Home is… where the heartless demons are

It's funny, but earlier this week I reviewed Resident Evil 5, and criticised it for not really feeling like the old Resi games any more, such has been the series' drastic change in direction. Silent Hill: Homecoming on the other hand is so similar to previous Silent Hills that it feels like something of a by-the-numbers re-run of the formula. So what's the happy middle ground between the two? Whatever it is, Survival Horror games need to find it in the next few years.

Foggy

Not that Silent Hill: Homecoming is a bad game, mind. In fact, if what you're after is a familiar-feeling, traditional Survival Horror adventure full of slow-paced exploration, psychological scares aplenty, puzzles galore and ridiculous layers of fog, then you've come to the right place.

Silent Hill: Homecoming puts you in the shoes of discharged soldier Alex Shepherd as he returns home (hence the subtitle) from war to find his hometown shrouded in a thick mist, his Mom gone a bit bonkers, and his Dad and little brother Joshua missing. Except, by the time you've gotten to this point about half an hour in, you've already met young Josh – in a warped, rusted hospital populated with shuffling zombie nurses and scuttling oversized flying beetles.

This is Silent Hill: Homecoming's dream sequence intro; an intro which does few of the things an introduction should. To be fair, it does help you with the opening salvos of hand-to-hand combat, but doesn't hint at the fact that you have a flashlight, and fails to guide you through the first puzzle you encounter, which involves discovering an access code spread across two X-ray sheets and putting them together. It won't take Silent Hill veterans very long to figure it out, but series newcomers unused to old-style Survival Horror games might find themselves wandering around for quite some time getting frustrated.

Stick with it, though, because Silent Hill: Homecoming is a grower. Like other Silent Hill games, it features a dual world system – Alex's creepy home town seems like any other visibility-challenged American Midwestern town, until a siren sounds and turns it into an oppressive, blood-splattered hell dimension strewn with the undead. It's a well-worked concept, and gives you the chance to get to grips with some of the nastiest enemies in modern gaming.

If you enjoy being truly unnerved, then these monsters really are one of the highlights of Silent Hill: Homecoming. There are some seriously hideous creatures, which you'll mostly be battling with a similar combat system to that in PSP's Silent Hill: Origins – the left trigger locks on, and various weights of attack are on the fascia buttons. New for Homecoming is a dodging manoeuvre which adds an extra element of depth, but fans of recent Resi games should be warned – while there are firearms in Silent Hill: Homecoming, their ammo is so limited that shooting is basically removed from the majority of the gameplay.

Anti-Resi

In that respect, Silent Hill: Homecoming is the anti-Resi, and speaks volumes about the divide taking place within the genre. Where Capcom have made many strides to streamlining its design, Konami's game does no such thing – there's still some really obscure puzzles; you still save at checkpoints; and the story is as darkly supernatural as ever.

When you consider that this wasn't made by the original Team Silent, that actually becomes something of a compliment. Put together instead by Double Helix, Silent Hill: Homecoming feels every inch the Silent Hill experience. Sure it's re-treading old ground, and it's hardly imaginative, but Homecoming is at least another solid addition to one of the gaming medium's more surreal series.

GAME's Verdict

• Another solid instalment in the Silent Hill series.
• Truly unnerving for those that like that sort of thing.
• The dodge move gives the close quarters combat some added depth.

• Formulaic traditional Survival Horror that lacks any real innovation or imagination.
• The lack of an autosave makes it a bit of a labour finding a checkpoint.
• Why can you invert the aiming, but NOT the third-person camera!?

Review by: Mark 'Supernatural' Scott
Version Texted: PS3
Review Published: 13.03.09