Silent Hill Homecoming: First Impressions

Why is this a first impression piece and not a full review? Well unfortunately I am right royally stuck, so stuck I’m not sure I’ll be able to get through the game for a long time and I want to go through the pros and cons of the game thus far before I get completely disillusioned!

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First of all I’ve got to say I was a little disappointed when I finally got hold of the game. I’ve been wanting to play a Silent Hill game since I first got into gaming: regular readers will be aware of my creepy obsession with survival horror and Silent Hill has always been one of the big names in that genre. Taking its cues from horror movie greats like the Shining and Jacob’s Ladder, it has a reputation for outstanding atmospherics and ghastly monsters. I’d seen the drastically over the top movie adaptation and I’d seen entire walkthroughs of some of the earlier games (because I’m one of those strange gamers who is more interested in the plot than the gameplay and can happily watch someone else play through a whole game), so I was pretty familiar with the mood and the key set pieces of the franchise. The game I ended up playing wasn’t quite the full blown terror experience I had been hoping for, it’s nowhere near as unsettling as Condemned, and although it’s not really a bad game it is seriously flawed.

A lot of what I like about it is part and parcel of the Silent Hill franchise in general; the biggest being the sumptuous music by Akira Yamaoka, at times industrial and oppressive and at others haunting and beautiful, aiding the atmosphere of the experience enormously. It’s so beautiful in fact that I went off and downloaded as much of it as I could, I never thought I’d be raving about music from a videogame but there you are! Adding to the atmospherics is clever use of sound effects, notably the characteristic radio interference adding to the sense of dread before a creature attacks you, as well as muffled voices or growls and even the odd scream just to keep you on edge. The franchise’s trademark Fog and Other Worlds also make an appearance, distorting reality in a suitably unpleasant way and ensuring you can never see too far ahead. The only downside to all this is the fact that there are slightly too many monsters in the game: it’s far scarier when Alex is running around blindly and you know that soon one will appear, when it actually appears the fear subsides a little. Other little details, like the large number of letters and notes lying around to be read, and even the “I got a whatever” text whenever you pick things up keep the game within the realms of the previous instalments.

This story follows Alex Shepherd, an ex-army chap searching the titular haunted town for his lost brother. Although Alex is a bit beefier than previous protagonists he still fights (and runs away) in a similar way, except that we now have a dodge move. The dodge is a bit of a pain to be honest; it’s hard to master and has to be used slightly differently with each monster. I had similar problems with the block button in Condemned, it’s a more realistic move and it adds to the frenetic edge that survival horror encounters really ought to have but it’s cumbersome and it doesn’t always work; sometimes I’d whack the button at the right moment and Alex would stand there oblivious while whatever monstrosity he was facing cut him into ribbons. The fact that damage shows up wherever an enemy is hit is quite nice, though it doesn’t stop Alex from stabbing the Nurse monsters in the chest all the damned time, though to be fair to him their chests are pretty big targets! Combat is generally quite hard, once a monster has hit you once it’s probably going to beat you, though most are relatively easy if you strike first. Irritatingly, the combat system has an automatic lock on so that Alex simply faces the nearest thing, even when strategically going to another might be more useful. Ammunition is scarce and health packs even scarcer, although just to lure you into a false sense of security the first few levels offer both pretty plentifully, before suddenly leaving you in a hotel full of monsters with only one health drink to be found. Thank you game for making me waste most of my health on easy monsters beforehand!

This inconsistency is part of the reason I’m currently stuck. The first boss battle is painfully easy, I got through it in one go, but the second, which occurs about half way through the game, is absolutely murderous and follows a level with very little ammunition or health. It showcases the reason why I don’t really like boss fights in games, they’re either anticlimactic or nigh-on impossible. I’ve got nothing against sticking a really tough battle right at the end or putting some harder monsters in once in a while, but why suddenly put the toughest battle in the middle? It’s very, very frustrating, although if anyone feels like popping over to my house and defeating the damn thing for me, I’d be very grateful!

Because the real trouble is, I really want to know what happens and being stuck in the middle of the game is agonisingly annoying. Plot-wise the game seems to be following the general themes and set pieces of the previous games: average chap with serious emotional baggage searching for someone close to him in an environment of fear and psychosexual shenanigans, though unfortunately I cant discern that much of psychological core without finishing the game.

Oh and a quick word on the monsters, since everybody loves them. There are plenty of familiar faces, or should that be lack of faces: the bubble-head nurses return, looking more and more like drunk girls out on a Saturday night as the teeter around on their high heels groaning and flashing flesh; the skinless dogs return as “ferals”; the big bugs are back and very annoying they are too, since it’s often so dark you can’t see them and the game doesn’t tell you straight away how to get rid of them; oh and Pyramid Head makes a brief and apparently fan-serving appearance, dragging his obscenely phallic knife across a hallway, and sauntering off. New monsters range from nondescript, such as Lurkers which are easy to defeat creatures resembling the Fiji Mermaid, to interesting, such as Siam a sort of elephant made from conjoined male and female figures, to downright silly, namely Schism, a daft-looking pale creature that looks like a cross between a hammerhead shark and a banana. The settings look great, as always, the animation is outstanding… its just a shame it’s so inconsistent.

While I’m at it, a quick word of the E3 trailer for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. A re-imagining of the first game, it looks promising but… the decision to change the Otherworld from its usual rusty, industrial look to something very cold and icy is bound to annoy fans. Part of the appeal of Silent Hill is the design of the Otherworld and, yes, okay it’s a psychological construct and ought to look different depending on the protagonist (remember Angela’s fiery Otherworld in the second game?) but some of the same visual cues need to be there. The design of the monsters is going to have to make up for this and at the moment the developers seem to be playing their cards close to their chest: only rather generic faceless humanoids can be seen, juddering with Jacob’s Ladder style convulsions. I like the idea of returning the game to a more to survival-based rather than combat-based level, but I really don’t see why it’s going to be released on the Wii of all things. Either they’re trying to persuade survival horror players to buy more consoles (as though releasing Origins on the PSP wasn’t bad enough) or they’re trying to make a greater range of games for the Wii in general… either way I’m not sure it will be a success. Maybe I’ll persuade my sister to let me play it on her Wii, because I’m certainly not buying one just to play that one game!