Silent Hill Homecoming for ps3

[stephanie]

Not really keeping my interest...i expected better graphics from Konami.
they really slacked with the programming.

pyramid head is still bad ass though!!!

[Homer Simpson]

hmmm, its out, huh?

Might go rent it soon! always been a big fan of SH.

[stephanie]

me too i was dissapointed

[Homer Simpson]

dang...well thanks for the heads up, gonna rent it tomorrow...good thing I saw this before I actually bought it.

[stephanie]

not worth buying. i have gamefly.com and got antsy and traded a few games in to get it. so after i beat it im going to trade for the new call of duty 5 when it comes out.

[flak_monkey]

This game was absolute horse sh*t.
Like coke zero.

All of the Silent Hill 2 Story, none of the scares.

[flak_monkey]

When you watch the making of the Silent Hill games like Silent Hill 2 and 3, it will be apparent that Team Silent put a lot of thought into their decisions with the game writing, the character design, and the story. Silent Hill Homecoming, developed by American team Double Helix, made absolutely no attempt to terrify or even entertain players. The previous games have a palpable sense of dread that is so intense, you are sometimes afraid to even play. Double Helix rehashed the Silent Hill story almost verbatim with new characters and slapped a game with piss poor character models, horrid “trial and error” puzzles, the worst textures I’ve seen to date in a next gen game, horrible camera and controls, an irritating and pointless “combat system” and zero scares and called it a Silent Hill game.
If you are a fan of the series, then you will agree that the writing in the second and third silent hill games was fantastic. Take the confessional scene in Silent Hill 3 and compare it with the one in Homecoming. In the third installment, the confessional was meant to make you feel uneasy, to put you into an uncomfortable situation and force the player to make a decision regarding ambivalent forgiveness. Things like this are what make the Silent Hill series so frightening. All of the scares had been previously thought out, carefully crafted to fill you with uncertainty and dread to the point where you would want to put the game down. Homecoming relied solely on “Jump Out At You” scares to frighten players, while the writers missed SO many opportunities to make the game truly frightening. Who can forget the locker room scene in the first silent hill and how absolutely terrifying it was? The locker was empty, and you were still afraid to walk James out of the room. Double Helix could have done something like that with the incubators in the first level.
It seems that what double helix has done is confuse the alternate world with an abandoned ship hull and a smelting plant, and used visuals from the film to fill in the gaps. In the previous silent hill entries, every environment in the alternate world differed based on what was “wrong” with the main character. There was a purpose behind every environment, to both tie the alternate reality closer to the story and to disturb the player. Homecoming did neither.
Homecoming did not utilize camera angles and lighting to create a sense of unease either. It instead insisted on completely linear gameplay with a movable camera and an utter lack of emphasis on exploration, unlike previous Silent Hill titles. For example, in Silent Hill 2, in the hotel, there were certain rooms that served absolutely no purpose, and you were still scared to venture in to them. Even when you knew that you did not have to explore them, they taunted you into going in on the off chance of finding ammunition or health.
The puzzles were mostly easily solved by process of elimination. The ones that were not, honestly I had to look up on the internet how to solve a few of them. The solution to the end puzzle was so obscure I had no idea where to start. I just moved the rings around until it worked.
The combat system was extremely cheap. Needlers and the end bosses were absolutely annoying to fight. They will knock you down and if you were having trouble with the non-invertable controls (which I found out could be inverted later in the game but not from the start menu screen and not in the options in the first half of the game) the monsters would just keep stabbing at you as you laid down like an idiot on the floor. I found it aggravating that Johnny HotShit Soldier Boy couldn’t get up any faster if you missed the “cloud of dust” that would prompt you to hit the dodge button to avoid getting impaled by the Needlers.
The monster designs were uninspired at best, another re-hash of familiar villains from previous games. Didn’t Double Helix understand that the reason that most of the monsters were so frightening was because of their humanoid forms and their relation to whatever the main character’s problem was? They are meant to be an extension of what the town is punishing the main character for. The only one that truly fit the description was Smog, but it was more of a redux of the lying figure than anything truly original. The textures on the monsters were laughably bad.
As an animator, I know bad mocap data and bad animation when I see it. By the end of this game, I was about ready to scream with all of the HORRIBLE animation. The lip movements NOT ONCE matched the dialogue. Something any second year animation student could have done a better job with. There were issues with every model and every rig. The nurses were not weighted correctly and their leg-hip weighting resembled that of a cabbage patch kid doll. Their fingers bent like noodles. I was outright offended by the utter lack of interest in making models that were executed properly and animation that was believable. Did they even edit the motion capture data?
The textures were terrible. As was the lighting. The flashlight did about as much good as tits on a bullfrog. The textures turned to legos faster than getting up close to the wall in Quake. Honestly, the textures looked dated.
The game’s expansion on the film’s stab at organized religion was lackluster for lack of a better word. I will always remember Heather at the end of Silent Hill 3 saying, “This is God?” I don’t remember a thing about the cult in Silent Hill Homecoming and I just finished the game a few days ago.
All and all, this was a horrendous, offensive take on Silent Hill. If I wanted to play Silent Hill 2 again, I would have. The story was exactly the same. The graphics were better. The characters were believable, shit even the animation was miles ahead of this game, and Pyramid Head had a reason to be in the fucking game. I’ll give it a 2 out of 10, only because I liked the fog.

[Me86Rob]

god damn flak monkey........cliffs?

[flak_monkey]

It sucked. Don't waste your time or your money. Don't even fuccking rent it. Go rent Silent Hill 1-4 and play them again. Go to youtube and watch the making of silent hill. Play Condemned 1 and Fatal Frame 1 & 2 and then see if you can walk through a dark room without flicking on the lights. Honestly, this game made me very sad. I love the silent hill series. The writing was amazing, the concept art was perfect. This is in every way a rehash of the previous titles, and it jumps the shark like Condemned 2 did half way through the game, only this was just bad ripoff of the movie.

[stephanie]

what you know about fatal frame 2 and 3.....crimson butterfly was my fave.
i screwed up....my 60 gig ps3 messed up so i sent it in for the warranty replacement, and best buy didnt have another 60 gig, and i got impatient and got a 40 gig....
cant play ps2 games on that....