Along the way you digest numerous passages of text, and, of course, you stumble across puzzles of varying levels of obscurity. You pick up a map of your immediate vicinity, traipse to a designated location, mine it for objects, ammo and health items, and laboriously try every door until you find someone to talk to. The gameplay, once again, is a fine balance between exploration, puzzle-solving and tense combat, and anyone vaguely familiar with past Silent Hill titles will note that the fundamentals are as they were eight or nine years ago. The boob job wasn't quite what was advertised. Typically for a Silent Hill game, the whole place is shrouded in fog, entire streets have been ripped apart by what looks like an earthquake, and crazed, disembodied creatures lurch out of the gloom with a peculiar desire to eat your face. Troubled by dreams of his younger brother Josh, he returns to discover his mother almost catatonic, and the town largely abandoned, save for a few frazzled individuals also on the hunt for loved ones. In this case it's Alex Shepherd, a 22-year-old returning to Shepherd's Glen after a spell in military hospital. Double Helix has - by its own admission - been tasked with making a solid, faithful continuation, rather than building on what's gone before in any meaningful way, and the familiarity often breeds contempt.Īs ever, Homecoming's about a man haunted by his past. And while the game is mostly successful in its attempts to ape the cloying atmosphere and visual grime that made the originals so disgustingly alluring, its obsession with ageing gameplay mechanics and bygone design quirks means that it feels regressive and out of touch. In almost exactly the same way that Silent Hill Origins dared not stray from the formula, Homecoming is guilty of paying homage to the series to a restrictive degree. Again farmed out, this time to the US-based Double Helix, fans were expecting another frustrating compromise. With the slight disappointment of The Room, followed by the curious and controversial decision to farm out the development of the underwhelming Origins to UK studio Climax, expectations for Homecoming have been dampened for some time. After the enduring majesty of the first three Silent Hill games, it's now more than five years since Konami's survival-horror lynchpin stood shoulder to shoulder with the most vital, relevant brands in gaming.
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