Silent Hill: Homecoming

Plot synopsis:
At the start of the game, the player controls Alex through a nightmare concerning his younger brother, Josh, before Alex wakes up in the cab of a truck driven by Travis Grady, the protagonist from Silent Hill: Origins, who gives him a ride to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen. The town, named for a distant ancestor who helped found it, is covered in fog and deserted. At home, he finds his mother in a catatonic state, murmuring about his father leaving to find Josh; promising to find Josh, Alex leaves.
Alex soon discovers that many more people have gone missing in Shepherd's Glen since he left when he finds his childhood friend Elle Holloway pinning "missing" signs to a board outside the police department. As Alex explores the town, he witnesses the separate deaths of Mayor Bartlett and Dr. Fitch by monsters in the Otherworld, both of whom have a child who is missing. Back in Shepherd's Glen, Alex allies himself with Deputy Wheeler in the police department. Alex eventually learns that his father was involved in the secrets of the town and had left to attempt to resolve the town's problems, but before he is able to get answers from his mother at home, he is knocked unconscious when The Order—a religious cult from Silent Hill which has been taking people from the town— kidnaps his mother.
Alex, Elle, and Wheeler take a boat across Toluca Lake to find Alex's father in Silent Hill but are intercepted by the Order. Elle and Wheeler are taken to Silent Hill's penitentiary, where Alex attempts to rescue them. He finds his mother bound; the player must make a decision regarding whether to kill her out of mercy or not, which will affect the outcome of the game. After rescuing Elle's mother, Judge Holloway, and separating from Wheeler once more, Alex finds the Order's church, where he listens to his father in the confessional; the player may choose to forgive him, again affecting the outcome of the game. Alex later runs into his father, who reveals that Alex was never a soldier and has been in a mental hospital since "the accident" occurred. He begs forgiveness before he is killed by a monster called the Bogeyman (Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2).
Continuing to the Order's underground facility, Alex is captured by Judge Holloway, who reveals that everything that has happened is due to a broken pact. One hundred and fifty years ago, the four founding families broke away from Silent Hill's Order to move to Shepherd's Glen. They were allowed to do so on the condition that once every 50 years they would sacrifice one of their children in a preordained fashion. On this occasion, while Joey Bartlett, Scarlett Fitch and Nora Holloway were successfully sacrificed by their parents, the Shepherd sacrifice failed, and as a result, the Order had been reformed to try to appease their god. Judge Holloway tries to kill Alex, who kills her in self-defense. Alex rescues Elle from the facility and, after finding Wheeler injured and allowing the player to choose whether to save him—once more affecting the game's ending—continues on alone to find Josh.
Realizing he was the intended sacrifice, Alex experiences a flashback showing Josh's true fate. When Alex was younger, he had taken Josh rowing out on the lake, where Josh showed Alex a ring, which his father had chosen to give to him instead of Alex. Out of jealousy, Alex struggled with Josh to try to take the ring, and as they fought Josh accidentally fell into the lake and drowned. His father retrieved the body and explained that Alex had "ruined it for all of us", since he had chosen Alex, and not Josh; unable to accept Josh's death, Alex was then sent to the mental hospital, and with Josh instead of Alex sacrificed, the Order's pact was broken. After fighting the final boss, the manifestation of Josh's spirit, Alex finally has the chance to apologize and states that he never wanted Josh's death. Alex leaves the family ring and their father's angle-head army flashlight on Josh's body and exits the chamber.
There are five endings available, which depend on the player's actions during the game, including whether the player kills Alex's mother, forgives Alex's father, and saves Deputy Wheeler. These range from the single positive ending to the game—where Alex comes to terms with his past actions and reunites with Elle to leave Shepherd's Glen—to three other endings: Alex getting drowned by his father, waking up in the hospital and receiving a shock treatment, or being turned into a Bogeyman. There is also a joke ending, where both Alex and Elle are abducted by a UFO while Wheeler witnesses. In addition to these endings, if the player collects all of Josh's pictures or clears the game on the "hard" difficulty, a first-person post-credits scene is played where Alex finds Josh sitting on the bottom bunk of his bed and Josh takes a picture of Alex with a camera.

Tags: revenge, gothic, violence

Review:
As an avid fan of the Silent Hill series, I understandably, had this pre-ordered way back 2 months ago.
All fans of Silent Hill know the formula -it's that oppressive, dark, dense, anxious build up.
These elements are synonymous to Silent Hill and were severely lacking in this game.
The plot, length, atmosphere, quality and overall feel of this game was quite frankly nothing more than an American travesty of something that was unique and brilliant.
A Silent Hill game?
For starters the game is more combat oriented with the introduction of using various combos and finishing moves to kill your enemies, you can also aim the gun yourself giving you the freedom to place a few pellets in certain monsters critical zones which can be really handy when your conserving those last 4 bullets that you 'wasted' 2 minutes ago fighting another creature.
The horror factor stands up to the silent hill name, really gory, really twisted and leaves you feeling cold due to the attention paid to certain details.
It's also great how you can have a combat buddy fighting alongside you, blasting monsters back to back.My only complaint is the fact that the game is really anti-climatic towards the end, in many cases it feels that the designers just got bored and didn't bother with some greater in depth story line unlike in SH2 where you get two bosses and a scene explaining more of the story.
Overall the game is good and I give it 8 stars for the reason that the ending wasn't as good as it could have been, but it is definitely worth the look..
Although still a somewhat good trip to Silent Hill it is also disappointing..
Yes, I was excited when I found out Silent Hill would be coming to the next generation consoles and I bought it soon after its release.
Let's just say I like Silent Hill 2, 3, and Origins more than this one.
I liked it a bit more than Room and I have never played one so I can not really say if I thought it was better or worse than that game.
Even though I thought it was overall better than Room, its story is not quite as good as that game either.
It does boast the best graphics of the series to date, the monster look good, and the characters do too, the problem is the story is not up to par with the other Silent Hill entries I have played.
Also, the combat is not as good as the last game of the series Origins, as in that one the character was a lot tougher than Alex in this game, beating enemies with his fists.
Of course, in the end it leads back to the town of Silent Hill.
A couple of plot points just did not really work for me, the game featured members of the order like those seen in the movie, I am not sure if they appeared in the first game, but I know I never saw them in any of the other games I played.
It seems this one focuses a bit on the religious cult more than previous games, but a lot of stuff presented here just did not add up.
So for the best looking of the Silent Hills play this one, story wise though it is a bit weak..
Silent Hill: Homecoming (PC experience).
The majority of Silent Hill: Homecoming is based in Shepards Glen which is a very risky idea.
I found it was more interesting discovering how a second town was rapidly descending to the nightmarish underworld of Silent Hill...I bought this on PC format for the purpose of my new laptop and I have to say I really enjoyed playing it.
Despite some very long loading times between levels & scenes it was quite easy to control, although as much enability you are given to explore the town its too freaky to go of wandering.
The monsters are freaky as ever, there are many ways to attack, dodge and tackle them and as you progress through the game its more clear how they behave.I know most people compare this to Resident Evil but this is what makes your skin crawl....
"Silent Hill: Homecoming" is arguably the weakest entry in the series, yet it still has the feel and the tone of previous entries, and is a good game overall....
Each entry in Konami's "Silent Hill" franchise has explored a deep and dark portion of the human psychological makeup.
The second game focused upon a man in perpetual grief, who comes to the haunted town to find his missing (and deceased) wife.
Each game has that sort-of Grimm's fairy tale quality- there is always a moral, no matter how hard the trials may be, and "Homecoming" is no exception.
It tells a tale about loyalty and love within the family unit, set within a hellish facade of horror and mayhem.Being that this is my first review of a video-game, I'm going to do things differently- I'm going to give a brief, spoiler-free plot synopsis, and follow it up with an analysis of each major aspect of the game.
(Graphics, sound, etc.)The game follows Alex Shepherd, a soldier who returns home from battle to the small town of Shepherd's Glen.
He has had a troubled relationship with his family- he cares deeply for his younger brother Joshua, but has grown distant from his mother and especially from his strict and seemingly emotionally abusive father, Adam, also an army man, who lives by the strictest of rules.Alex notices that something is wrong the second he arrives.
Feeling a special bond with his brother, he decides to go look for him, starting a quest that will take him to the bowls of hell and back, and eventually to the dark town of Silent Hill itself, on a mission to save the one family member that truly seems to appreciate him.That's the basic plot, now here's a breakdown of actual game mechanics and facets, rated on a 1-10 scale:Graphics...
This holds true for Alex, who looks like an animal with bared teeth during conversations.
"Silent Hill: Homecoming" controls beautifully when your exploring areas and searching for clues.
The developers tried to make this a more action oriented game than previous entries, and therefore beefed up the combat system, adding new attacks, new weapons, a new "evade" button, and more.
6 out of 10 Everyone in a "Silent Hill" game seems to be looking for something on the outside, and something on the inside.
But for their first "Silent Hill" game, they did a great job, and stayed true to the spirit of the game.Overall, I give this game a 7 out of 10.
I am possibly the biggest Silent Hill fan I know, I've managed to introduce several friends to the wonders of this series and many of them enjoy it too.
I always say that no matter how bad a Silent Hill game is I will always finish it.
What really sucks about this game is that they had the atmosphere just right; the town of Silent Hill, the fog, the whole atmosphere was pretty much perfect.
What makes a Silent Hill game for me is not the constant fighting, but the wandering around in the fog, and that helpless feeling you get when you hear a strange noise in the distant.
In this game they pretty much took out all of these things and threw in a bunch of extremely annoying enemies that take about fifty hits from the axe to actually kill, that is before they've already knocked you on your ass half a dozen times.
I'm not saying there was a bunch of ammo everywhere you looked in the previous games, but hell, this is like playing Resident Evil - only even goddamn harder, and you can imagine what that's like.
That being said, Origins which was also made by the Americans was a lot better than this game, so maybe they just went wrong somewhere.
Anyone who enjoys action and combat should try this game, but if you're a true Silent Hill fan who still considers the second game the best of the bunch, I'd say rent it.
When Alex comes out of a military hospital and returns to where he grew up(after having been gone for years), he finds his mother catatonic, his younger brother missing(is there going to be a creepy kid in every installment of this series?) and his father(John Locke) seemingly having gone in search of the aforementioned sibling.
It does still build atmosphere, effectively with the excellent sound-side, the grotesque creature designs(there's a four-legged man-sized spider with blades for legs, a tight-clothes-wearing psychotic nurse with bouncy cleavage(...why?) and a knife with your name on it, and the second-hand-smoker's worst nightmare that you'll want to keep away from you; then again, this does have the worst dogs(it's the only bad case, really), they're essentially skinless with a head that's the cross of a newt and a leopard...
If we define Silent Hill as what we got in the original three and what the fourth was a different artist's take on(not the same, yet interesting in its own right), then this, well, ain't it.
The psychology holds up, and it makes you think, like the rest of them.
Good as a game, bad as a Silent Hill game.
Much too often the most important thing for the creators is to pander to the tastes of the AVERAGE gamer, who often thinks, "Hey, I fork out my parents' hard-earned bucks and I want to get what I already know and like  fog, flashlight and Pyramid Head, 'cause he was sooo cool and I wanna be like him!
Team Silent concocted four highly ORIGINAL and INVENTIVE works of art.
SH is officially dead to me.THE REVIEW PROPERI feel that with the new team the main concern was how many bucks the next SH game would/should earn.
It's like they wanted to play it safe and their main goal was to please the old fans and at the same time make the game attractive to casual gamers.
Hence, to me Silent Hill is no longer about art or new ideas  it's about making easy money through imitation rather than creation.Here's what I find wrong with SH Homecoming:In short, the game is well-produced but STALE.In more detail:1) FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPTIt's repetitive  all the trademark features of the previous SH games are used in a basically unchanged way, which makes the game dull, predictable and unscary.
Cases in point: flashlight, fog, locations (hospital, sewers, prison), monsters (nurses, dogs, straitjacket monsters), music (exactly the same ambient stuff we've already heard so many times before) and the most important thing: storyline (an ugly imitation of SH2 story and some elements from the movie).
Jeez, the overexposure just makes the game BORING.2) TWO IS A COMPANY, THREE IS A CROWDThere are too many characters in Homecoming (I think around a dozen in total!).
Some characters are totally irrelevant to the plot and you can't help but wonder why they're in the game at all.
In my humble opinion, the graphic nature of some of the scenes is out of place in a game like SH.
The other three acts of violence were implied!) Please, don't turn SH into "Hostel", for Mary's sake!To sum up, although well-executed, the game is derivative on all fronts and doesn't introduce anything substantially new to the series.
If you enjoy the feeling of deja vu in your gaming experience you will probably like this game.
The goriest Silent Hill game ever.
I enjoy virtually all Silent Hill games.
Starting from Silent Hill 2, 3, 4, and the latest one is Silent Hill Homecoming - the last title out for PC (no word on PC version of Downpour as of yet, quite a letdown indeed).Homecoming offered an interesting plot: a soldier returns home from battlefield finds his family is a mess: his brother and father are missing and his mother, while not missing, is no less tragic.
So it's up to the soldier to find out the truth behind the disaster, and the rest is as we've all expected - trapped in the demonic dimension of a Silent Hill neighbor called Shepherd's Glen, and followed by the traditional story (for Silent Hill series anyway) of human sacrifice and things - No, I wouldn't reveal the plot further, you just have to experience it yourself.The atmosphere - as we have all expected - is spooky enough.
The graphics, while not as good as, say, Heavy Rain, are great, not surprising though giving it is a PS3/X360-class game.
Boogeyman or Pyramid Head, I honestly agree (and most of you I think will too) that he is one of the scariest enemies in horror games.One most distinctive feature is that Homecoming employs more gory scenes than before.
This is NOT the Silent Hill I know.
Maybe it's because I loved the other silent hill games so much, and had such high expectations for this one.
Either way, I have to say that Silent HIll: Homecoming is a sorry excuse for a Silent Hill game.
I consistently enjoyed every other SIlent HIll installment, even SH4, which had a different feel than the others, but had the same essence.
On the surface Homecoming may have looked like the other SIlent HIll games, but when you look closer it actually has nothing in common with them aside from the name.
I think the foremost thing that the Double Helix team missed about Silent HIll is the element of mystery and the unknown.
Previous Silent HIll games were about subtlety, and hinting at things, but not actually affirming much.
"Fear of the Unknown" is what drove Silent Hill.
The little nuances and creepy occurrences were what made the other SIlent HIlls great.
These creepy little imaginative things made these games, and are what Homecoming lacked.
Homecoming had a lot of over the top gore and brutality, reminding me of the cheap "eww" moments of American horror films (including the silent hill movie) and not the eeriness of SIlent HIll. There was nothing at all that left you wondering.
Also, the monsters in this game were all about combat, and not at all about evoking fear in us.
There were the big-boobed nurses from the SH movie, the dogs that have been in all of the games, some sewage monster, and some other creatures with big blades that were hard to kill.
I don't buy silent hill games to fight.
Another thing I want to acknowledge about this game is the lack of desperation and loneliness.
Usually in a video game I would think that the last level would be building to a climax.
In previous silent hills, the last level is where everything goes to *beep* showing you that this is really it, and that something really horrifying is coming.
In short, this game may have had some new bells and whistles (new combat, seamless room transitions) but I'll take the clunkier SIlent HIll games any day.
This game lacked everything that I loved about Silent Hill.
I'm not an avid gamer, but I played Silent Hill because it was different.
Welcome Home: a Silent Hill review.
Silent Hill is a survival horror series that's focused on psychological horror rather than shock horror.
I've played a few games in the series, I wasn't too interested in the original Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2 was pretty good, I didn't play Silent Hill 3, so I can't judge that one and same thing goes with Silent Hill Origins, as for Silent Hill 4: The Room, I didn't like that game at all.
I'll tell you in this review.Story: The game is about a former soldier named Alex Shepard returning home after his service from the war but he's not getting the homecoming he deserved.
Alex goes on a search for his missing brother Josh but his search would take him to the foggy ghost town that is Silent Hill where the mystery of the missing citizens of Shepard's Glen takes a dark turn.
Alex must unravel the dark connection between Silent Hill and Shepard's Glen and find out why his little brother Josh and everyone else had disappeared.
5/5 Graphics: Like Silent Hill: Origins, Silent Hill: Homecoming wasn't developed by Team Silent.
When I first played this game, I was surprised Double Helix Games pulled the graphics off really well.
Double Helix even took some inspiration from the Silent Hill film for the Otherworld moments which is a plus.
5/5 Gameplay: In Silent Hill 4: The Room, I felt the controls were stiff, melee combat was delayed, holding ten items until you put them in a chest was tedious and repetitive, and the first person perspective just didn't serve a purpose.
As I said before, Silent Hill: Homecoming is a huge improvement.
Not only Silent Hill: Homecoming goes back to the basics of previous games, it also implements the over the shoulder targeting mechanic and has greatly improved melee combat.
Once again, Double Helix Games really pulled it off on the gameplay.
5/5 I truly recommend this game to anyone who's a big fan of Silent Hill or survival horror games in general.
Silent Hill: Homecoming is a great game and go check it out but don't take my word for it.Final Score: 5/5.
Pretty good, I think - little terrifying, and the combat's great.
I liked it, but I don't think it holds a candle to Silent Hill 2, but then again I had the static turned off and the screen rather bright.
Anyway, my favorite part of this game was probably the combat system.
But before you enter Silent Hill the (first?) time, when in...
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes that kind of combat system, for sure, as long as you don't mind a little terror along the way.