Loved

Thematically Strong: Silent Hill: Homecoming delivers on a solid, exciting storyline, one peppered with dense themes: child abuse, infanticide, religious fanaticism, mental illness. It's far more straightforward in comparison to other Silent Hill games, ones which often needed the aide of a plot guide to disassemble, but it's administered with finesse. Double Helix supports their storytelling with brilliant symbolism, little of which rarely detours into the obvious.

A Reasonably Good Facsimile Of A Silent Hill Game: If you're desperate for another trip to Silent Hill, Homecoming fits the bill. At times, the game feels like a "greatest hits" compilation, borrowing monster and environmental designs too liberally from previous entries and, unfortunately for this reviewer, the Silent Hill movie. At others, it feels more like a tribute band doing a well-worn cover version of older games, abstracting subtlety and nuance.

Improved Controls: From a mostly better inventory interface to more logical action controls, Homecoming is much easier to get a handle on than its predecessors. That doesn't necessarily mean that hand-to-hand combat is any fun. It's not. It's just better than what Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo was capable of with the older, more cinematic camera style.

Hell Looks Hellishly Good: The "Descent to Hell" portion of the game looks stunning. If only the camera were pulled back just a few more feet to get a better view...

Hated

Graphical Letdown: While Double Helix nailed portions of Silent Hill's "otherworld," the game is disappointingly inconsistent in its technical execution. Alex Shepherd looks well detailed in comparison to Shepherd's Glen's other inhabitants, with fathers, mothers, sons and daughters all looking, curiously, the same age, more like action figures that human beings. Homecoming also has some of the worst water we've seen this generation. Ugly textures abound.

Odd Bugs and Visual Quirks: Getting stuck on an invisible platform in the first fifteen minutes, forcing a restart of the game, did not leave a good first impression. Fortunately, this was a unique circumstance, but it made moments of geometry clipping and moments of violently spinning camera angles tied to enemy death animations that much more noticeable. Some lip-syncing in the game feels like it was left unfinished.

Annoying Enemies: While the game's combat mechanics are somewhat improved, it doesn't prevent the battles with the blade-limbed Needlers from being any less controller-throwing. A severe lack of supplies, that tends to irritate more than add to the "survival" of the horror, required reverting to an older save to beat one of the tougher bosses.

Obtuse Puzzles: Even for a Silent Hill game, Homecoming's puzzles are simply... puzzling. Too many simply devolved into a frustrating series trial and error attempts.

GAMEPLAY: 8.2

There is a noticeable improvement in the overall gameplay of Homecoming over its predecessors. However, there still is an unbalanced combat system. At times, Alex seems to overpower some enemies, thanks to his military background, while other enemies seem to have the balance tipped in their favors.

GRAPHICS: 8.5

The best looking of the franchise, Homecoming offers up the most engulfing environments of the series. The game itself is both detailed, yet intentionally limited in its visuals, to create an unsettling atmosphere. However, there are some cases of frames dropping when a larger number of swarming enemies show up that keep it from reaching the next level.

AUDIO: 8.7

The audio is sure to keep players jumping in their seats and looking over their shoulders as the creepy and disturbing ambient sound effects fill the room. The voice acting is an improvement, but still a bit flat in its delivery at times when there should be a lot more emotion involved.

LONGEVITY: 6.8

The game’s puzzles aren’t too difficult to figure out and many are quite obvious. It’s just a matter of moving from area to area and happening upon them. The storyline is compelling enough to keep players interested in what happens next and the disturbing nature of it all is what whets our appetites the most. Once the game is completed, though, there’s little in the way of going through it all again aside from checking out the alternate endings.

INNOVATION: 7

By sticking to the franchise’s roots, Double Helix hasn’t done much in the way of coming up with new gameplay aspects. However, it has continued to refine what’s proven to work in the past, while having improved nearly every aspect of what Silent Hill has to offer.

6.5 Presentation
Coming across more like a subplot than a full extension of the Silent Hill franchise, Homecoming manages to lose the horror that made the series so compelling.

7.5 Graphics
The monsters and environmental changes within the game are very sharp, but the title does suffer from some odd filters, shadows and framerate dips.

8.0 Sound
Yamaoka's score is fantastic, but feels like it's too good for such a generic action title. Some of the voice acting falls flat as well.

6.5 Gameplay
While the combat system is extremely flexible and gives Alex a lot of different attacks to launch, it makes him way too skilled to take on the monsters of Silent Hill.

6.5 Lasting Appeal
If you're looking for a scare, you're not going to find it here. The lacking scares will probably keep you from returning much to Silent Hill and Shepherd's Glen when you've beaten the game.