(THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SILENT HILL 2 AND 3 AND HOMECOMING)
(AND EXCESSIVE UNORGANIZED RAMBLING ABOUT A MEDIOCRE GAME)
This game is a mediocre mess that comes so close to doing some things right but ultimately falls flat on its face over and over again throughout its duration to create a game that is a complete slog to experience. It took me over TWO YEARS to finish this game. Two years this game has tormented me as MY own personal Silent Hill hellscape. And now that i've beaten it, I'm going to go in-depth as to why I hate it so much and think it is a completely bland, uninspired, frustrating waste of time.

Combat
The elephant in the room and perhaps the biggest headache of the game. Silent Hill Homecoming introduced a new combat system, accompanied by the shift from tank controls to over the shoulder action. Silent Hill has always had clunky, dull combat that could be frustrating at times. However, enemies are often meant to be fought as a last resort. While the combat was never great in Silent Hill, it wasn’t the focus. In comparison, SH:H does have a certain focus on combat. It’s almost impressive how the developers took a jank PS2 combat system and made it ten times WORSE. Gone are the simple light and heavy melee swings and auto-aim, in its stead is bad RE4-styled shooting and an extremely frustrating melee system that includes button combos, ineffective dodging, and ridiculous Dark Souls circus rolling.
I’ll start with the guns. The weapons feel weak and bad to shoot, and it feels like you barely get enough ammo to even use them for half the game. Even worse, the ammo in your inventory actually has a MAXIMUM that caps at a completely pathetic amount (I think you can only carry around 10 shotgun/10 rifle/30 pistol ammo at a time). Due to the limited ammo, and the fact that the gun’s aren’t even terribly strong: you’ll be using the new and “improved” melee system this game offers. Yay… (Note: the lack of ammo partially stems from the fact I am bad, and I honestly constantly had an excess in the 2nd half of the game. Perhaps I am unfairly judging the game, but still I feel like it could've given more ammo. If you experienced an ample amount of ammo in the first half I am jealous.)
The melee combat is TERRIBLE. At best, you spam a combo (more on that later) and stunlock all enemies to death. At worst, you get in a couple hits, fail to dodge because it's horrible, and then get YOU get stunlocked, smacked around, and knocked down repeatedly. To be fair, I did vastly improve at the combat by the end of it, but just moving around, dodging, and attacking DOES NOT FEEL GOOD even when you’re decent at it. The dodging feels heavy and unresponsive, and the attacks feel slow and ineffective. Even worse, the game FORCES you to do combat all the time. Either by making the environment unfriendly to run past enemies, or by legitimately not allowing you to progress until something is killed (less common but still). Maneuvering around enemies can be difficult, which is bad because enemies like the Needlers, Smogs, and Siam’s are best attacked on the side/back (when in Melee). Not to mention, having a fleshed out combat system removes from the horror. Being weak against monsters is scary. Doing knife spinning ballerina combos to stunlock an enemy to death is silly.
I think if the game just had classic Silent Hill melee combat with more ammo around, the
game would be FAR more tolerable. Frustration is one of the biggest detractors of horror, and the combat is beyond frustrating and dull. Something simpler would’ve done the game wonders in terms of playability.

Level/Puzzle Design
The areas in the game are frustratingly boring. Gone are the large levels in SH1-4 that you’d spend hours working through and exploring and solving the puzzles of. Instead, we have completely dull environments that are barely visually distinct from each other. Basically, the levels require you to walk to a dead-end, and pick up something, and then backtrack. There is almost absolutely nothing of interest in these areas, no moments to look back on, no good scares. I’ll always remember the hoof beats in the SH2 prison, the mirror room in SH3, the room full of Twin Victims in SH4. All the memorable moments from the first four remind me of how much NOTHING is going on within the levels of SHH. No interesting events, no interesting creatures to gawk at, NOTHING. Just walk around. Pick a thing up. Backtrack a little. Walk around some more. Do terrible combat and resist the urge to shut off your system and never play this boring game again.
The puzzles are also atrocious. The vast majority of them are completely brain dead. Such as inputting a code where the document with the code is approximately 3 feet from the door (extremely impossible). A couple of the puzzles are okay, (The Church one, the one at the end, the prison one at the end), but the vast majority either require 0 brain power or are busywork puzzles (slide puzzles, wire puzzles). This is really disappointing, because I thought the first four had some great puzzles. They’re usually decently challenging, and at the very least clever and satisfying to solve. I also sorely miss the option of puzzle difficulty, a cool feature from the older games. I guess that would require effort to be put into the puzzles so it makes sense it’s absent here. The puzzles did feel like a big part of the older games, so for them to be completely shafted here feels wrong and lazy. The areas are dull enough, and the puzzles within them being equally dull only massive exacerbates how uninspired and empty each area is.

Enemy Design
I actually find the (original) enemy designs in this game to be pretty good. Of course, some are just rehashed versions of old enemies. Here’s a list of enemies that are reused/rehashed old enemies: Ferals, Smogs, Siams, and Nurses. And then not rehashed but extremely boring: Bugs. And men in gas masks (terrifying). However, I think the Schisms, Needlers, and all the bosses actually look AWESOME (the Lurkers are whatever). I wish the game had more original roaming enemy designs, as the majority are borrowed ideas or uninspired (men…). The most aggravating offender of this is Pyramid Head, who randomly appears for basically no reason to the point where you don’t even interact or fight him at all. Actually, there is a reason: he’s iconic and Konami wanted to turn him into a mascot. Yuck. Fighting the enemies themselves mirrors the combat, ranging from easy stunlock to making me want to bash my head into a wall. As a result of all of the reusing, the enemies don’t feel strongly related to the story at all as opposed to SH2’s direct manifestation or all of SH4’s ghosts. I don’t think this is a huge deal however, plenty of Silent Hill monsters in previous games don’t really have a super special significance to the plot or characters. Again, while I don’t particularly like how many enemies are reused from previous entries, this game does have good enemy variety: something older Silent Hill desperately lacks.
The boss designs in this game are really awesome. I find them all to be unique and memorable, and they all represent something from the plot. The fights themselves are often terrible and frustrating(nothing can save that combat) but the designs themselves were all pretty great and unique.

Presentation
Graphically, the game looks fairly good. The Otherworld transitions in particular look really cool (even if its inspired by the movie). I think the Otherworld itself looks fairly cool, but not as good as Silent Hill 1 or 3’s Otherworld. I think the presentation is weakened by the fact it pulls from the movie so much, as the movie is not very well-liked, leaving a bad taste in my and many other’s mouths. As is consistent with the level design as a whole, there’s just not really a whole lot going on in the Otherworld sections. The aesthetic itself is fine but I find it could use more flourish in it, SH1/SH3 had a lot of cool set pieces to look at in the Otherworld that are just absent here.
The colors of the game look very muddy and washed out to me, I would’ve liked to see more vibrant or distinct colors in some of the areas. And while the graphics themselves are good, the facial animations and lip syncing is a huge step down from past Silent Hill games. The faces just look… off… and the lips are noticeably bad in some scenes. Character’s like Judge Holloway are distractingly ugly. The people and faces in SH3-4 look SO good (Heather in particular comes to mind) and are great at showing emotion (when they want to, maybe don’t look at poor Henry) so to see the graphics be a DOWNGRADE in some ways on newer hardware is beyond disappointing. Overall, the game looks okay and has okay aesthetics, but is ultimately a step down from previous entries in my opinion.

Atmosphere/Sound Design/Music
I think this game has a good atmosphere at points but for the most part lacks great sound design to back it up. The sound design was a big part of the classic Silent Hill atmosphere. SH2 had me terrified at points not because of a monster, but because it was playing spooky sound files at me. SHH lacks this great synergy and creativity between sound design and atmosphere. I enjoy the fleshy noises it plays and it does have overall fine sound design, but I think it fails to create the fear from sound alone that older Silent Hills managed. The lack of interesting set pieces within the environments as I previously mentioned also creates a weaker atmosphere. I loved seeing the unsettling things in the background of SH1-4 (such as Valtiel in the background, PHead menacingly standing there, Eileen’s fat head), as they were often scarier than any actual monster. SHH has a decent atmosphere but lacks interesting things and sound to keep it scary.
The music is fantastic. I have zero complaints, it’s the best part of the game.

Story/Characters
There’s not much to say about the characters because they’re all extremely bland and forgettable. There’s really nothing to say about any of them, which tracks with the extremely uninspiring and bad story. To extremely briefly summarize: Alex is a war veteran who returns home to his home of Shepherd’s Glen. As typical, he finds the town crawling with monsters and his young brother, Joshua, is missing as well as many other members of the town. Later, Alex discovers two things 1. He isn’t really a soldier and he actually killed his brother in an accident years ago and 2. The town was founded from four families splitting off from Silent Hill and agreeing to sacrifice a child every 50 years to appease their God. Alex was meant to be one of those sacrifices. After Alex learns this, he defeats the final boss and apologizes to Joshua for killing him and then one of the endings plays. Parts of the story have interesting ideas (the cult and sacrifices for instance) but I think they ultimately fall flat and fail to be fully realized. The twist with Alex not being a soldier and actually being in a mental institution instead of in combat feels silly and overused (all in le head) and the twist of him actually killing Joshua feels like a dollar store SIlent Hill 2. It’s exceedingly obvious that Joshua is dead the second you meet him (he is constantly reappearing and running off and disappearing) and the twist that Alex killed him doesn’t nearly hit as hard as you don’t give a shit about Alex or Joshua, and Joshua’s death was a genuine accident. What makes Silent Hill 2’s murder such a great twist is that it integrates itself with James’s character and the truth he learns in turn allows him to complete his character arc. Alex cries about it a little and then says sorry to Josh and the game ends. Alex doesn’t really need atonement for what he did, as he did something stupid and reckless but it was ultimately an accident versus James’s act of malice.
The main issue I have with SHH’s story is that it fails to really do much of anything. Alex learns his brother is dead, and the truth about his upbringing, and doesn’t really go through any emotional journey. He also doesn’t stop the Order or anything (as far as can tell). So the credits roll and all you're really left with is: “Why?” Silent Hill 1-4 each had clear goals for each of their protagonists. Harry wants to find Cheryl. James wants to find his wife (and in failing to do so he goes through a psychological journey). Heather wants revenge for her Dad dying. Henry wants to escape his apartment. Alex wants to find Joshua but the story provides almost no sort of emotional pay-off when he learns that Joshua is dead. He finds out the truth of the town and his family and the game ends, leaving an all-encompassing “Whatever” feeling.
Parts of the story do have potential though. Alex being a soldier could’ve been a great basis for war-trauma induced Silent Hill. The whole idea of having to sacrifice children to appease The Order is a neat idea. Unfortunately, the game fails to really deliver any big moments and the story feels like it has no kick or climax to it and just feels like wasted potential with a side of trying to be like Silent Hill 2.
THE ENDINGS…
Ah, the final cherry on the shit story sundae. The endings in this game are BAD. There are 5 and only one of them manages to be decent. The majority of them range from laughable to actual nonsense. Even worse, you can get the JOKE UFO ending ON YOUR FIRST PLAYTHROUGH. In fact, I DID get the UFO ending on my first playthrough. So even if you are invested in the story, hope you like all the tension being killed by a meme ending. Of course, to get the good ending you have to forgive your neglectful parents that planned to partake in child murder. Because duh, why wouldn’t you forgive them. The good ending is fine, standard Silent Hill ending of leaving the town with girl. The other’s include Alex’s father drowning him in a bathtub and Alex being in a mental hospital and the whole game a dream woooooo. They’re bad and lame and do not feel like a satisfying conclusion. SH2 is the other Silent Hill game that has multiple endings like this (SH1/SH3 technically do but there’s an obvious “correct” ending) and it just does it in such a better way. All of SH2’s endings feel like a valid end to the story. Most of SHH’s endings feel like a weird slap in the face that leave you scratching your head. I haven’t even mentioned the ending where Pyramid Heads, sorry, “Boogeyman”s turn Alex into a fellow “Boogeyman.” (??????). So yeah, the endings are equally bad at providing closure to the lacking story.

Performance
I can’t talk about this game without mentioning how EMBARRASSINGLY it performs. I played on PS3, and the worst I got was frame drops. Obviously, not the end of the world. One of my favorite games is Deadly Premonition, I more than tolerate bad frames. However, in a game like Silent Hill where atmosphere and presentation are EVERYTHING… the poor frames are a really terrible look and outright damage the atmosphere. It just looks incredibly sloppy, especially since we're in the PS3 era now and updates were possible. Not to mention there’s a plethora of game breaking bugs in the game that are still unfixed. I have not played the PC version, but from what I can tell it is nearly impossible to play without installing mods to fix it. All of this together gives a very poor impression and is outright lazy.


Conclusion
This game is not good. It almost is at points, but it never truly is. Save your time and money, at best watch a playthrough or something to save yourself the headache if you really must see what the game offers. If you wish to experience the best (and perhaps only consistently good part of the game) simply look up “Silent Hill Homecoming OST.” You’re welcome. Don’t play this.