I had heard bad things about Silent Hill: Homecoming, but being the huge Silent Hill fan that I am, I went out and bought it anyways. Once I got home and popped in the game I was quite impressed and the more I played it the more impressed I became. Homecoming was a true Silent Hill game, it had the fog, the creepy nurses, the uncomfortable music, and of course, Pyramid Head!
The game melts the previous games in the series and the Silent Hill movie together seamlessly while still keeping the overall terror and disturbing feeling and settings as the older games. The gameplay is just as you remembered it, a little hard to control at times and the attacks are rather clunky. I do miss the fixed camera views from the previous games, but the free-floating camera controls weren't that bad. The save points were a far from each other, but the constant auto-saving feature came in handy many times.
The monsters are just as gruesomely creative and awkwardly disturbing as before. The graphics were nothing to joke about and the unrelenting, uneasy feeling of the sets were quite impressive. While the game was not too long and yet not too short, you never ran out of things to be doing, or places to explore. I always think it's funny how quick I am to go explore the cemetery in Silent Hill, because if it was real life I would be reacting to everything in a very different way. There are many different locations you will be visiting while in Silent Hill, the hospital is back, but also there is the jail, powerplant, insane asylum, and even your own house to name a few.
Silent Hill 5 has five different endings and many different "choose your own adventure" style of decision making through out the game. Several times you had to escort AI characters through levels, they would fight monsters, and help you through certain puzzles you couldn't get through alone. The AI was surprisingly smarter than I expected and I didn't have to worry about keeping them alive either.
Seeing Pyramid Head back was one of my highlights, he is my all time favorite video game bad guy. Along with him he brought a whole gang of creepy characters:
Feral: your basic zombie-esce dog.
Lurker: distorted human body with an huge mouth-like slit down it's head. Usually hides in water.
Needler: The spider-like monsters with knives for legs are probably one of the harder monsters since they can shield themselves from most attacks.
Nurse: You remember these sexy killers from previous installments of Silent Hill.
Schism: a monster with a human body but a hammerhead shark-like head that splits open for it's attack.
Siam: One of my favorites. This baddie in one big guy with swollen club-like hands, but the coolest part is he has a mutilated female corpse strapped to his back.
Smog: Watch out, these guys can deal a lot of damage with their spit smoke attacks. Hit: go for the lungs.
Swarm: (not pictured) Big flying insects. Not much trouble.
The Order Members: (not pictured) Guys in rather cool looking hazmat suits who intend to do you great harm.
The few bosses you encountered were gorgeously designed, from an old decaying porcelain doll to a long centipede looking form that is made up of several different human bodies molded into one long disturbing creature.
I recommend this game to any survival-horror fan, this game brings a whole new meaning to the word "disturbing". It comes together with heart-stopping effects, intuitive gameplay and immersive surroundings. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give Silent Hill: Homecoming a 9 1/2. This game kept me thrilled and jumping in my seat the whole way through.
