![]() The game starts off promising and it’s actually fun to string together your first few combos against Feral (the skinless, plastic-looking dogs) and the Nurses. But what’s perhaps more damaging to the fun factor in Homecoming is the resource allotment. Yes, the save points are spaced too far apart, which only compounds the issue of difficult combat sequences. And both Needlers and Schisms can effect one-hit kills against Alex – highly irritating when you can’t see to dodge properly and the last save point is ten minutes back. The gargantuan Siam – a man mountain with a female form affixed to his back – breaks through concrete pillars and prison walls alike, and will pummel you with impunity. ![]() The ever-present Nurses (who now look a great deal like they did in the Silent Hill movie) can put together some quick combos with their scalpels for considerable damage. In fact, they’ve come a lot farther along than Alex, with his rudimentary dodging and countering. Which brings us to the next point: enemies are also a lot more capable in this game. ![]() The problem is, the aforementioned darkness, and the way the camera is sometimes fixed when you’re in ‘ready stance’ actually obscure the enemy ‘tells’ so that you’re often unable to properly evade the attacks as they come. He can roll out of harm’s way, slip impending attacks with the new dodge button, counter coming out of the dodge, and string together combos with light and heavy attacks. Alex is a good deal more capable in a fight than previous protagonists. The ups-and-downs continue with the combat, which is ramped up as advertised. From Judge Holloway to the local gunsmith, Curtis – texture and refinement is disappointingly lacking. But Double Helix didn’t seem to put as much care into the creation of the supporting cast. The monsters too, are a meticulously detailed representation of the perverse macabre. Our hero, Alex Shepherd, looks to have been designed with great care, from his facial expressions to his facial hair – this is the stuff that made us yearn to have our great series make the move to the next generation. You’ll miss items, miss door knobs (not fun when being chased by monsters), and miss monsters (not fun when being bludgeoned by monsters). And yet, the game is far too dark on the whole. Consider this, for starters: Homecoming boasts positively striking lighting effects, where shadows are cast realistically, rich with depth and mystery. The contrary trend doesn’t end there – the game does everything in its power to quell its own fanfare. the next game to come along, Silent Hill: Downpour. Silent Hill: Homecoming is a study in eliciting ambivalence: it wants so badly to stir emotions and instead taps Silent Hill's last vestige of intrigue in order to give us the canon's hollowest experience until. Rather than sate our thirst with some ingenious new angle to this business of Otherworldliness, new developers Double Helix serve up something that closely resembles the first game only in appearance, and not in spirit, choosing to ramp up the elementary combat and miss the point altogether. Ironically, in coming home we are farthest away from a new path to the original waterfall. I now knew what Silent Hill was, and I met the ‘plights’ of Heather and Henry (of subsequent entries) with indifference. The Question that first game elicited would never again be so pure and resonant:īy the second coming, we knew pretty much what 'this place' was, but the creators asked us to ponder on something else not clearly explained in the original - Question #2: Why us? And James Sunderland’s tragic lot furnished a wholly satisfying if melancholy answer.įollowing James was little more than disappointment. Its world was hell seen through the fragile veneer of normalcy hell which you could touch and through which you could tread when the veneer thinned out completely in places. With each subsequent release in the franchise, the pertinent questions, the questions that matter, lose a little more of their potency.Īnd with this Homecoming, there is precious little remaining.Ī friend of mine remarked that success of the original Silent Hill was an anomaly, and he was on to something. What made it possible to push forward in spite of perfunctory combat and the tedium of door-knob jiggling and dead-ends at the mouths of streets torn asunder. The desire to have them answered was what made wading through the wounded alleys and hateful hallways so compelling. In the beginning, Silent Hill made me ask questions. Silent Hill: Homecoming (Xbox 360) review
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