Game: Silent Hill: Homecoming Publisher: Konami Developer: Double Helix Systems: PS3, 360 N.A. Release Date: September 30, 2008 (PS3, 360) Score: 9.2 (Out of 10)

Silent Hill: Homecoming Review

S ilent Hill: Homecoming, the fifth official game in the franchise, is a hard one to look at objectively. Officially announced at the Electronic Entertainment Exposition in 2007, fans' jubilation over a fifth Silent Hill quickly turned to consternation when they found out that it wasn't going to be handled by Team Silent, the internal Konami team who has worked on every Silent Hill release since the very first. Insult was added to injury when they realized the group that would be handling it weren't even going to be Japanese, but rather the American company The Collective (later merged with Shiny Entertainment to form a company called Double Helix). The fear was that an American company wouldn't know how to create a Silent Hill game as frightening or psychologically complex as Konami's own internal team could. Their fears were allayed only slightly when it was confirmed that series composer Akira Yamaoka would be on board to help ease the transition.

However, if any company would be right to treat an established franchise respectably, it would be The Collective. In 2002 they surprised everyone by creating a Buffy The Vampire Slayer game for the Xbox that garnished universal acclaim for it's innovative game engine, excellent story, faithfulness to the franchise, and for being just plain fun to play. But after Buffy put them on the map, their future efforts with other people's IPs were a bit of a roller coaster. Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb would have been everything that Buffy was and more... if there hadn't been some horrible, game crashing bugs left in the code when they shipped it. Their game based on The DaVinci Code got middling reviews, although to be fair reviewers noted that they made a game based on a book with no action in it just about as fun as it could be, with some great puzzles. Only in their collaboration with urban fashion designer Marc Ecko, Marc Ecko's Getting Up did they recapture the innovation that had won them such acclaim with Buffy, creating a game that combined death-defying free running (also known as Parkour) with fun graffiti tagging mechanics. But would they be up to handling a game in one of the most frightening psychological horror franchises known to man?

The answer is: mostly. Let's start from the beginning. The game centers on war veteran Alex Sheppard, who, after being released from a military hospital, returns to his home town of Sheppard's Glen to check up on his little brother Josh. Alex has been bothered by bad dreams of his little bro, one of which we are treated to in the game's introductory level. There are just two problems. The first is that Sheppard's Glen is on Toluca Lake, the same lake next to which the town of Silent Hill crouches. The second is that when Alex arrives, he finds out that Sheppard's Glen seems to have been swallowed by the same eerie darkness and mist that afflicts Silent Hill. Even worse, it turns out that Josh is missing, his mother nearly catatonic, and that when his father went to look for Josh, he disappeared too. In fact, most of Sheppard's Glen seems to be missing, having disappeared into the shadows and mist that have enveloped the town. It soon becomes clear that Alex doesn't give a toss for his parents or the rest of the townsfolk (there seems to be some bad blood there), but that he feels responsible for his brother's safety and is determined to save him. To do so he'll have to unravel the sordid history of Sheppard's Glen, its ancient link to the town of Silent Hill, and how his family is tied into the whole mess.

Of course that's easier said than done, seeing as how Sheppard's Glen has more in common with Silent Hill that just darkness and fog; it also seems to have adopted some of it's otherworldly horrors. While the town seems to be having a bit of a shortage of townsfolk, it has no shortage of screwed up and dangerous monsters. Here the game really shines; the monsters are beautifully designed, fairly diverse, and almost always terrifying. The famous nurses have returned, bearing the sexed-up facelift of their 2005 Silent Hill movie incarnation (which in turn borrowed from Silent Hill 2). Also making an appearance from the Silent Hill movie are the Swarm, nasty little cockroaches of doom who burrow their way through floors and walls to latch on to Alex's noggin for a bit of a nosh, but who are usually disposed of fairly quickly and easily. There is also the ubiquitous incarnation of the "zombie dog" that has been part of the survival horror experience since the first Resident Evil game, here taking the form of a skinless and eyeless pooch called the Feral. Other monsters include the Needler, a spider-like corpse thing that tries to skewer Alex on scalpel-like appendages, the Lurker, whose legs are fused together and drags itself around on meat hook-like finger claws, and Smogs, who bear more than a passing resemblance to the "Straightjacket" enemies from Silent Hill 2, though here they are more charred and ember-y, spewing choking black smoke that can kill Alex from a distance. Rounding out the menagerie are two larger, more dangerous monster types: the Schism, which is more or less humanoid but have razor-sharp blade-like hammer heads, and the Siams, which are huge, unholy mixtures of man and woman, fused into an S&M mash-up of crushing limbs and black leather. Saucy.

The good news is that Alex, being a soldier, is a far more competent monster basher than previous Silent Hill protagonists. This is most obvious when using firearms. When aiming, the game goes into an over-the-shoulder view reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 or Gears of War, in which an aiming reticule appears in the middle of the screen. This allows Alex to make precision attacks on enemy's weak spots, such as a Needler's head or the Smog's smoldering lungs. Besides the expected handgun and shotgun, Alex will also find a rifle for longer range attacks. But since this is survival horror, ammo for the guns is relatively scarce, which means most of the time Alex will have to get a little more "hands on", which is where melee weapons come in. Besides the combat knife that Alex starts out with, and the piece of broken steel pipe that he comes across early in the game, he eventually finds the wonderful, wonderful fire ax. Each weapon has its own uses, since while the knife is slow it is quick and easier to chain together combos and keep the monsters at bay, while the pipe and ax are slower but have the advantage of reach and increased damage. For each of the weapons, both firearms and melee, you will eventually find a more powerful upgrade that helps to offset the greater difficulty later in the game. But all Silent Hill protagonists have had weapons; the difference here is that Alex actually knows how to use them. Besides being faster and more competent with his attacks, Alex is able, with careful timing, to dodge enemies attacks and use this to exploit breaches in their defenses, striking while they are off balance from their failed attacks. Each enemy type has their own patterns and weaknesses to exploit, and finding each enemies rhythms and figuring out their timing and which weapon to use to best defeat them is one of the great joys of the combat system. It also feels really natural and organic, as each enemy is devastating when you first encounter them, but become easier to take down once you become more familiar with them. To keep Alex from having too much of an advantage, the enemies have been given an upgrade in both speed and AI, making death by combat a lot easier to come by if you aren't careful and patient. Another welcome addition is the cool looking finishing moves for each enemy and each weapon; if you get your timing right and exploit their weaknesses, Alex will first stun an enemy, and then finish it off in an impressively bloody and violent way. One of the best is one of the first you'll see, as Alex beats down a twitching dog and then jams the broken end of his steel pipe through it's head, having to use his foot to wrench the pipe free from the skull with a satisfying slurp. Another move has Alex hamstringing a nurse, sending her to her knees where he decapitates her with a follow up swing. What fun! Figuring out how to pull off these finishing moves with each weapon type with each enemy serves to spice up the combat even after you've gotten the hang of it.

The environments are diverse and interesting, ranging from the expected Hospital level to graveyards, underground tunnels, and an abandoned, burned out wreckage of a hotel. Early in the game you are more or less bound to Sheppard's Glen and it's environs (with a few interesting exceptions), but later, as the town's ties to Silent Hill become more and more apparent, the narrative takes you to the root of Toluca Lake's evil. And, true to Silent Hill's past incarnations, there is a twisted and industrial "dark side" version of most of the environments as well; darker, creepier, and more deadly then their mist-shrouded versions. Unlike in almost every instance in previous Silent Hill games however, the transition from "real" world to dark side takes place while Alex is awake and aware, which means that we get to see this transition in all of it's visual glory. This is yet another element that was borrowed from the movie, though in this case this is a good thing, because this transition is one of the best graphical effects in the game. Regardless, whether you are in the light or dark side, the game offers a good blend of new and familiar environments, even making the clichéd sewer levels more interesting. One complaint of many early reviewers of the game was the number of locked or jammed doors in Silent Hill, making the game world feel cramped and linear. However, this is not only true to the franchise, it is absolutely necessary. With two full towns and all of their exterior and interior doors, the programmers could be working from now until doomsday to make every single building and room available for exploration and interesting in terms of visuals and narrative. In games like Metal Gear Solid 4 and Grand Theft Auto 4, there isn't even the choice to interact with every single door and building in the game, because it would be nuts to expect that, but apparently Silent Hill is held to different standards. One other neat element is how certain areas that were inaccessible earlier become accessible later as you discover new weapons that you can use as tools to open them. For example, the steel pipe can also be used to pry open certain gates, lockers and cabinets, the ax to hack through boarded up doors, and the knife to cut through curtains, paintings, and meaty skin apertures in Silent Hill's dark side. This helps to alleviate some of the tediousness of returning to certain areas more than once.

The puzzles in the game are also well thought out and clever, feeling like they are tied into the game world more than in some of the previous games. For example, there is one early puzzle where you have to figure out how to rewire a breaker to activate an elevator, and another where you need to figure out how to knock out power to a facility so that you can get through an electrified gate. The downside of this is that though they are more realistic than in previous games, this robs the game of some of it's "otherworldy" elements, as in previous games the creepy word games and puzzles felt like some supernatural force, and in some cases the character's own psyche, were trying to keep them from progressing. Since the puzzles in this game are more realistic and grounded in reality, it doesn't really impart that same feeling.

But one of the best elements of Homecoming are it's grand and beautiful boss battles, which are a mixture of combat and puzzle. These monsters are huge and impressive, requiring more than just a ton of lead and an itchy trigger finger to bring down, more resembling nightmare versions of Legend of Zelda boss battles than those of previous Silent Hill games. One is a giant, tree-like carrion beast called Sepulcher, capable of crushing a man-sized foe into a meaty paste. It's cyclopean bulk is supported by twitching, body-bag like counterbalances that are attached to the greater beast by chains and meat hooks. In order to take the suspended beast on directly, Alex must first destroy the body bags, which sends the behemoth crashing down to the ground, where Alex can deal with him directly. Another is a nightmare entity resembling the fevered dream of a porcelain doll; it order to get to it's vulnerable, meaty center, Alex has to first chip away at the hard porcelain armor protecting it. These are just two examples, but each of the game's five boss battles are unique and require some thought and reflexes to go with all the bloodshed.

The story of Silent Hill: Homecoming is one of the best of the series, although this isn't apparent to the casual player looking to fly through the game from beginning to end as quickly as possible. The reason for this is that much of the overarching story is complex and hidden in documents scattered throughout the game world. Only by taking the time to explore the game thoroughly do you get the whole picture, at which point it becomes clear how well the whole thing is tied together. Everything, from the monster design to the reason that every clock in the town is stopped at 2:06 is carefully tied to the narrative, giving even the smallest detail meaning if you dig far enough. Unfortunately, this brilliant cohesion isn't obvious to casual players, who will be left confused with the "bland" narrative. Unfortunately, giving examples of this will only serve to ruin the game's mysteries, but rest assured the all the psychological complexity of previous games and more so is there for those willing to dig.

Visually, the game is somewhat of a mixed bag, though it is pretty impressive if held to no other standards than its own. It can't stand up against billion dollar titles like Metal Gear Solid 4, Halo 3, or Gears of War 2, but it also didn't have the budget or staff of either of those games. The atmosphere and environments are beautifully rendered, resulting in a game world that is steeped in ambiance and more realistically creepy than any other horror game out there. The game borrows heavily from the visual style of the movie, but that is actually a good thing, because the gorgeous visuals were the movie's biggest redeeming feature. The look of the nurses and the bugs, the transition from real world to dark side, and even the chilling appearance of series favorite Pyramid Head (whose presence in this game was hotly debated by fans but used to excellent effect in the game's narrative, and he looks frickin' amazing) were intrinsically tied to the movie, as is the look of the sign marking Silent Hill's border and Alex's reference to the substance falling from the sky being ash (in the first Silent Hill game, Harry thinks it is snowing). One really cool thing that they borrowed from the movie was the nurses' behavior and how they reacted to light. If your flashlight was on, the nurses would rush you, swinging the scalpels in a deadly arc, but at least you could see them coming. But if you turned your light off, though this made it harder to navigate, the nurses would stand as still as creepy statues, allowing you to ambush them or sneak by unnoticed, so long as you stayed quiet. But if you bumped into something in the dark (aided by the game's great physics engine), they would burst into frenzied and deadly motion. All in all the game's use of visual elements from the movie is nicely done, and adds to the impressive atmosphere. The monsters, as previously mentioned, looked amazing, both in their visuals and in the way they moved. Character models were where the game took it's biggest complaints; some characters, like Alex and his semi-love interest Elle, are well-rendered and look great (although teeth look a little freaky here and there), while minor characters, like Curtis and Mayor Bartlett, lack detail and fidelity. But for the most part, the graphics are impressive, even if they lack the "wow" factor of modern triple-A titles.

One area where Silent Hill has always garnered praise is through the audio, composed and mixed by Akira Yamaoka, and this game is no exception. The subdued audio really lends to the game's ambiance, with Yamaoka's signature mixture of traditional and industrial music and sound fitting the game's feel and themes perfectly. The sound design is also as impressive as ever, with the sound effects and ambient noise perfect for drawing the player in and immersing them in the game world. However, it must be said that in terms of Silent Hill theme music, Yamaoka has yet to recapture the magic of the first two games, whose memorable opening themes set the standard for the whole genre. Not coincidentally, it was in the third game that Yamaoka added a female vocalist to many of his pieces, which robbed them of some of their power by making them seem like wanna-be pop tunes. For those fond of the vocals, female vocalist Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and male vocalist Joe Romersa both return for performances in this outing. Voice acting in the game is almost universally excellent. While there are no standout "Oscar" moments in terms of the voice acting, the characters are realistically voiced and the actors give nuanced performances, in all cases an improvement on previous games in the series.

An aside: it seems Homecoming was heavily influenced by the best of other horror franchises besides Silent Hill, but in subtle and well-implemented ways. There is the aforementioned similarity in the use of firearms to Resident Evil 4, which is a welcome addition, and completely necessary in light of the new free-roaming camera and 360-degree controls. There is the new timing and combo-based melee combat, which is the result of the heavily modified "Slayer" engine at the heart of the controls; a remnant of the superfluous Buffy game that brought The Collective into the public eye. But far more interesting is the game's similarities to Midway's under appreciated and lamented action horror franchise, The Suffering. Like in The Suffering, the game has a free-roaming camera and a fully explorable environment, rather than the fixed camera and linear paths through the environments as in previous Silent Hill games. The control scheme is also borrowed directly from that game, with camera controlled by one analog stick and movement controlled by the other. But far more similar is the monster design, in which each monster has a "theme" that is far less tied to the character than in previous Silent Hill games, and more tied to the narrative. But the Needler is very reminiscent of The Suffering's "Slayer", the Lurker to The Suffering's "Burrower", and so on... to go into too much detail would do a disservice to the story and monster design of both games. Another element that is reminiscent of The Suffering is the way that the game determines which of the game's multiple endings; in both cases it ways the moral choices that you make throughout the game and then uses them to determine whether or not your Alex's actions were just or unjust, evil or good, sane or insane. There are five endings in the game, each one of which is tied to a series of moral decisions that you have to make through the game's new dialogue system; different combinations of these decisions result in a different ending, some of the less obvious of which are really interesting.

In the end the game ends up being an impressive affair whether you get it for the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 (the PC version, which will be available for download through Valve Software's "Steam" digital download service, has yet to appear at the time of this writing), though there are some issues with it's transition to the next generation of gaming systems. If you compare it side by side with previous games in the series, it definitely appears to be "the odd man out" in terms of it's overall look and feel. The game world feels more realistic and less otherworldly, even in the "dark side" areas. For example, in previous games you would see weird and shadowy monsters moving just beyond where your light would reach, performing strange, cryptic and symbolic acts for no reason other than to enhance the feeling that you were trapped in another world with strange, occult laws. Another example of this is the aforementioned lack of "otherworldliness" and illogical symbolism in the game's puzzles. Previous games had puzzles in which you had to solve a puzzle in order to perform some symbolic act to progress. Homecoming doesn't do that (at least not often); since Alex and his narrative are tied more to Sheppard's Glen and its own dark history than to the town of Silent Hill, Alessa, and the cult of Sammael, the game and it's symbolism are similarly more personal and realistic than the other games. In some ways this seems a loss, but it makes sense for the story they were trying to tell. Double Helix was kind of stuck between a rock and hard place; if they tried to make the game exactly like it's predecessors, people would be upset because the game lacked innovation. If they changed the formula, they would be attacked by the fans for "ruining" the Silent Hill feel of the game. All in all they did a good job of striking a balance between the new and the familiar, but still managed to catch flack from both camps. But if you judge Silent Hill: Homecoming on it's own merits, you will find an impressive, viscerally exciting game with a great story, a brilliant if subtly nuanced story, and one of the most impressive and pervasively creepy atmospheres in the genre. And really, what more could you ask for?