Would have forced myself to play through the entire thing, so nice of the game to completely bug out half-way through during a boss-fight and i couldn't progress.

So nice to have an excuse, because this was not very good. I did enjoy parts of it, the idea of a Silent Hill: Modern Warfare type game amuses me. The superdetailed "tacticool" knife combat animations are hilarious.

But it never really goes fully over the top and bonkers, instead mostly feeling like the most generic version possible of an IP the dev studio was forced to make. At least the 2008 Alone in the Dark had some ambition. So much is just extremely linear walking but without any atmosphere and the combat is terrible.

If this game had any balls it would have given you an M4 and had you mow down surreal body horror terrorists while nu-metal plays in the background.

I don't know what to think about a game that pulls from so many aspects of Silent Hill yet finds nothing for itself. Combat is so fucking bad and inconsistent, the story is so nothing, and the general structure of the game introduces the absolute worst in tedium. I think the only thing in this game I genuinely enjoyed was the Shepard House gimmick even though that section of the game is liable to being a buggy mess.

I have played through 3 of the western Silent Hill games now and this one somehow topped Shattered Memories and Origins in being bad and those are written by a guy who turned Lisa Garland into a junkie for no reason.

An entirely forgettable experience... it is a damn shame, what happened to the once legendary Silent Hill franchise. But hey, at least the composer and singer, Akira Yamaoka & Mary Elizabeth McGlynn respectively, always come to play. SH's music is always great, and here is no exception.

The only ones who could have saved SH from its current fate, is if Kojima and Del Toro were allowed to continue making Silent Hills (P.T.). Unfortunately, with its cancellation all those years ago, there now sits an enormous, vacant hole in the AAA video game landscape... nobody is making any true, psychological horror games anymore...

sometimes when you're young, you make decisions without giving a lot of tought, and without any sort of guidance or orientation. life is an experience that will give you some jeepers every now and then, and the things you decide to do to yourself - do not be fooled - 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭, and will mark or scar you in some way or another, forever, maybe showing up again to haunt your memories only several years down the line. 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝. all it needs to come back is you remembering it, even, barely, a little, and then its there again.
now why the fuck did i decided, in 2011, to not only play, but also to beat this shit game. did i thought i had all the time in the world? that i wouldnt grow older and remember that i played it? now i can never erase that. i did this to myself.
i have to live with it and learn to not repeat the same kind of mistake again.

As with Downpour, Silent Hill: Homecoming is another Silent Hill game that squandered the opportunity that could have been a game with potential. First of all, I guarantee that you will be disgusted while playing because of the noise effect and 30 FPS lock that cannot be turned off in the original version of the game. I really don't know whose idea it was not to set the setting to turn this off. As for the PC port, it's a complete joke. Because again, like on console, there is 30 FPS lock, noise effect that can't be turned off, and worse, a crappy job constantly crashing. There are patches for the PC port in the community, but this time you may encounter other problems (when I tried, the game was not saving my progress after the patch was installed :P). I finished the game on PlayStation 3 emulator with 60 FPS patch and noise effect turned off, and I think this game can be played this way best at this time. As for the game, the story is intriguing and contains a few interesting plot-twists, but overall, I can say that it still stays away from the classic Silent Hill atmosphere. A common problem I find with Silent Hills that comes out after 3 is that the storylines of the side characters are not given any importance and that's why the side characters feel extremely boring and unimportant. Unfortunately, this also applies to Homecoming. The combat system is the best in this game in my opinion compared to Downpour and The Room. You can use the dodge mechanic and the weaknesses of each enemy with various attacks and weapons. This has been an important factor that diversifies combat for me. The graphics aren't bad, the lighting is pretty dark, but it's not a reactionary kind of darkness, just unnecessary darkness. In the game, we mostly spend the daytime in Silent Hill, but we only play a very small part of the game at night. It would be better to spend more time in the game at night, I think the night atmosphere of the game looks much more reactionary. The variety of enemies and bosses in the game is quite good compared to Downpour, I can say the same for the music. Homecoming's music is quite successful compared to Downpour. As a result, Silent Hill: Homecoming has a story that can be considered good with its combat system, music, but it cannot escape being an average Silent Hill due to factors such as bad game design, limitations in settings, meaningless dialogue choices in the story, and the poor use of Otherworld as in Downpour. If you're a Silent Hill fan like me, it wouldn't hurt to try, but don't have high expectations.

Port todo mal feito, apenas. A história tem potêncial, mas os bugs desse jogo estragou minha experiência, bugs e crashs constantes desanima demais, essa compra que fiz se não me engano foi em torno de 4 reais, tava animado pois era uma chave de entrada para mim no universo de silent hill, já que eu tinha jogado apenas o Origins. Porém o jogo crasha umas 3 vezes durante jogatina, sem condições
Um dia posso fazer questão de jogar isso de novo se eu tiver paciência e minha opinião possa mudar, não em gameplay mas em história também.

There are no words in the English language that can explain how funny this game is. A Japanese developer hands the keys to their IP known for nuanced, heavy stories, driven mostly by an incredible cast of flawed, deep, weirdo characters to a USA dev and they immediately turn it into a combat-oriented game about an army man that's all in le head with "puzzles" that insult the player's intelligence, all while dangling words "SILENT HILL" and iconic characters like Pyramid Head and Robbie the Rabbit every 15 fucking minutes of gameplay. ALL THIS without even mentioning that the story is garbage, the dialogue is written by actual fucking alien creatures, the game crashes every second loading screen (and it has A LOT of loading screens). It's certain kind of funny to play this right after 1, 2, 3, and 4, and depressing at the same time. There are 0 good reasons to EVER play this, the only thing might be satiating your morbid curiosity about how one of the most iconic gaming franchises fell.

HALLOMAD 2.0 GAME #3

I can't believe this game exists in the same franchise with games like SH1 and 3. An embarassing game from beginning to end that not only shits on the legendary status of Silent Hill but is also a completely shit game in its own right. EVERYTHING from the dogshit combat to the dull story/characters makes for a game that feels outright broken at times. If I had to say anything positive it would be the actually impressive otherworld effects (ripped from the movie) and phenomenal OST. Otherwise this is one of the worst games I've ever played and would only recommend if you wanna see just how little of a shit Konami gave to this series post 4.

2/10

Played most recently on RPCS3 at 120fps. Don't bother with the PC port. I've fiddled with it every which way, and no matter how much you patch it, you're better off staying away from the PC port.

Before I get into it, the short answer is that Silent Hill: Homecoming is not worth your time. The rest of the upcoming wall of text will cover all the ways it got close to being worth your time.

Let's push the topic of the series' reputation for story and music to the side for a second and talk about how it's also known for having bad combat. I find this an unfair and untrue observation, particularly when discussing the original 3 games. It's a huge and complex topic that's way beyond the scope of this little review, but let's say the combat in the original 3 was "inaccessible" as opposed to "bad". Might be a weird word off the bat considering none of the original 3 are particularly difficult to get through on Normal or Easy, and even Hard can be slogged through without a strategy so long as you disregard the scoring-systems, but what about being accurate? Let's use just the shooting-mechanics of Silent Hill 1 for an example. The ideal use of the weapon is mid-range for obvious reasons (doesn't do enough damage at close-range to risk closing the gap) and your flashlight needs to be on to hit stuff. That's the easy part. What dictates whether or not the shots actually land? 3 things; your proximity to the enemy, how much the enemy is moving, and how long you aim at the enemy. You can line up decently long-range shots by just taking a second or so longer to aim at one enemy, and taking the same time to line up each successive shot. This isn't explained to the player anywhere. Getting the most out of the combat requires experimentation on the player's part.

The reason I wrote all that down is that part of Homecoming's design was to address the longstanding issue that the combat isn't good in the original games, which I only really find is the case in Silent Hill 4. Silent Hill 3 was the most refined combat of the original games, and it still complimented the process of exploration well.

So Homecoming added in combos, a dodge/parry system, and made enemies weak to specific attacks. It let guns be somewhat consistently useful, but was also stingy with ammo. Playing the game as intended, the combos do work. Light-light-heavy with the pipe sets the Ferals up for executions (even from full health), the axe instantly knocks off the heads of Lurkers in one hit, and so on. The parry/dodge is a little strange. You press the button during the windup of enemy attacks instead of trying to overlap i-frames with their hit-box, like even in Silent Hills 2-4 with 2 and 3's respective blocks and 4's dodges let alone other action-games. It works though. What doesn't work is the knife, especially when just spamming with it will shut down most enemies in the game. It's less damage and overall slower than using stronger less safe weapons and playing as intended, but it's safe and easier to do than learning how to dodge or what weapon works best where. The combat has another sore spot in Siam who is typically out of range of any retaliatory-attacks after a successful dodge leaving you stuck awkwardly whiffing as you chip at it's rather large health-pool. Another strange aspect is crowd-fights. This simple system of combat does not include a crowd-control system of any kind other than just shooting everything. But, enemies, even on Hard, tend to politely wait while you dodge-roll around someone else before taking their turn.

That said, the real problem is how the combat fits into exploration. It doesn't, and it grinds level-progression to a halt as you battle something in a hallway for an extended period instead of just downing it safely and finishing it off ala the classic games. The game would've been better served by expanding the scope of the combat and just not bothering with the classic gameplay. The combat's too shallow to carry the game, but too complex to coexist with exploration and puzzle-solving. It's a shame because the skeleton of something worthwhile is here, but just the skeleton.

Alex also runs too slow for how large the environments are, which is another mixed bag because there's an ok amount of explorable town and hidden stuff here. I always want more town, but not at this speed. Huge bummer btw in not making the remade parts of Silent Hill 1's map look correct. This is something Origins nailed.

So, what we're left with is something more boring and unpolished than outright bad. It's a shame.