Serves up scares, but doesn't satisfy my Silent Hil craving.

Silent Hill Homecoming is not a bad game by any means. It's got solid gameplay, a new camera system that works, and a new combat system that while far from perfect, is serviceable. The problem is that all of these innovations change everything that made Silent Hill scary to begin with.

Anyone who's played a Silent Hill game before will notice right away a few things that have changed since our last romp around. The new game adopts a 3rd person camera view that somewhat reminds me of GTA IV (especially when aiming a firearm). When opening doors, the main character just runs into the next room, rather than the black screen that shows up when entering rooms in other silent hill games. Our hero this time is in the armed forces, and knows how to handle himself. The result is a combat system that makes you run up to monsters and get into an attack-dodge-counterattack dance with them.

These things you'll notice right off the bat all add up to do one thing: remove all sense of claustrophobia, dread, and helplessness that previous Silent Hill games had. There was always a certain sense of dread whenever opening a door in previous games, because there was a pause in the action durring which you saw nothing but blank screen, and were treated to a view of the main characters face while you hear something moaning in the room with you. When you do fight the enemies, they aren't overly powerful or fast, but neither is your character. It made you feel helpless. The traditional Silent Hill feeling is gone, and this made me feel somewhat betrayed.

While the game is not the same sort of unsettling, it is still unsettling nonetheless. Alot of the atmosphere comes from the soundtrack, which mercifully is still the same industrial-panic music, and the next-gen visuals make the game all the more unsettling. Rather than claustrophobic dread, the game gives the player an unnerving feeling that something is just plain wrong. The feeling is different, but still just as intense. (The first night playing it, I stopped because I just didn't feel like i could take much more right before going to bed.)

The biggest problem I had with the game, however, was the combat system. It works, but it doesn't take much to ruin your day. It consists of melee weapons and guns, as usual, but the melee system has been completely revamped. Your attacks are much faster, you can block, and dodge. So can your enemies. It wouldn't be a big deal, but some enemies can link combos together, and they can go through half your health before you can counter. This is fine for one enemy, but the developers seemed to think that since you're alot more powerful this time, you can handle alot more baddies at once. Like, say 5.
Most unfortunately, ammo is almost criminally hard to come by. You can only hold enough ammo to load a gun three times, but you'll rarely ever have so much that you cant' pick up more. Halfway through the game i came across probably 4 boxes of handgun bullets. To make matters worse, one of the enemies (called smog) has an attack that hurts rather viciously, AND leaves you stunned, and to top off, you can only hurt him a split second before this attack. So, basically, you NEED bullets to finish him off, because getting within melee distance will leave you dead. The end result? You're going to be too hesitant to shoot the 5 enemies who are eating you alive because you'll be paranoid that you'll turn a corner and run into one of these damned smogs after you've used all your bullets. And later in the game, enemies respawn. Fun!
This is not a bad game. There are a few positive things about it (in particular, a few of the "other world" sequences are deliciously disturbing). Its just a bad silent hill game. Morale of the story: If you're a huge fan of silent hill, go buy this one. If you've played Silent Hill 2, go rent this one. If you haven't played Silent Hill 2, slam your fingers in a door for your neglect and go play that one instead.