Horror, in any medium, relies heavily on the unknown to be effective. For any fans of Silent Hill out there, I recommend not reading the following impressions. They aren’t spoiler heavy, but knowing anything about the game prior to experiencing it first hand may dilute it. You should, however, know that if you’re one of those fans, you should play Homecoming on day one, and don’t be embarrassed if you have to turn on the lights when you do.
It speaks volumes of Double Helix Games’ new Silent Hill for Xbox 360 and PS3 that, provided you have a pair of slick headphones, the game can manage to be terrifying, ominous, and discomfiting even when played in a room bustling with journalists, PR agents, and noisy Dance Dance Revolution kiosks. Silent Hill: Homecoming does what Silent Hill should, in principal, do: it makes you profoundly uncomfortable. Not just scared, but itchy and nervous. If you can’t tell, my playthrough of the game’s first half-hour not only left me impressed, but helped to allay my fears that a full-bore Silent Hill game not crafted by Team Silent’s careful eye would not live up to the series’ past accomplishments.
Of course, Homecoming does start off on the wrong foot. The game’s opening moments, an unplayable sequence that finds protagonist Alex Shepherd bound and wheeled through a nightmarish hospital pulled right out of Jacob’s Ladder, feel overly traditional. Frantic as Alex sounds and creepy as the mute, blood-spattered doctor is, the imagery and scenario are par for the Silent Hill course. Actually playing through the hospital after Alex’s inevitable escape is just as familiar; when the faceless demon nurses show up, it feels like running into an old friend rather than intimidating. The cryptic dialogue with a mysterious child, the eviscerated bodies scattered around the environment, the bloody, organic walls all make Homecoming initially feel like blank homage to its predecessors, albeit a very good looking and controlling homage. It isn’t until the hospital is left behind and Alex makes his way home to Shepherd’s Glen, where the game begins in earnest, that Double Helix shows their understanding of Silent Hill’s legacy.
I’m not going to go into detail in describing Alex Shepherd’s homecoming. I will say that this sequence, of Alex being forced to explore his childhood home – his actual home, mind you, not a warped, cast-iron, evil version – gets to the very root of what makes the Silent Hill franchise tick. Each of the original four Silent Hills take utterly mundane, familiar locales (a mall, elementary school, hotel, a city apartment) and make them alien and wrong while maintaining their familiarity. It’s always done to emphasize and reflect each protagonist’s plight, from Harry Mason’s desperation to save his adopted child to James Sunderland’s crushing guilt and masochistic need for punishment. I don’t know Alex Shepherd’s story, but this first real environment in Silent Hill: Homecoming betrays his sad background and implies that somewhere between his youth and what you play, something went terribly wrong for him.
There’s a lot more to say about Silent Hill: Homecoming, particularly regarding its revamped control scheme and newfound emphasis on combat, but those are topics best saved for our review. As of now, I’d say that the pinnacle of interactive horror is set to comeback in a big, big way.
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Screen Test: Silent Hill Homecoming
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