So Silent Hill Homecoming sat on my shelf for a whole year and I never even took the plastic off. I wanted to–don’t get me wrong–I just had other games ahead of it in the pipe (and, frankly, my game-hours-per-month was down in the single digits for most of 2009). So after I finished Cursed Mountain a while back, I decided to make Homecoming my next game.
I’m several hours in now and so far it’s pretty good. The camera, which I identified back in 2007 as a potential problem, is indeed not very good. It’s not that the camera doesn’t work, it’s just that it’s a standard, 3rd person camera. All of the composition and framing that the previous Silent Hill games have done is lost on this Western 2-stick generic system. Other than that, things are pretty good. The Silent Hill vibe is well captured, the influence from the Silent Hill movie is clear and not nearly as annoying as I feared it would be. Pyramid Head looks good (though it remains to be seen if they’ll actually use him correctly or just make him a cool-looking boss), the combat system is pretty slick, and the levels are pretty well designed. I’m surprised that there have been so few Otherworld transitions so far; by this point in any other Silent Hill game, I would have gone into and out of the Otherworld several times, but as it is it’s only shown up once or twice (and even then for very short durations).
I will say that the game has a few issues above and beyond the camera. After playing for a while this evening, for example, I stopped being able to bring up the item menu. I can bring up the weapon menu, and if I try to transition from the weapon menu to the item menu, I can see the item menu appear for a brief second, but then it drops me back in the game (I even tried to switch the buttons around to confirm it’s not some problem with my controller). This is a problem because it means I can’t access health drinks, and that’s a problem because all of a sudden the difficulty of the game has spiked. I’ve gone for three or four hours without a single death, but at my current save I’ve died ten or fifteen times (the last two or three because of this bug with the item menu, admittedly).
This brings me to another problem: after fifteen deaths I realized that I’ve actually been carrying a gun around for most of the game. The gun icon appears at the bottom of the screen, far away from all the other weapons, and though I’ve probably had it since the first hour of game play, I never saw it there and never once used it (the game probably told me that I collected it, but after that I probably saved and promptly forgot it was there). I only found it because I tried hitting the d-pad in a desperate hope that the health drink command was mapped to some other button (no luck). The game hasn’t been very hard so far and I really haven’t needed the gun (I mean, Silent Hill is about lead pipes), but it sort of sucks that it’s been there the whole time and I didn’t even know it. I even dispatched a boss or two without ever realizing it was there.
So, my impression so far is that the game is pretty good. It knows the history of the Silent Hill series and has chosen a path that is sincere to that history without being a carbon copy (unlike some other games I could mention). I’m disappointed with the camera (especially for the indoor environments) but I like the combat system. The game’s been pretty easy up until this one difficulty spike, but the real problem is probably that the UI for the item and weapon screen is a) buggy and b) hard to read. The bugs will probably go away with a system restart, and now that I know to look more carefully at my item screen, I hope I won’t miss an important part of my inventory again.
If my impressions were a terrorist threat level, I’d be “guarded but optimistic.”
I’m glad you like it so far! I feel like not only am I the only SH fan that didn’t like Shattered Memories, but that I’m also the only one that DID like both 4 (although I prefer to not think of it as a Silent Hill game) and Homecoming.
Are you playing on XBox? I went through the whole game on my 360 and never had a single control problem, that’s odd.
Also don’t worry about the gun too much. The knife is seriously the most effective weapon you can possibly use against every non-boss enemy in the game if you time the combos right. Even if you pick up upgrades for the others earlier than knife upgrades, just keep using the knife and things’ll be easy.
Also… And here’s a minor SPOILER WARNING: Pyramid Head does absolutely nothing in the game other than that one cameo, which felt fine to me. I still thought he was out of place being there at all but for just being the quick nod to SH2 and the film that he is, it’s fine.
I actually enjoyed this game quite a bit, more than I was anticipating. Sort of sad it got panned by reviews. The mood is definitely SH and I like the fact that they added some new monstrosities. And, the plot is pretty decent as well. For anyone who never played a previous SH this is a pretty good introduction to the world.
http://www.wryhullothar.blogspot.com
Glad to see you catching up! I can’t say my experience with Homecoming was anything but infuriating. I thought the game was insultingly idiotic when the story finally came around to making an appearance. I thought the rest of the game felt chorish and lazy(except for some of the other world portions). The characters, monsters, and combat all were pretty terrible. I have to say the opposite to Ultimate Carl(except that I actually liked 4 as well), in that I loved Shattered Memories and hated Homecoming.
Nice to see ya back in action, Chris. Tbh i was pretty disappointed with SHH myself, the army guy prot.agonist, the crappy storyline and way too huge influences by the movie killed it for me. Yet, the game did indeed have certain charm and style about it, so waiting for a full review. : )
Chris which version of the game are you playing? The PS3 version supposedly has more bugs then the 360 version. It does take a while get use to the realtime system for the menus but it does click in.
I aways find it funny the SH community hates on Homecoming so much. The game is a remake/re-imagining of SH 2, every should be happy right??
…Other than the fact that they both involve the town of Silent Hill (most of Homecoming doesn’t even take place inside of it) and Homecoming has a Pyramid Head cameo, how is it at all similar to SH2?
Yeah this confused me immensely as well.
Something I enjoyed after completing Homecoming was listening to the soundtrack again, and making connections to the storyline with the lyrics. That Akira Yamaoka is one clever composer. 🙂
Seeing that Chris is having a D-Pad problem, it must be a 360 version, lol. It happens to me all the time on several games.
I love the lighting effects and the bosses of this game. This is my 3rd Favorite game after SH2 and SH3. SH4 is also an okay game to me with some nice puzzles. But I lost my motivation to play SH:Origins after playing it for 2 hours and now that I’d sold my PS2 back, I won’t be able to play SH:Origins and SH:Shattered Memories for now.
It’s really funny that my first ending of SH: Homecoming is UFO ending. It used to be a hard one to get back in old games and I thought I must had did something special to get that one. Turns out I was wrong 🙂
I’ve played every silent hill game ever made for any version of every Playstation console system… and I’ve loved every single one.
I don’t get the hate that some people have for some of the games, especially Origins and Homecoming. I liked them too… I also don’t get the ADULATION of SH2 that everyone seems to have. Sure, it was far better than SH1, but that’s from a jump to a next gen system. I think every game that came after was just as good if not better…
…I just don’t understand some of my fellow SH fans. I have yet to see a game that really brutalizes the world of Silent Hill and is “Silent Hill in name only” like how RE5 is Resident Evil in name only…
I also don’t understand why Silent Hill fans dislike some of the games so much…however, I do understand the complete adoration of SH2. There was something magical about that one; awesome story, beautiful music, atmosphere, and the introduction of Pyramid Head. Hiding inside that closet…? BRRRR! So creepy. Everything just really clicked together perfectly in SH2, at least for me it did.
Silent Hill 2 is important because it’s one of the very few games (in any genre) to attempt a non-trivial, non-standard story that is told mostly through game mechanics rather than exposition and cut scenes. The other Silent Hill games in the series, though creepy and lots of fun, are much more straightforward. SH2 is a favorite, I think, not just because it was so well executed, but because it accomplished a form of story telling that very few games have succeeded at (even now).
While i dont want to get into a holy war or anything, and i do respect others’ opinions, guys, what’s wrong with you? telling a good game from a bad game is much like telling a good piece of any other kind of art from a good one. I mean, look at the plot, look at the characters, the soundtracks, the ovar dynamics. the early SH is ways better than the latter one.
While i dont want to get into a holy war or anything, and i do respect others’ opinions, guys, what’s wrong with you? telling a good game from a bad game is much like telling a good piece of any other kind of art from a good one. I mean, look at the plot, look at the characters, the soundtracks, the ovar dynamics. the early SH is ways better than the latter one.
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Not to be rude, but that’s a pretty laughable comment. The whole point of art is that it’s subjective. What a person draws from a game or a piece of art depends as much on the individual person as the art itself. You can claim a lot of individual aspects between the games are better than worse, esp. from a technical standpoint, but it’s hard to claim that any of them are definitely better than any of the other ones.
That being said, I find HC pretty weak. I had to watch it rather than play it myself, so that might have skewed my opinion, but I see the art direction & plot as watered down rehashes of past SH themes (esp. from 2, with splashes of 3’s goriness done badly). I’m actually kind of grateful I didn’t have to play it through myself, because I probably wouldn’t have finished LOL
@Chris: hope you get a chance to try Shattered Memories soon. After Origins & this mess, it was a welcome change C:
That’s weird about the menu. I’ve played it through several times on the Xbox360 and once on the PS3 and never encountered this problem. The only problem I had with the menu was I accidentally used serums the first time because letting go while hovering over them apparently counts as selecting them.
You missed getting the gun? There’s a whole scene that involves getting the gun. I only used it a few times myself, since the knife was to me the best weapon in the game until some later parts, but how the heck did you miss the fact that you had it o_o
I won’t go in to much detail, but I was surprisingly pleased with how they weaved Pyramid Head in to it. It ended up being an interesting touch to the game rather than an annoying attempt to appease fanatics.
Also, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one wondering what’s with the hate.
What happened was, I played almost the whole game from the start to that scene in one sitting. It took a while–maybe 2 hours of play. By the time I got to the repair shop I hadn’t saved in ages, and I was ready to quit for the evening (I think I had to be somewhere or something). I rushed through that scene, found the save immediately after it, and quit.
Then, I didn’t come back to the game for about a week, since I’m pretty busy. When I did, I remembered the scene but not the conclusion: I wasn’t sure if I’d done everything at the repair shop or not, and I ran around for a while looking for something to do. There wasn’t anything else, so I left and moved on. I totally forgot about receiving the gun, and when I checked my inventory I didn’t see it because of its size and placement.
So yeah, not entirely the game’s fault, but I would have actually used the weapon if I had been able to see it in the inventory screen.
This post will mostly be echoing what has already been said but I felt the need to chime in.
I’ve played and completed all of the Silent Hill games and 2 is far and away my favorite.
I was pleasantly surprised by Homecoming (and to a lesser degree by 0rigins). I didn’t mind the controls or the combat system in spirit. I did think they could have been polished a bit more, though. I felt like the developers really tried to make this game a worthy addition to the series rather than a cash-grab. Where I think the game failed was in its storytelling. Where the overall construction of the game felt like a successful effort from a professional studio, the caliber of the storytelling felt like that of a student film.
Any and all story elements that weren’t already provided by previous games in the series were seriously lacking. And the “twist?” Who didn’t see that coming a mile away?
My other major gripe is probably just me being a whiny gamer purist. Why did they borrow so heavily from the Silent Hill movie!? It’s not even canon! Actually, it makes sense why they did. They didn’t have a strong enough writing team!
http://resident-fantasy.zzl.org
Yamaoka is a survival horror audio composer legend. He varies so much, and make perfect scores. Chilling, artistic and ones that never bore players.
Genious