is in no way polished.
EDIT: I'd love to see what you think of Resident Evil 5. I don't know if you've played the demo, but if you think Homecoming is polished, then you're going to LOVE RE5!
"Having limited ammo and enemies that take a load of health from you does NOT make a game scary."
I don't know, it certainly scared the poo out of me at times ;)
I'll concede that the dodge function doesn't exactly rival Street Fighter 4 for grace and precision, but I found it pretty workable on Hard - except when fighting those sodding Siams. The near-instantaneous respawning you mention is pretty blatant, yeah, but I felt it was the exception rather than the rule and so didn't give it much thought when I wrote the review.
I'd still say the darkness is no problem. Homecoming might be gloomier than previous Silent Hills - I haven't had a chance to check - but the levels are also more linear and easier to navigate. I reviewed FEAR 2 recently and managed to get hopelessly lost at one point in blazing sunshine because the stupid area exit was hidden under a grill.