Silent Hill 5: Homecoming
Silent Hill 3 and 4 were released within a year of each other, so when nothing was announced right away concerning a 5th game in the series, my hopes started to dwindle. During this period a live action adaptation of the first game made it's way into theaters and although this was no replacement for a new game, the reinvested visuals at least presented some passion from a different group of creative individuals. Shortly after, it was announced that two western developers (as opposed to Konami in Japan) were working separately on a PlayStation Portable prequel and more importantly, a new Silent Hill game on the Xbox 360.
Although most people were weary of the fact that it was now an American team working on a beloved Japanese series, everything I read suggested it was going to be handled with care. The American team, Double Helix, was essentially led by producer and songwriter for the series Akira Yamaoka. Who both created a fantastic new soundtrack for this game and kept the team on style with the series.
As far as I was concerned, he did his job well and Homecoming turned out scary as ever. The only real complaint some people had was that the whole game was a little too combat oriented. And the real fear in Silent Hill is that you really can't kill everything that comes at you, you should be running, not forced to fight waves of tough creatures.
But alas, Silent Hill 5 did a lot of things very right. The recent release of the feature film and it's new take on some of the visuals really rubbed off on the developers and they made sure to include as much of this as they could in Homecoming. When the world goes from light to dark and the air raid sirens roll on, the paint starts to peel from the walls, floating up in the air like ash and a horrifying skeletal and rusty world beneath reveals itself. The graphical prowess of the new consoles now allowed for much more detailed perks like this that really help sell the incredibly frightening world of Silent Hill.
Double Helix not only took visual effects elements from the film, they also seemed to have drawn from the new canon set forth. In Homecoming you encounter the same gas-mask wearing cult the Order introduced in the movie. But it worked well, not quite as horrifying a narrative as previous games, but it was neat to see and Homecoming found many other ways to balance the scary.
A lot of this is found in the absolutely incredible monster design. As always, Silent Hill manages to feature some horrifying creatures and this is no exception. Pretty much all of the enemies are based off of humans, only twisted beyond most recognition. The hulking Siam features jaws that resemble human fingers, the Schism has a human bottom half and a hammerhead top that splits down the middle, riddled with teeth. The Needler appears as if a contortionist tied giant knives to his appendages and crawls around on them, upside-down like a spider. The list continues. Homecoming did unfortunately bring back Pyramid Head and the Nurses, as in the movie, even though the concept behind the creatures is that they are supposed to reflect memories from the protagonist. Nevertheless..
In the end, although it did have a tinge of American feel to it, I was very happy with this new addition to the series. It was scary as hell, featured some incredible moments, a decent narrative and some brilliant designs. This was another one of those games that I really couldn't play for more than an hour at a time or risk having a heart attack. It was almost a bit of a drawback since I couldn't complete it at any regular pacing since it was too scary to play for any length of time. I once asked a friend who was over to hang out for an extra hour so that I could get to the next save point.
I never did beat it, I got stuck at the very end with no ammo and no health. I've been meaning to go back and replay it from the beginning. Maybe I'll go out of my way to finish it this Halloween night. As per tradition.
Silent Hill 3 and 4 were released within a year of each other, so when nothing was announced right away concerning a 5th game in the series, my hopes started to dwindle. During this period a live action adaptation of the first game made it's way into theaters and although this was no replacement for a new game, the reinvested visuals at least presented some passion from a different group of creative individuals. Shortly after, it was announced that two western developers (as opposed to Konami in Japan) were working separately on a PlayStation Portable prequel and more importantly, a new Silent Hill game on the Xbox 360.Although most people were weary of the fact that it was now an American team working on a beloved Japanese series, everything I read suggested it was going to be handled with care. The American team, Double Helix, was essentially led by producer and songwriter for the series Akira Yamaoka. Who both created a fantastic new soundtrack for this game and kept the team on style with the series.
As far as I was concerned, he did his job well and Homecoming turned out scary as ever. The only real complaint some people had was that the whole game was a little too combat oriented. And the real fear in Silent Hill is that you really can't kill everything that comes at you, you should be running, not forced to fight waves of tough creatures. But alas, Silent Hill 5 did a lot of things very right. The recent release of the feature film and it's new take on some of the visuals really rubbed off on the developers and they made sure to include as much of this as they could in Homecoming. When the world goes from light to dark and the air raid sirens roll on, the paint starts to peel from the walls, floating up in the air like ash and a horrifying skeletal and rusty world beneath reveals itself. The graphical prowess of the new consoles now allowed for much more detailed perks like this that really help sell the incredibly frightening world of Silent Hill.
Double Helix not only took visual effects elements from the film, they also seemed to have drawn from the new canon set forth. In Homecoming you encounter the same gas-mask wearing cult the Order introduced in the movie. But it worked well, not quite as horrifying a narrative as previous games, but it was neat to see and Homecoming found many other ways to balance the scary.I never did beat it, I got stuck at the very end with no ammo and no health. I've been meaning to go back and replay it from the beginning. Maybe I'll go out of my way to finish it this Halloween night. As per tradition.
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