From the faceless, shuffling and lumbering nurses to the clawed, crawling lurkers, and bizarre, Smogs, seemingly racked by constant pain, each foe is excellently modelled, and behaves in different ways, requiring different tactics to defeat.įollowing with Silent Hill‘s formula, the game features a lot of exploration and puzzle solving, as well as a fair bit of combat. Then there are the monsters… As ever, these are of the distorted, human meat bag variety, and all of them look sick, creepy and cool in equal doses. Almost every person you meet exudes a kind of chilling indifference to the obvious horrific events, leaving you to wonder what’s really going on, and the story is helped along by the dialog, which, although not Oscar winning, fits in perfectly, and is a huge improvement over previous entries in the series. The game’s characters look great, and suitably ominous. After all, nothing’s quite as scary as something in the room with you that you can’t see. This could be annoying to some, but it only serves to heighten the suspense and fear. Alex’s trusty torch is often your only light source, and it’s no floodlight, leaving much of your environment steeped in shadow. I suspect the game may be far too dark for some people, and playing around with your TV’s settings may be required, but at the end of the day, this is supposed to be the case. The use of lighting is handled well, with light sources, such as Alex’s torch, casting moving shadows, and the old-film grain filter makes the whole thing look suitably atmospheric. Graphically, Homecoming is great, and Double Helix has obviously taken plenty of inspiration from the series, specifically the first game. This is the first Silent Hill to grace the current generation hardware, and while the game has been passed from Silent Hill‘s original Japanese developers to US-based Double Helix, the title hasn’t lost any of its feel, and right from the off, this is pure Silent Hill, right down to the rust-covered ‘otherworld’, and the ominous air raid siren that signifies the imminent arrival in the hellish alternate reality. Being a good guy at heart, Alex decides to find said lost sibling, and begins a nightmarish journey to the truth, with predictably gruesome and downright disturbing revelations being served up. Entering his family home, he finds his mother in a near catatonic state, and discovers that his little brother has gone missing. The town is silent, eerie, covered in dense fog, and all’s clearly not right. The big question is does Homecoming bring the Hill back to form?Īs new protagonist Alex Shepherd, a soldier who’s just been discharged following an injury, you arrive (after a brief prologue of sorts) at Shepherd’s Glen, Alex’s home town. Okay, so the series lost it a little with the lukewarm Silent Hill 4: The Room, but this was an exception to an otherwise classic series. So, while Resident Evil has taken the more action-oriented route all the way to the superlative Resi 4, and hopefully, just as excellent Resi 5 (review coming soon), Silent Hill has taken a slower, more, dare I say, adult route.
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