Silent Hill: Homecoming Review
Player(s): 1
Memory: 756KB
The Silent Hill series has been taking gamers on a wild ride through some of the
most terrifying images and disturbing storylines for some time now. Last year's
Silent Hill Origins for PSP went back to the beginning to show us how the
darkness first spread throughout the town of Silent Hill. Origins marked the
first time that the series has been developed by a developer other than Team
Silent and now another developer has taken up the mantle and brought us a new
next-gen Silent Hill entitled Silent Hill Homecoming.
Silent Hill Homecoming follows the story of Alex Shepherd, who has returned home
from active duty due to the troubling nightmares about his brother. Upon
arriving in his hometown, a mysterious fog now blankets the streets of a once
thriving community. When he arrives at his family's house, Alex is greeted by
his mother, who has lost much of her will to speak due to the disappearance of
Alex's father and brother. Alex sets out on a journey to find his brother and
find out what happened to his hometown.
Homecoming takes much more of an action approach when compared to other Silent
Hill games. Silent Hill Origins increased the combat a good bit, but Homecoming
goes even further by adding a dodge button. Enemy attacks can be dodged by
tapping the dodge button just before an enemy attack connects to move out of the
way of the attack. Directly after dodging, counter attacks may be performed.
Dodging is a big key to survival in this Silent Hill installment since some
enemies can get much more aggressive this time. The dodge feature really shines
during boss battles since many of the bosses have to be fought in an open area
without any sort of cover.
The new dodge feature has a few issues with timing sometimes. Some enemies
simply do not give off a proper warning before an attack, which leaves you
guessing and basically hitting the dodge button at random. Most enemies give off
a warning sign, but some, I'm looking at you Feral, can get way too random with
their attacks to where dodging can be quite hard to perform effectively.
This Silent Hill goes back to the basics in terms of weapons. Instead of collecting an assortment of different weapons like in Origins, the game offers only a few weapons like the older Silent Hills. This isn't a bad setup at all however, since Homecoming makes good use of all weapons that are obtained. There is no weapon that becomes completely useless. All of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. All melee weapons are also used to pass through certain obstacles from time to time, so you'll have to return to a certain weapon eventually even if you don't use it in combat. There are many button tap action commands much like Resident Evil 4, where a button is assigned to a certain action when your character gets close to an area that can be interacted with.
