STUDIO: Helix Games
RELEASE DATE: September 30, 2008
CONSOLE: XBox 360
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: PS3
DEVELOPER: Konami
GENRE: Survival Horror
PLAYERS: 1
ESRB RATING: M

Finish decorating that float and break out your spirit stick because it's homecoming season in Silent Hill, that special time of year when all the undead ladies trade in their nurse uniforms for cheerleader outfits and Pyramid Head begins his annual run for Homecoming King. (Anyone have the balls to vote against him?) Seriously though, this fall, we've been presented with Silent Hill: Homecoming for the XBox 360 and PS3, a new title in the long-running horror franchise, brought to us by Silent Hill newbies Double Helix Games, marking only the second time that a SH game has been produced by anyone other than Konami's original Team Silent (the first was 2007's PSP game Silent Hill: Origins). How did the new guys handle taking the reins of possibly the most famous horror series in modern gaming? The short answer is not bad, though there are definitely some big stumbling blocks in their attempt to show that a Western studio could tap into the same sense of paranoid creepiness that made the original Silent Hill such an icon in the industry.

Is Silent Hill: Homecoming scary? Not really. Granted, Double Helix does a really admirable job creating a claustrophobic, spooky atmosphere, but there aren't really any of the pee-your-pants, "Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod" moments that made the earlier Hill games so memorable. In fact, the main thing I noticed while playing Homecoming is that, to me, the whole game seems like a concerted effort on Konami's part to produce a very accessible, very newbie-friendly access point into the Silent Hill universe that goes out of its way to blend in popular aspects from almost every SH game and even Christophe Gans' 2006 film. Keep in mind, aside from 2007's Origins - which was a prequel PSP game - this is the first major console Silent Hill game to come out after the surprisingly well-received (in some circles) and profitable Silent Hill movie. In terms of look and gameplay, with Silent Hill: Homecoming, it definitely feels like Konami is very purposely trying to blend the quirky surrealism of the original games with more combat-based Western gameplay and storytelling to appeal to new fans who might be discovering the Silent Hill universe through the movie. (The transition moments between the real world and the Otherworld look almost EXACTLY like they did in Gans' movie.)

Not that accessibility is always a bad thing. While some of the other Silent Hill games have had storylines that you couldn't decipher with Robert McKee and a Rosetta Stone, Homecoming is almost charmingly linear, a change that has both its ups (the story is much more engrossing than recent chapters) and downs (not a lot of surprises or scares). The storyline actually rationalizes some of the changes in the combat engine by this time giving us an Army veteran as our protagonist, which is a fairly clever way to explain away the newfound abilities to strafe and dodge attacks. The plot revolves around Alex Shepherd, a Special Ops vet, who comes back to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen - which is, unfortunately, right across the lake from Silent Hill - to find his mother half-crazed and his father and brother MIA. As he begins his investigation into this supernatural missing persons case, Alex quickly finds himself caught up in the Lovecraftian madness of Silent Hill, particularly a mystery involving connections between the demon-worshipping Order (a cult very familiar to SH fans) and the founding fathers of Shepherd's Glen. Thematically, the story fits in well within the Silent Hill canon, although certain aspects ignore fairly big continuity points from the previous games.

As I mentioned, the story is pretty straight-forward and the scares are mild to medium, so the big remaining question surrounding Silent Hill: Homecoming is - what's the gameplay like? In a word, frustrating. There are some changes in the overall design that work beautifully. For example, I was a big fan of the new camera controls, which allow you to move with one stick and adjust the camera with the other. I probably got stuck against less invisible barriers in Homecoming, thanks to the new camera, than in any other of the previous SH chapters. (Oh, and the new inventory system is very user-friendly and easily accessed in sticky situations.) However, the new combat engine is definitely going to be the "love it or hate it" aspect of Homecoming, and I definitely leaned more towards "hate" after playing through the game once. Fine, you came up with a story reason to make the lead character a military man.

That's great. But it doesn't mean that combo-based brawling is a great fit for the Silent Hill universe. The SH games have always been about survival - they're closer cousins to Metal Gear Solid than Halo - yet Double Helix constantly throws you into situations where combat is 100% required and it's almost impossible to disengage. In most reviews of Homecoming, you'll hear gamers bitching about the "dodge" function, and there's a lot to complain about. OK, you can have some fun once you perfect some of the new combination attacks - which, again, feel out of place in a Silent Hill game - but you're very often thrown into melee after melee where, if you can't perfectly dodge multiple attackers in close quarters, you're toast and thrown back to one of several awkwardly placed save points. The combat/survival schizophrenia is even more apparent when it comes to supplies. The SH games have a tradition of keeping weapons sparse - no dual-wielding machine guns allowed - but the new emphasis on combat and the (at-times) overwhelming melee situations had me constantly swearing up and down that I couldn't find more ammo for my gun. Don't give me a Porsche and only let me have one gallon of gas at a time. Either make this a full-on "Silent Hill Goes Military" game, with ammo and grenades everywhere, making Silent Hill less like Ridley Scott's Alien and more like James Cameron's Aliens, or borrow more from Metal Gear and turn the game into a stealth survival experience. This is essentially a playable horror movie, guys, and, in slasher flicks, the smart ones run.

But, gripes about the new combat focus aside, like I mentioned, the game is a very accessible introduction to the Silent Hill universe and I could very much understand 360 and PS3 players who are only passingly familiar with the SH series wanting to give Homecoming a shot. While it never replicates any of the truly shudder-worthy moments of some of the previous games, there is a well-composed overall atmosphere to the game, which should appease (though not fully satisfy) any horror fans, and the story goes to less bizarre places than many of the earlier chapters. (Though I hear that the obligatory "alien abduction" ending IS an option in Homecoming.) But longtime fans of Silent Hill might definitely have some problems with Double Helix's "fight over flight" focus and some really underwhelming visuals. (The texturing is extremely unimpressive in places, especially around water.)

All in all, this new addition to the Silent Hill canon doesn't make a bad homecoming date, but don't expect to go all the way and keep your eye on the horizon for something better to take to prom.