Silent Hill Homecoming Comments by Kristan Reed

Resi goes from strength to strength this goes from shit to shit.

maybe worth testing if you've never played these games before? i sure haven't, and i'm looking for a good scare....dead space maybe?

Oh.

:(

maybe worth testing if you've never played these games before? i sure haven't, and i'm looking for a good scare....

Get a PS2 and Silent Hill 2&3, on the double!

"US studio Climax"? UK-based I'm afraid :(

EDIT: *sheds a tear for the Silent Hill series*

"or Pro Evolution Soccer taken from Konami TYO"

Isn't that a bad example nowadays? It didn't look that hot this year.

I loved every second of the game, yes it wasnt totally like the old silent hill games but still a very damm solid game, the story was really good, the combat got better without getting boring and repetive (RE4) and the graphics were mostly good.

I really dont get all the negative reviews.

It's nearly like the good old adventure games, everything still got a greater meaning and all the creaturs and locations symbolises stuff to the story... Made me scared which no game has managed to this gen yet (dead space and siren).

A 8.5/10 from me

retibra : dead space is better in gameplay yes... Completely failed to make me scared, the story was boring and you always knew when and where the monsters would come from... Not to mention they were so ugly you would only laugh at them "oh i'm a giant stick monster" and sound design SH wins easily in.

I was horrible dissapointed in dead space, mostly because i thought it would be scary... I still enjoy old adventure games with not much gameplay so SH wins for me. The atmosphere and story is enough for me.

"And whether or not you buy into the idea of controls deliberately crippled to amp up the fear factor"

I don't. Frustration is not the same as fear, and fear generated through a loss of control (in a more general sense) is a bit of a one trick pony. It is much scarier to feel that there IS nothing you can do, rather than just feel you are not ABLE to do what is possible to save yourself.

@vegard

Silent Hill 1 is scary as feck, but it probably looks somewhat dated now. Condemned was pretty scary at times, but overall not as strong a title.

Siren is quite good, if you have a PS3.

Game is out in February, grinderhouse. This is an oddly-delayed import review.

Seems the biggest complaint is that it was too much like previous Silent Hill games. I'll take that!

I bought this on PS3 when it was released in the states after recently buying the Silent Hill collection for PS3 (backwards compatible), I couldn't wait for the next-gen version... I was disappointed. I have to agree with alot of what this review says, also this series for me has always been about the narrative, SH1, 2 & 3 it really is on point, SH2 story still lingers while Homecoming story is very forgettable and not engrossing at all. Bring back Team Silent! What happen to them anyway? I heard some worked on Siren Blood Curse (in my view a better game than homecoming)...

"Maybe Team Silent is quietly beavering away on something new, which is going to blow us away again, but until then horror fans must make do with this fairly decent cover version."

or maybe they've lost their edge like so many other developers

Ouch.

No surprises. I said this as soon as they went with a western developer. On saying that though, I checked out of the Silent Hill hotel part way through 4 and haven't looked back. I won't be vacationing there again.

At least i can cherish the memories of the first 3...

Reviews say Silent Hill 4 was rubbish and I absolutely loved it so I don't pay attention to Silent Hill reviews. In the US...The Silent Hill fans loved it so I'm more inclined to listen to them tbh.

RE blows - not scary is it? RE4 wasn't anyway - just blooming tedious. One thing Silent Hill has that RE doesn't - Akira Yamaoka - the king of atmosphere - and he was a consultant on this game.

I'm still looking forward to this...and Alan Wake.

should be good for 6-10 Ģ then

kangarootoo: "Frustration is not the same as fear, and fear generated through a loss of control (in a more general sense) is a bit of a one trick pony. It is much scarier to feel that there IS nothing you can do, rather than just feel you are not ABLE to do what is possible to save yourself."

I'm glad I'm not the only one feels this about the survival horror genre. Many designers seem to consider their mission to be accomplished if they can get the player to feel tense, but there's a difference between the tension you feel when you're excited and involved in an atmosphere, and the tension you feel when you're being forced to perform an arbitrarily arduous task. One is transporting and enjoyable, and takes skill to construct and evoke; the other is frustrating and annoying, and can be accomplished by any idiot. I remember excitedly renting Silent Hill 2 back in the day, on the back of strong reviews; I was alone in an empty house, with all the lights turned down, ready to immerse myself in psychological horror...for all of half an hour, whereupon I gave up in an irritated strop after trying and failing to enjoy the experience of controlling a character with the handling and mobility of a tank. Since then, I've given the whole genre a wide berth, with the exception of Resident Evil 4, which was more of an action game anyway...

Team Silent don't exist anymore FFS

RIP Silent Hill.

Most of them still works inside konami on PES and MGS so there is a chance...

I played up to the large boss monster in the circluar room next to the lobby in the hotel in Silent Hil town, not yet progressed further past that stage. But have to agree that its certainly not memorable, wanted to like the game but doesnt recall to me SH2 on PS2.

Siren Blood Curse and Dead Space are both also in my view a bit better offering for the PS3 owners, SH Homecoming is still not too bad, but more for the fans. 7/10 so far for me.

Review is pretty much on the ball, sadly.

Blood Curse was brilliant....Now that is a good Horror franchise. If anything is to overtake Silent Hill in the horror stakes then this is it.

Thats good enough for me, probably go with the PC version.

This game was actually good. 6/10 is just a stupid score.

It'a a bit more combat-based that previous SH titles but it's still really good. This is coming from a fan of the series who has played all of them including Origins (which was treated unfairly by critics as well).

I think that a lot of peoples problem is it wasn't made in Glorious Nippon like the others. Stupid dev-fanboys. The same thing would happen if the next Resident Evil was made in the US or Eu.

The first SH game is the best one IMHO.

Sigh. Another example of a developer completely missing the point of what made a game good in the first place.

Look at these monsters. It's like the developers don't even know that the basic premise of the Silent Hill mythos is that the monsters are manifestations of the character's own disturbed mental state. Hence the weird, sexualised, bondage-themed, vulnerable, monsters-raping-other-monsters repression of Silent Hill 2 (the sexy nurses were James' warped, guilty fantasy, they weren't in SH1 and now they've been in every game since for absolutely no reason), and the huge, brutal, oddly phallic and decidedly not so vulnerable monstrosities of SH3. Look at these screenshots. What the hell is that leather-bound, arms-coming-out-of-his-face monster supposed to represent? And what part of this character's damaged psyche is worried about spidery mannequins? If this guy's been in a warzone, there would have been a massive potential for giving him warlike, destroyed enemies, like landmine victims with no apparent limbs, warped suicide bombers or whatever. There could have been potential for some kind of commentary on the devastated emotional state of someone who's seen the horrors of real, modern war, up close.

Bottom line: Silent Hill 2 was better than Jacob's Ladder, or any other horror movie I've seen. The subtlety, the rich emotional content. It was one of the very, very few games I can hold up to a non-gamer and say "Look. See? This is what games have the potential to be". Silent Hill 2 was a genuine, honest-to-god work of art. This? This is just a videogame.

Silent Hill 4 strayed away from the Silent Hill formula and that got slated too - you cannot win with these critics.

i canīt agree with this review. Homecoming is great, far better than The Room or Origins, even better than SH3. It could have been better with a better combat system and maybe taking some more risks but as it is itīs a fantastic SH game. The new camera works very well and story is as good as always. I think reviews are being quite unfair with the game, to be honest.

Jade - SH4 wasn't a Silent Hill game. It was a game using an original IP that got the Silent Hill name tacked onto it at the last minute.

I'm perfectly aware of that...it doesn't mean it's crap though does it. And it was done by Team Silent anyway.

No I'm just saying that's why it got bad reviews - putting "Silent Hill 4" on it and marketing it to Silent Hill fans was bound to make people say "urgh, this isn't Silent Hill! Get it away from me! 5/10". Ironically it would have done a lot better if it didn't have Silent Hill on the box.

I don't particularly want the Silent Hill franchise to be re-invented, so this is a purchase for me.

It'll be nice to get back to exploration rather than fending off irritating ghosts or escorting NPCs past invincible enemies.

I stopped reading after the reviewer complained that the game sticks too closely to the previous games' mechanics. To be honest, if you want an action shooter that has nothing to do with Silent Hill, you can have Resi5. Leave Silent Hill alone. The suped up action clearly robs the game of its dangerous atmosphere as you can now commando roll and grapple with enemies. Resi 4 had almost no atmosphere and wasn't the slightest bit creepy or scary.

Silent Hill is meant to be a survival horror game (for the record, Dead Space -although I love it- is not meant to be a survival horror in the traditional sense)

Also, personally I thought Origins was a pretty good effort. Same goes for 4 which has the scariest feel to it in my opinion. Leave Silent Hill alone, it doesn't need fixing, just a decent team developing it.

I see your PameBoy...It's a shame that that is the case though because it is a really good game.

Don't know nothing about that February release. I have mine on pre-order from Amazon and it says 26/December.

PameBoy : have you actually played homecoming ? All the creatures actually symbolises stuff and so does all the enviroments and crap.

I'm a fanboy of SH but i really think this is better than SH1, The room and Origins.... And pretty much as good as Silent hill 3.

Anyway diffrent taste i guess, i really really like homecoming and i think people should give it a try before saying it is crap just because eurogamer and ign didnt like it... I guess there is no place for this kind of games anymore where you dont

1. Play a sport.
2. Kill a zombie every 2 sec
3. Play it in fps
4. Want to play through the game because of the story

"maybe worth testing if you've never played these games before? i sure haven't, and i'm looking for a good scare....
--
Get a PS2 and Silent Hill 2&3, on the double!"
--

...and throw in an old xbox, with 'Fatal Frame' too - bloody game nearly made me incontinent...
small japanese girl Vs Ghosts, armed with nout but a poxy camera...
'brown-trouser-tastic'.

@actionfitz - I'd say Fatal Frame/ Project Zero is much scarier than Silent Hill (even though I'm a Silent Hill Geek)... especially PZ 2 and 3... and to think people keep saying that the defenseless nature of the main characters and how you control them has little to do with the atmosphere and scariness. Project Zero, Silent Hill and even Siren are perfect examples of how to induce panic when confronted with enemies and dangerous situations and it's almost exclusively to do with the controls.

Fatal Frame was far too scary for me.

/sighs

Silent Hill died after number 3. Origins was a fair stab but didn't do anything particularly remarkable. The less said about the disgrace that was 4 the better. I don't think any SH game will ever beat number 2 - I thoroughly agree with the sentiments voiced already about it being a piece of art (whatever that may be, let's not get into that debate here...) I just can't get excited about Homecoming. /end waffle

"Resi goes from strength to strength this goes from shit to shit. "

Funniest thing I've heard all week - but then I am a fan of the real RE games :)

As for Homecoming, the review is fair. It's not terrible but it's not great either. It's oozing with the SH atmosphere but with the likes of Siren and Dead Space out there Silent Hill needs to raise it's game big time (just please no reboot into a unscary arcade shooter).

The first SH game is the best one IMHO.

QFT

"Konami have been one of the least impressive developers this generation"

Tell that to Hideo Kojima.

Just out of interest, have all you guys shitting on the game and saying the series died at 3 actually played this game?

no

Is this region-free on 360 then?

I don't particularly want the Silent Hill franchise to be re-invented, so this is a purchase for me.

If you really wanted that, then you wouldn't want Homecoming. The biggest issue for me lies EXACTLY where it strays from SH1 and 2, the linearity. I want to actually explore on my own again, coming across scenes and setpieces in corners of the town seemingly by chance, making me feel like -I- discovered them. That's what made the first two games feel immersive and real, and in turn served as contrast to the parts where you -were- restricted and locked in the belly of some dark rusty environment, lending those more weight as well.

But when the entire game is just a long rail of narrow path after path, all that is lost and you're left with a frustrating, empty, rigid movie-like experience that hardly feels real at all. That's where SH is being re-invented ever since 3 (which was alright, but already heading in that direction), and the same can be said for almost all games these days. Just a boring as shit sequence of shooting galleries in a straight line (unless, on the other end of the spectrum, they throw you in a huge computer generated heightmap with objects randomly strewn about, and call that soulless exercise a game).

Surely one of the first rules if you want to make a really great game is don't put the following words in the title:

1. Zero
2 Origins
3. Homecoming
4. '4' (well, apart from a few games eg Resident Evil 4- although I prefer the remake).

Do yourself a favor and go get Dead Space (quality game) instead...SH has always been shit and recycled over & over again!

@Mudtallica

I remember excitedly renting Silent Hill 2 back in the day, on the back of strong reviews; I was alone in an empty house, with all the lights turned down, ready to immerse myself in psychological horror...for all of half an hour, whereupon I gave up in an irritated strop after trying and failing to enjoy the experience of controlling a character with the handling and mobility of a tank. Since then, I've given the whole genre a wide berth, with the exception of Resident Evil 4, which was more of an action game anyway...

... yes, another action horror game in which the developer deliberately restricted the mobility of your character in order to create tension. That's why in RE4 you can't step sideways, you can't walk and shoot at the same time and when aiming your gun moves so painfully slowly.

Personally, I managed to finish Silent Hill 2 despite the slightly clunky controls. I cannot say the same about Resident Evil 4 though... I think I got about a quarter of the way through before giving up.