I have never before played a game that is so relentlessly frustrating in every single area of production. Every single aspect of this game: gameplay, visuals, narrative, overall presentation, et cetera, is so deeply flawed that I struggle to even grasp for straws of positive traits. The fact that some in the fanbase continue to defend Homecoming perplexes me. Knowing that Konami canceled Team Silent's Silent Hill 5 for this infuriates me. Naturally, all of this is a result of Konami commissioning Double Helix Games, a studio that had never made a game prior, to do the job, alongside Konami's demands that they modernize the series to fit with industry trends. Of course, this is not entirely Double Helix's fault, but also due to total mismanagement of the project on Konami's part. This is a spoiler review, so please be warned.

Firstly, the story. You are Alex Shepherd, a soldier coming back from the war to his town of Shepherd's Glen, a town neighboring Silent Hill. Strangely, your hometown is shrouded in a thick fog and people have gone missing. This isn't to mention the numerous ripped-off and unoriginal monsters roaming the streets. He finds his mother in a catatonic state and she tells him that his brother Joshua has gone missing. Unfortunately, this interesting premise is utterly wasted by the dumbfounding writing in this game. The game does absolutely nothing interesting with the soldier premise, never bothering to explore the trauma that could arise from fighting others in a war-torn nation. Alex's PTSD is never explored and the monster designs, manifested from his subconscious, never reflect this. More on this later. The supporting cast isn't much better, with love interest Elle Holloway being little more than that, a childhood love interest with no depth or development. Deputy Wheeler is little more than a minor black cop stereotype who sometimes helps out in combat. Margaret Holloway, the game's main antagonist doesn't even show her true colors as the villain until the cutscene you kill her (in a quick-time event, naturally). The only character I found interesting was Adam Shepherd, Alex's father. Adam naturally is a horrible person, but I feel like he had the most depth of the cast. When you do learn of the situation he was forced into and how he speaks of it afterward, it does make you consider if he genuinely feels remorse or is simply trying to save face. Adam isn't a great character by any means but he's the only one with some sort of depth. This lack of developed or memorable characters makes it hard to connect to the game's narrative and as a result, I found myself not really caring whether Alex and company survived. This isn't even to mention how the game just drops a braindead plot twist on you at the last minute. Alex was never a soldier and just came up with this ridiculously convoluted backstory to cope with Joshua's death. I find this to be the most egregious part of the game's narrative since it wastes the only interesting part of it: the premise. Throwing out a genuinely interesting story hook for a stupid bait-and-switch plot twist is the biggest mistake of this game. It makes all of the symbolism in the game feel completely disconnected from Alex and they feel like monsters in a void rather than manifestations from his psyche. It's just poorly written, predictable, and boring.

Homecoming was the first "next-gen" Silent Hill title, so naturally, at the very least you would expect some pretty visuals to go with it. This is false, unfortunately. Homecoming just reeks of budget constraints, and almost every part of this game's visuals feels cheap. Environments are generally rendered fine. They're large and detailed, even if they suffer from poor texture work. Character models are really ugly and suffer from a severe uncanny valley effect. They tend to have puppet facial animation and chunky, polygonal hair that seems to have matted together into one giant clump. The game also suffers from a severe case of asset reuse. I wouldn't be able to count on one hand the number of times the same corpse model is used over and over again. The game also has next to no graphics options, with only a resolution setting and a general quality option, the former of which is a bit redundant for me as the map and inventory break at resolutions higher than 1080p. The lack of any real video settings such as anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering is unacceptable for a PC game from 2008, even if you can force them externally. The game is also unoptimized as all hell, even on a modern PC rig. Firstly, it's capped at 30fps, but using mods to unlock it produces an unstable framerate that goes from 165fps to 20fps based on the area. The game is also very unstable even with mods seeking to alleviate the issue. It has crashed on me numerous times and while I never lost a significant amount of progress, that didn't make it any less unacceptable.

From an art direction standpoint, Homecoming feels uninspired. It feels like Double Helix's art team diluted Silent Hill's aesthetic to the most Hollywood-esque marketable style, and makes it feel more like fire and brimstone rather than a surrealist hellscape. The monster designs feel uninspired, the ones that are new that is. Plenty of them are almost entirely ripped from previous games. The smogs are just lying figures. The nurses are just from the film. Believe it or not, Pyramid Head even makes a brief yet frustrating experience. Even if you ignore Homecoming's cheap technical appearance, it doesn't even offer interesting visuals on paper.

Double Helix set out to make Homecoming's combat more intuitive than the previous five games, all of which were criticized to some degree in that regard. Comedically, they somehow made it even less intuitive! Homecoming's combat is incredibly frustrating. The simple fact that the game's main mechanic is stunlocking, something which is considered an exploit in most games, is so hysterically absurd. Hysterical, of course, until you actually have to play it. I played on hard mode, as I usually do with games, and was surprised with how little room the game gives for failure. Enemies have much quicker reaction times than you do and have a much easier time stunlocking you than the player can ever hope to achieve. Enemy attacks are also poorly telegraphed, making it hard to determine when it's best to attack and when it's best to retreat, which is especially frustrating since the nurses have an instant one-hit-kill attack. Dodgerolling isn't as useful as it should be, as some game designers thought it was an absolutely brilliant idea to give the player no invincibility frames, defeating the entire point of an evasive maneuver. Enemies are also total bullet sponges, eating up your ammunition and taking absurd amounts of melee attacks to kill. That would be fine in a survival horror game, but Homecoming is action horror, and therefore it feels counterintuitive. Puzzle-wise, the game puts in little effort. It feels like they're just there for the sake of it rather than genuinely wanting to make the player think, as they are all insanely easy. Some of them are even sliding block puzzles. Yeah.

Silent Hill: Homecoming spits in the face of everything the franchise stands for. The story is generic and poorly written, the gameplay is frustrating and unintuitive, and the game itself is held together by duct tape. It's really not worth playing at all, even if you're a diehard Silent Hill fan. If you absolutely must play it, play it with Unknownproject's Patch, or on a console where crashes are less of an issue.

I have never before played a game that is so relentlessly frustrating in every single area of production. Every single aspect of this game: gameplay, visuals, narrative, overall presentation, et cetera, is so deeply flawed that I struggle to even grasp for straws of positive traits. The fact that some in the fanbase continue to defend Homecoming perplexes me. Knowing that Konami canceled Team Silent's Silent Hill 5 for this infuriates me. Naturally, all of this is a result of Konami commissioning Double Helix Games, a studio that had never made a game prior, to do the job, alongside Konami's demands that they modernize the series to fit with industry trends. Of course, this is not entirely Double Helix's fault, but also due to total mismanagement of the project on Konami's part. This is a spoiler review, so please be warned. Firstly, the story. You are Alex Shepherd, a soldier coming back from the war to his town of Shepherd's Glen, a town neighboring Silent Hill. Strangely, your hometown is shrouded in a thick fog and people have gone missing. This isn't to mention the numerous ripped-off and unoriginal monsters roaming the streets. He finds his mother in a catatonic state and she tells him that his brother Joshua has gone missing. Unfortunately, this interesting premise is utterly wasted by the dumbfounding writing in this game. The game does absolutely nothing interesting with the soldier premise, never bothering to explore the trauma that could arise from fighting others in a war-torn nation. Alex's PTSD is never explored and the monster designs, manifested from his subconscious, never reflect this. More on this later. The supporting cast isn't much better, with love interest Elle Holloway being little more than that, a childhood love interest with no depth or development. Deputy Wheeler is little more than a minor black cop stereotype who sometimes helps out in combat. Margaret Holloway, the game's main antagonist doesn't even show her true colors as the villain until the cutscene you kill her (in a quick-time event, naturally). The only character I found interesting was Adam Shepherd, Alex's father. Adam naturally is a horrible person, but I feel like he had the most depth of the cast. When you do learn of the situation he was forced into and how he speaks of it afterward, it does make you consider if he genuinely feels remorse or is simply trying to save face. Adam isn't a great character by any means but he's the only one with some sort of depth. This lack of developed or memorable characters makes it hard to connect to the game's narrative and as a result, I found myself not really caring whether Alex and company survived. This isn't even to mention how the game just drops a braindead plot twist on you at the last minute. Alex was never a soldier and just came up with this ridiculously convoluted backstory to cope with Joshua's death. I find this to be the most egregious part of the game's narrative since it wastes the only interesting part of it: the premise. Throwing out a genuinely interesting story hook for a stupid bait-and-switch plot twist is the biggest mistake of this game. It makes all of the symbolism in the game feel completely disconnected from Alex and they feel like monsters in a void rather than manifestations from his psyche. It's just poorly written, predictable, and boring. Homecoming was the first "next-gen" Silent Hill title, so naturally, at the very least you would expect some pretty visuals to go with it. This is false, unfortunately. Homecoming just reeks of budget constraints, and almost every part of this game's visuals feels cheap. Environments are generally rendered fine. They're large and detailed, even if they suffer from poor texture work. Character models are really ugly and suffer from a severe uncanny valley effect. They tend to have puppet facial animation and chunky, polygonal hair that seems to have matted together into one giant clump. The game also suffers from a severe case of asset reuse. I wouldn't be able to count on one hand the number of times the same corpse model is used over and over again. The game also has next to no graphics options, with only a resolution setting and a general quality option, the former of which is a bit redundant for me as the map and inventory break at resolutions higher than 1080p. The lack of any real video settings such as anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering is unacceptable for a PC game from 2008, even if you can force them externally. The game is also unoptimized as all hell, even on a modern PC rig. Firstly, it's capped at 30fps, but using mods to unlock it produces an unstable framerate that goes from 165fps to 20fps based on the area. The game is also very unstable even with mods seeking to alleviate the issue. It has crashed on me numerous times and while I never lost a significant amount of progress, that didn't make it any less unacceptable. From an art direction standpoint, Homecoming feels uninspired. It feels like Double Helix's art team diluted Silent Hill's aesthetic to the most Hollywood-esque marketable style, and makes it feel more like fire and brimstone rather than a surrealist hellscape. The monster designs feel uninspired, the ones that are new that is. Plenty of them are almost entirely ripped from previous games. The smogs are just lying figures. The nurses are just from the film. Believe it or not, Pyramid Head even makes a brief yet frustrating experience. Even if you ignore Homecoming's cheap technical appearance, it doesn't even offer interesting visuals on paper. Double Helix set out to make Homecoming's combat more intuitive than the previous five games, all of which were criticized to some degree in that regard. Comedically, they somehow made it even less intuitive! Homecoming's combat is incredibly frustrating. The simple fact that the game's main mechanic is stunlocking, something which is considered an exploit in most games, is so hysterically absurd. Hysterical, of course, until you actually have to play it. I played on hard mode, as I usually do with games, and was surprised with how little room the game gives for failure. Enemies have much quicker reaction times than you do and have a much easier time stunlocking you than the player can ever hope to achieve. Enemy attacks are also poorly telegraphed, making it hard to determine when it's best to attack and when it's best to retreat, which is especially frustrating since the nurses have an instant one-hit-kill attack. Dodgerolling isn't as useful as it should be, as some game designers thought it was an absolutely brilliant idea to give the player no invincibility frames, defeating the entire point of an evasive maneuver. Enemies are also total bullet sponges, eating up your ammunition and taking absurd amounts of melee attacks to kill. That would be fine in a survival horror game, but Homecoming is action horror, and therefore it feels counterintuitive. Puzzle-wise, the game puts in little effort. It feels like they're just there for the sake of it rather than genuinely wanting to make the player think, as they are all insanely easy. Some of them are even sliding block puzzles. Yeah. Silent Hill: Homecoming spits in the face of everything the franchise stands for. The story is generic and poorly written, the gameplay is frustrating and unintuitive, and the game itself is held together by duct tape. It's really not worth playing at all, even if you're a diehard Silent Hill fan. If you absolutely must play it, play it with Unknownproject's Patch, or on a console where crashes are less of an issue.