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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4996 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Konami
• Released on: 2009-02-27
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Platform: Xbox 360
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish

Manufacturer's Description

Amazon.co.uk
Silent Hill: Homecoming marks the debut of the renowned psychological horror series on next-generation consoles. Building upon the series' trademark foundations of atmosphere, adventure and storytelling, it introduces a frightening new and standalone gameplay experience destined to haunt the dreams of both first-time players and those with some experience wandering the famously fog-shrouded streets of the town of Silent Hill and its new sinister sister city Shepherd's Glen.

Survive Shepherd's nightmare

Explore Silent Hill as Alex Shepherd. View larger.

Battle frightening enemies. View larger.

And the unexpectedly frightening. View larger.

Use tools and your wits to puzzle-solve. View larger.

The Story of a Grim Homecoming
Homecoming's story follows the nightmare turned real life of Alex Shepherd, a war veteran returning to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen to investigate the sudden disappearance of his kid brother, Josh. From Shepherd's Glen to the foggy streets of dreaded Silent Hill, Alex must face the darkest of horrors in order to find his brother. Struggling with his own grip on reality, it's here that Alex must unravel the mystery behind his nightmares, discover the truth behind his brother's disappearance, and confront the evil that takes hold of his own flesh and blood in the process.

Improved Gameplay
Firmly steeped in the Survival-Horror genre its series has been pivotal in establishing, action in Homecoming remains based on exploration of the terrors residing in the communities surrounding Toluca lake and puzzle-solving skill as a means of surviving them. But to its credit game developer Double Helix refuses to rest on past laurels, choosing instead to include new more accessible gameplay in the hopes of gaining a new audience for Homecoming. Examples of this gameplay include:

Next-Gen Visual and Spatial Features - Every sequel seeks reinvent the namesake game in their series. Homecoming does this in three ways, by adding the ability to toggle between a traditional third-person view and an action-oriented first-person view; by adding fully 3-D physics to the game, creating a realistic range of motion for any and all objects impacted by the player; and by adding transitions or "Hell States" that alter the game's physical landscape at points in the game both in real-time and via cinematics. All three actively change the way players see themselves and in the process create a whole new game experience.

An Enhanced Combat System - Adding to the standard knives, axes, pipes and other melee weapons that made up the arsenal of previous Silent Hill games, Homecoming adds a wide variety of guns and explosives. Fitting with the military back-story of protagonist Alex Shephard, these weapons can be wielded in attacks weighted as weak or strong and can be strung together in combos to stun or incapacitate opponents, who can then be taken out with powerful finishing moves. With practice players can even perform evasive ducks and rolls and follow these up with counterattacks. But remember that enemy AI has also been significantly improved to compensate for your higher degree of combat prowess, and that it's not uncommon to battle multiple monsters simultaneously.

Key Features:

• Enter the next chapter of Silent Hill as you delve deeper in the tormented history of the town and learn of the evil that surrounds Toluca Lake.
• Silent Hill: Homecoming is the 1st Silent Hill game designed for Xbox 360.
• From the murky fog to the ominous shadows, all-new next-gen graphics bring Silent Hill to life like never before.
• Survive the denizens of Silent Hill with an all-new enhanced combat system that gives you a wide array of attacks and counters.
• Solve the treacherous and deadly puzzles of Silent Hill to discover its darkest secrets.
• Silent Hill: Homecoming will feature an all-new soundtrack by acclaimed series composer Akira Yamaoka.

Exceptional Replay Value
Although Alex Shepherd is the only playable character in Silent Hill: Homecoming there are many other important characters--some returning from earlier games in the series--that can have a dramatic impact on the game. When interacting with these, players are given a choice in how to proceed via dialog trees. Will you take the short route letting only the search for your brother guide you or will you explore the nooks and crannies that make up the mystery of Silent Hill hidden in the small talk you share with non-playable characters? The choice is yours, with different paths providing for possible alternate endings each time you delve into the game.

A Frighteningly Masterful Soundtrack
All games in the Survival-Horror genre seek to create tension and unease through sound and Homecoming does this masterfully through the compositions and sound engineering of Akira Yamaoka. Having scored the music and effects for dozens of video game titles, including all of the previous games in the Silent Hill series, Yamaoka is considered a master at using sound to illicit a response.

Product Description
Follow the story of Alex Shepherd, who is returning to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen to investigate the sudden disappearance of his brother. From Shepherd's Glen to the foggy streets of Silent Hill, Alex must face the darkest of horrors in order to find his brother. Struggling with his own grip on reality, Alex must unravel the mystery behind his nightmares, discover the truth behind his brother's and father's disappearances, and confront the evil that has taken hold of his own flesh and blood.

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Customer Reviews

I wasn't expecting much, but it still managed to disappoint me.
It's important not to think of this as a "proper" Silent Hill game. The team that made the first four instalments left the series behind in 2004, and it's now a franchise. I think Konami have made a huge mistake in giving the series to Double Helix, as the result is a hollow, half-decent cover version of Silent Hill that's superficially similar, but completely loses the feeling of the other games.

It's impossible to shake that feeling (or lack of) off. I constantly felt through this game that I was playing a budget imitation of the old games. It feels like fan fiction turned into a very polished game, but one that's drastically lacking in substance. It's like eating Sainsbury's Basic Tortilla Chips instead of Doritos. It's never going to be as good, for all it's individual merits, it's not the real thing.

Specifically, the game lacks subtlety. Where the Japanese games were slow, and relied on a constant looming feeling of menace and made you weak, this game puts you in control of a soldier and puts you in a relatively comfortable, fear-less world that's more inconvenient than it is frightening. The incredibly lifeless, irritating and out-of-context combat system (tap light, light, hard, dodge, repeat, repeat, repeat, die, reload, repeat, etc, forever) is so horrifically riddled with collision detection issues and utterly moronic design flaws that it nearly single handedly kills the game for me. Every single enemy encounter is a chore, and there are far too many of them.

I didn't care about the story much, either. A limp love sub plot and wildly out of context buddy-cop sidekick add more annoyance to a plot that's predictable and feels pretentious in it's attempt to pull the wool over your eyes. It's also stylistically closer to Christophe Gans' terrible movie adaptation of the games than it is to the games themselves. It's like the game of the movie of the game - a washed-out photocopy of a photocopy that's lost all the meaning of the original. Silent Hills 1 - 4 succeeded by being sufficiently different to each other that they felt relevant to the series' progression (each one had a unique feel, especially 2 and The Room). In a way, by trying too hard to imitate bits of those games, Homecoming misses the point and makes itself irrelevant.

If you're a Silent Hill fan like me, you'll buy this and it'll almost certainly make you sad. It's unfortunate - if it hadn't used the Silent Hill name, it would have been a half-decent game. It's the fact that it sets such high expectations with the name, then dramatically falls short of them with the content.

I'm not saying it's a terrible game, it has it's good moments - hence the 3 stars - but it's a terrible sequel to Silent Hill. There are cutscenes and ideas in the game that are entertaining, and some of the voice work is actually quite good. There's nothing fun though. The broken combat system makes sure of that.

Silent Hill: Homecoming Review by: SamOfSuthSax
Silent Hill: Homecoming
Review by: SamOfSuthSax

Graphics: 3/10 "Silent Hill 3 Looked better than this!"Silent Hill 3 (PS2)
Sound: 7/10 "Silent hill isn't actually supposed to be silent!"
Gameplay: 3/10 "One track tedium with the dead leaves of a combat system!"
Story: 1/10 "Story? Story? Here story? Good boy?"
Multiplayer: 0/10 "No multiplayer play Resident Evil 5 instead."Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360)
Next Gen: 2/10 "Press blue to stop having your face eaten"
Dumb Down: 8/10 "Easy puzzles and no side story's"

Overall Rating: 3/10 "If Silent Hill was Alien this would be Alien 3"

UNFAITHFUL
If you liked Silent Hill one or Silent Hill two then this is not the game for you, the people who made those games went on to make Forbidden Siren 1, 2 & 3, if you want to play a Silent Hill like game with as much intelligence and creativity as Silent Hill, then go and buy any Forbidden Siren game.
Forbidden Siren (PS2)
Forbidden Siren 2 (PS2)
Siren Blood Curse - BDR (PS3)

CORRUPT
This is the bad game of the bad movie of a good game, literally they have thrown out the idea of creativity and intelligence in favour of crowbar-ing aspects of the bad movie into this game, what's even worse than this is the way that they have used good original ideas from silent hill games (namely Silent Hill 2) and through the movie adaptation and their own takes on these good ideas, they have turned them into mindless trash or even ruined them completely, making anyone who enjoyed the ideas in the original games feel like they are being used and abused.

!!!!HERE COME THE SPOILERS!!!!

QUADRANGLE HEAD
Yes Pyramid head makes a return but sadly this once elusive "Ridley Scott's Alien" like creature has been turned into something you would find in a teen slasher movie, also making a return are the skinless dogs and the nurses but again unlike the old versions of these enemies they have been altered into a shadow of their former selves.

BAD DOG
The dogs that populate the town are seemingly similar to the old ones, until you try to outrun one, (something that is essential because you never have enough ammo or health to take them on as they re-spawn) trying to outrun a dog now results in one of them jumping on your back and knocking you to the ground, not so bad you might think but if you are outrunning one dog in this game you will inevitably be outrunning three or four, this means as soon as you have got the first one off your back another one jumps you immediately and you end up having to fight every enemy that's been chasing you.

NIGHT NURSE
It's a similar story with the nurses they have been taken from the movie not the old game, they look exactly like the ones in the movie and also sadly act like them as well, as soon as you turn your light off they freeze, I managed to walk right up to one and push against her without any response at all.

PUTTING THE HAM IN HAMMER HEAD
The new enemies in the game are ridiculous, hammerhead shark man, sword crab man, smog man, that guy from the bathroom scene and the gasmask guys from the movie. Most of the enemies in the game are fairly slow moving and would be easy to avoid if you hadn't been locked you in a room with them or their collision boxes weren't so big that you couldn't get past them in a hallway.

SNEAK `EM DOWN
Unlike the old games you cant sneak around, although some enemies respond to your torchlight (like the nurses, see above) it makes little difference as most of the enemies you encounter are blocking vital passageways, spawned right behind you or in a too well lit area to have it make any difference, making sneaking a totally pointless venture.

HACK `N ROLL
The combat system in the game has been altered and like a lot of the things changed from the original they didn't make it better, the biggest difference is that they have removed the ability to block, something that has worked well for the previous four silent hill games. Now instead of block you have "dodge" what this means is that you lock onto your target and wait for it to attack you then press a button to "dodge" out of the way. This system doesn't work at all, the only time it would actually work is if you were in a large open area with only one enemy to fight! As soon as there is more than one enemy it makes the "dodge" system totally useless, as you roll around on the floor dodging one enemies attack the other one hits you, its like rolling around on the floor in front of your enemies while they beat you to death, even with one enemy in a small hallway you end up rolling against the wall while they stab you in the face as there is simply not enough room to "dodge" out of the way.

SLEEPY HILL
Most of the game is running around collecting keys or pressing switches, this get really tedious very soon as there isn't anything outside of the storyline to explore, in fact exploring dead ends in this game is not worth while as there are never any items or anything worth seeing in them, you are usually being chased by enemies so stopping to investigate dead ends invariably gets you hurt as well. The game has no discernable storyline or atmosphere and no emotional content at all, in fact they even managed to take the deeply moving euthanasia idea from Silent Hill two and turn it into a scene like something from "The Saw", less emotional content and more gore for gore sake.

INSULTING
This game is an insult to all the previous Silent Hill games, especially the first two as it constantly references and ruins everything gamers liked about them, this Silent Hill game is totally betraying the creative and intelligent ideas that made the first two games so popular that they created the Silent Hill franchise in the first place.

If you want a good horror game buy Resident Evil 5 or Forbidden Siren and leave this piece of trash on the shelf where it belongs.
Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360)
Siren Blood Curse - BDR (PS3)

Really Disappointing
I waited to get this game as it wasn't one I was sure about, after it came down in price and I read some favourable reviews I thought 'why not?'. The only Silent Hill game I have played other than this was the first one on the Playstation many years ago.... I loved it, it scared me half to death and I remember it fondly. This game is just like that one! By that I mean the graphics are that of a 10 year old Playstation game, the gameplay (and I use that word very loosely) is the same, the story... I'll be honest it hasn't really got one. A small child could write a better plot.

It's not that this game isn't scary, because it is. It builds an ok atmosphere, has decent sound and some of the scenes are a bit creepy. BUT and it is a capital 'BUT' this is in no way better than the first Silent Hill. I honestly wonder why in a world where games such as Dead Space exist that games developers can still get away with this tired & dated nonsense.

Please don't buy this you will only encourage them!