I just finished the Hell Descent section and yeah they really nailed this! 3 stars is a fair score. It's obvious Double Helix poured their souls into this title.

I think the combat is brilliant very visceral & brutal though the dodge mechanic is not that intuitive I guess it works...kinda. The enemies and boss designs are some of the best in the series and the graphics were more impressive than I anticipated.

I think the voice acting is also quite strong (SH2 has some of the worst ever)and the story as me invested in it.

My main gripe is probably he locales...I found the cemetery section deadly boring. It's hot & cold in that aspect whereas the SH1/2/3 I cannot ever remember being bored.

Otherwise this was a fine effort!

Another thing Chris...whats next? Are you going to do you're own review on Shattered Memories? Another thing that came to me playing Origins & Homecoming is that I hope Konami keep this franchise alive...I love these games.

Loved the review, while my own perception of the game was slightly less positive, you sumed it all up really well, thanks. Waiting for your Deadly Premonition review, DP looks quite yummy.

I really did not enjoy my time with Homecoming at all. I could excuse chorish combat and a first bad couple hours, but when its story finally reared its big and ugly head around, I was flabbergasted by how stupid it actually was. It has some of the worst writing I've seen in any video game and for me that's downright unforgivable. Homecoming is like an adaption of the Silent Hill Movie, but without the camp or great direction. Feh.

I use to bash Homecoming a lot. It's battle system is clunky but as time has gone on the game has grown on me.

Homecoming could have been a relaunch for the entire franchise because SH fan boys wouldn't accept it the died. It's funny the entire SH fanbase on the interweb wants a remake of SH2 they got it in the form of Homecoming.

I understood your problem with the placement of save points in the essence of time- given you don't have a lot of time to play- but I can only assume your were simply overlooking items because I found them to be pretty evenly distributed, even with minimal exploration.

The inconsistent pacing actually was almost a plus for me, because it broke out of the "wander in fog- fade to darkness-warp to rusty- boss fight, rinse and repeat" formula that, while fantastic in the older games, would have probably just gone sour from predictability in this game. However, I say "almost" because at times it simply felt random.

I didn't have the hatred for the camera that you seem to, but I can see your point about how it was used in previous games. It could have seriously stepped up the eeriness in this game if they had gone the route that you mentioned.



As for your note about the endings, I was under the impression that whether or not Alex was tied to the religious accident or whether or not it was all a "crack dream" was inherently tied to the ending you received. To me this is one of the things that the first two Silent Hill games had that 3 lacked, and only after replaying it a few times did it begin to bug me: there's a psychological depth 3 dabbles in, but never really dives in to. I still love the game, but I've found I don't enjoy it as much as I used to because of this.

Granted, Homecoming doesn't necessarily get much deeper than 3, but I find myself thinking it over more.

I'm going to play Homecoming and Shattered memories pretty soon, so I'm happy to hear that they're not bad.

Funny how much having control of the camera reduced the fear. Check out my haiku review, which highlighted the same point:

http://www.bitmob.com/articles/haiku-review-silent-hill-homecoming-ps3

you forgot to mention monster design, something yahtzee touched upon on his review: monsters on SH are not random generic crap, they're supposed to represent something. and as far as i can tell, they dont represent much of alex or anyone else

and what about the use of pyramid head, now named "the boogeyman", or depicting the cult members as industrial miners? there's a lot of loose ends on homecoming.