The Positives of Silent Hill Homecoming.

[Mr.E.Nygma]

Travis

[OverlookedMotel]

The voice acting.
The Hell Descent, Shepherd House and Church levels.
Some aspects of the story, including Alex's relationship with his family (but NOT the borrowed-from-SH2 plot twist).
Judge Holloway (I just love her as a character, not quite sure why).
The expanded mythology of the Order and the Holy Way sect.
The symbolism that IS there if you look for it, contrary to what many fans claim.
Alex (possibly the most sympathetic protagonist in the series thus far).
The combat system (apart from that one psychotic nurse in the Hotel who'll tear you to shreds if you make one false move).
The bosses.
Parts of the soundtrack (especially Witchcraft, Scarlet, and the vocal songs).
Travis!

[Perry Mason]

- The atmosphere
- The music
- The otherworld transitions
- The story

[Lupos87]

The ending scene which actually did get me choked up, if only because I would have behaved the exact same way as Alex after coming to terms with what I had done. Here I'm talking about when he gives Josh the flashlight. "Here you go buddy." he says while choking back sobs. I just watched that again last night and it hit me just how sorrowful and heartbreaking that whole sequence is. I admit, it got me. :'(

[MoonBlade]

As tricky as the combat system was, especially the menu aspect of it, I really liked that Alex was able to really fight. He is a soldier that has the ability to swing a knife like it was no one's business. In about 500 playthroughs of SH1, I've never once used the knife. The same can be said of SH3. I loved's Alex's ability to deliver blows, deflect attacks, dodge and the overall ability to play around w/ combo's, vs. the old form of shooting the shit out of enemies from yards away while the dumbly waddled toward the character.

[TraceBASS]

As tricky as the combat system was, especially the menu aspect of it, I really liked that Alex was able to really fight. He is a soldier that has the ability to swing a knife like it was no one's business. In about 500 playthroughs of SH1, I've never once used the knife. The same can be said of SH3. I loved's Alex's ability to deliver blows, deflect attacks, dodge and the overall ability to play around w/ combo's, vs. the old form of shooting the shit out of enemies from yards away while the dumbly waddled toward the character.

Did somebody say Resident Evil?
Hehehe, sorry. Couldn't help it.
I will say that the idea of killing the Order members was a little more disturbing because you were killing actual human beings who could feel and think and have morals (well, they may have been lacking in that department, but I digress) so yeah, it seemed a little confronting actually going that step further.

[Dr.Jebus Moon]

I liked the graphics, the design and the detail of everything.
I also enjoyed the characters very much, I think Joshua's character was the best,
Just liked his character throughout the whole game.
Also, the voice acting.

[Mercury]

I liked the idea of the diaries and the visuals are great.

[KLan]

Alex's voice actor is MUCH better than Henry's (SH4) voice actor. Henry's VA was so awful I don't even know how to describe it.
Yeah and the graphics are great I suppose for a 2008 game.
Other than that I don't see anything that would be "better" than SH 1-3.

[Lingo]

I kinda love just how dark and grisly Homecoming gets, the Silent Hill games have always touched on some pretty dark themes but this just goes insane with gory bleakness in the last third. I'm honestly still surprised that the ESRB let some of the brutally violent stuff that happens near the end slide, maybe they just got stuck on one of the boss fights and never made it that far.

[_Bleaux]

Oh man, Homecoming is probably my favorite Silent Hill now that I think about it.

I absolutely loved the story, I really could feel for Alex the whole game, especially when you first arrive at his house and start to piece together the relationship with his family. It struck home particularly for me because I have a younger sibling as well and our living situation ended up similar. (Much much less extreme of course) But I could totally feel for him and the situation he was in (even before you figure out why he was treated poorly).

Alex is my favorite protagonist in the whole series because I feel everything about him was so well done. Plus the branching dialog choices were all believable (I played on playthrough of him trying to be calm and then the next one where basically he was just screaming at everyone trying to find his brother).

I also really liked his facial animations, my favorite face he made in the whole game was the one where you transition in the Scarlet fight and he has a really tired, really intense, freaked out looked on his face from the fight which he thought was over. I also think Alex had the best reactions to date in the series to each of the creatures, he just felt the most -human- to me.

Then there's the combat, the combat never really got stale although to this day it baffles me how the ferals seem to completely wreck people.

Silent Hill Homecoming also brought another type of fear to me that I had not felt in the other series.... The simple fear of death. Knowing that every enemy in the game has the potential to severely injure you unless you have some of strategy really ups the stress.

And as someone else mentioned, fighting actual humans just for some reason made the whole thing a lot more grim to me. It made you feel like that Alex was going to find his brother and he was damn well ready to kill to do it. Which says something of his conviction I say.

Overall, there's not much bad I can say about Homecoming

[WalterisHere]

Something positive...The nurses were good eye candy?

[Shadedarkan]

One of the best games in the series. I'm just sorry that I own the game, but not the PS3 to play it at my whim. All that aside.

The combat was a puzzle by itself. My first run through I got stuck at the end of the sewer level with no health packs and dying to the three needlers and siam. I actually had to start a new game and rethink my "I kill everything with the steel pipe like in other Silent Hills right?" attitude. But boy, once I found out that everything but ferals, lurkers, and smogs should be taken down with the knife I was golden.

Exploration, I love it. This game let me do it without annoying me with monsters every five seconds. By far, Homecoming had the least amount of fighting in a Silent Hill game to date. You can run past 95% of the monsters.

I couldn't predict the storyline with more than 63% accuracy until after I'd completed most of the game. Too many of the other games were predictable from the outset. I also highly enjoyed the nature of the story and it's uniqueness.

The graphics were excellent without taking away from the rest of the game. In other Silent Hills gameplay and story were sacrificed to make the game look good. Big 'No no' in my book.

[TheCrazy]

Silent Hill Homecoming was pretty good, in my opinion. It's not my favourite game at all but still I guess that it was interesting, the atmosphere wasn't bad, the creatures were nice. What made me sad was the fact that they decided to pick too many elements from the movie and stick close to Silent Hill 2 (too close actually). The gameplay had some good things as well but had some were really bad, such as the puzzles, they were too easy or too hard.

Well, overall Homecoming is an 'okay' game - has good stuff and bad stuff, which is totally normal in everything!

[keeps]

maybe i'll check it out

i've been feeling more understanding and accepting of the new installments lately and i've played Origins and SM so might as well give it a shot i suppose

[The_Gatekeeper]

-Soundtrack (Witchcraft is an amazing composition)
-Enemy and boss designs. (Even is some of them aren't original, overall it was a good collective of enemies,especially the Lurkers. Loved the bosses. I was playing through the game with a friend of mine, and the first time we saw Scarlett and Asphyxia, we bugged out.
- Visual representation of damage in enemies.

[astro]

I bought this a couple of days ago after playing Downpour because I hadn't played any of the western-developed games until recently, and I have to say after hearing all the negativity surrounding it, I don't hate it. I'd guess that I'm only around halfway through it, but I genuinely think the combat is pretty good, I also like how it doesn't let you carry around three shopping carts worth of ammunition. I'm dubious about calling it a decent game, because compared to the other Silent Hill games it's a load of old bollocks, but if it weren't a Silent Hill title I feel it would be treated much more kindly.

[devil hunter]

Well, that's the thing. It's not a bad game, it's just not a good SH game.

[astro]

Up to Scarlet, what a kick-arse boss. There should probably be a healing item in the area though, I've died like six times and now I'm so proficient at dodging combat isn't going to feel hectic anymore.

[astro]

Just finished it.

Not bad, not good, just kind of "eh".

I liked how you could beat a lot of the puzzles by systematically trying all the different variations.