Silent Hill Homecoming tells the tale of, ex-soldier, Alex Shepherd and his brief return visit to his hometown, Shepherd’s Glen. He arrives to find the city in shambles, with most of the townsfolk plastered on various missing persons flyers, destroyed roads, a foggy ash-raining climate, and various forms of hellish monsters roaming about. His encounters with the various characters in town range from awkward to standoffish, with only two actual friends. As you return home to find your distraught mother staring blankly out the window, you learn that your father and younger brother are also missing. This begins your traversing the strange and creepy journey between the normal world and the nightmarish evil world as your quest to find your missing family members eventually brings you to the nearby Silent Hill.
The story is movie-quality, even if some of the dialogue is not quite up to the task. Solid voice work makes up for some of the writing deficiencies, and the further into the story you get the less you care about the couple of hokey lines. As you learn more about the disappearance of your brother, who pops up occasionally like a dangling carrot leading you the right direction, the more you find that Alex’s family relationship is definitely strained. His parents seemed to consciously favor his brother, even going so far as to tell him not to play with Alex. The game lives up to its ‘Survival Horror’ billing, delivering an engaging horror movie plot and visual tone. Falling a little short on actual scares, the ambient sound effects keep you on your toes. The plot twists and eventual explanation for the happenings in Shepherd’s Glen keep you interested through the hack and slash gameplay.
The game uses a two-button combo system for fighting, which actually works fairly well. Timing your weak and heavy attacks against the lull in enemy strikes will largely determine your success in the game. You can dodge enemy attacks, though it requires precision timing that will frustrate you in boss battles. Dodging attacks also becomes an issue when there are multiple enemies in the same area. The game never throws more than three at you at once, nor gives you more than two types to deal with. Rather than give you a standard circle around the base of the enemy to distinguish your target, the game uses your flashlight. When in battle, you can flick the right stick to switch your target; which works just as well without the clunky on-screen circle. The various weapons are of the melee and ranged variety, with knives and pipes getting most of your attention due to the scarcity of ammunition for guns.
Finding items in the game is a little too easy, with the brightly highlighted items sticking out obnoxiously in contrast to the murkiness of everything else in the game. The game itself is a very linear experience, with very few rooms to enter that are not directly related to your current task. Barricaded or destroyed roadways and locked doors prevent you from doing too much exploring, though some of your obstacles seem a bit lame. What kind of soldier cannot find a way around a single waist-high chain? There is also quite a bit of button-pressing to get Alex to ‘squeeze through’ tight spaces or ‘duck under’ to get through a hole. It feels like a weak excuse to keep you engaged during all the running around, perhaps to distract you from the scarcity of enemies.
The enemies of Homecoming are exactly what you have come to expect of the series; each looking like a human cloning experiment gone terribly wrong. The lack of variety is an issue, with only seven types of regular enemies to bash with your pipe. Still, each maintains their own set of strengths and weaknesses for you to deal with, with the pounding-fisted Siam and razor-sharp hammerhead Schism as cool looking as they are dangerous. Unfortunately, they are not prevalent enough, with Alex able to run for minutes at a time without an enemy in sight. When they do show up, too often you are able to run straight by them to your destination; since your chances of running into another one and getting gang-slashed are slim.
