Silent Hill: Homecoming First Impressions

I suppose it's time to accept that my Playstation 3 is faulty. I bought it on eBay because I just had to have a 60gb for its backward compatibility, so I'm screwed as far as warranty goes. I bought it, along with LittleBigPlanet, back in November. LittleBigPlanet has periodically frozen during gameplay ever since. But I played a DVD, a PSN game and a PS2 game with no problems, so I assumed it was the game and got a replacement from GameStop. I bought Silent Hill: Homecoming on this same trip and it's frozen during a few loading times between scenes. I removed the information bar, deleted game data, and disabled the internet connection, as suggested by some people on a game forum (and had already done a System Restore when I was first having the problem). That seemed to help, but it froze again after 2 hours or so of gameplay. It's something I'm thinking, for now, I can live with, but I can see it happening in the future right after beating a really hard boss or something and that's a big fat Do Not Want. I'll probably roll over and pay the damn $150 for Sony to fix it eventually.

I figured something like this would happen, which is why I wanted a Wii from the very beginning, but I'm stuck with Sony if I want to play the games I actually like cannot live without (Silent Hill, Final Fantasy, Fumito Ueda's eventual third game).

Speaking of Silent Hill. I'm finally in the middle of Homecoming, the game I spent so much time looking forward to; the game I remained so hopeful about for so long; the game I defended against the many fatalistic fans complaining that Pyramid Head was renamed Bogeyman and that the presence of a creepy child was played-out (what, it wasn't tired by the third time Team Silent did it?). There was a lot of fear that Double Helix understood the appearance of Silent Hill but not the emotional gears; sadly, I find that fear pretty much realized. There are a lot of "clues" in Homecoming that seem present simply to announce to us that they've at least seen the other games in the series– look, here's a TV with white noise! Here's the protagonist sticking his arm in a dubious hole! Here's a mannequin! Forcing rotten Easter eggs down our throats is not going to convince us that the game is anywhere near as good as the game being not-so-subtly recollected.

According to what little I've read, mostly by accident, I haven't even gotten to the bad part yet.

But I won't completely dismiss this game yet. Months ago, I came to terms with the fact that there never was and never will be another Silent Hill 2; after that, it was much easier to embrace Homecoming, and I believe I've been able to really appreciate the things it did right. There are some great things in it, namely the details and settings. The embers drifting up from the floor grating during the opening Otherworld scene? Brilliant touch. The sounds? As tense, uncomfortable, and downright nerve-wracking as any previous Silent Hill's has been. I'm not going to pretend this game hasn't successfully creeped me out so far. The environments, even if the things inside them aren't spectacular, are interesting. I'll take the Homecoming graveyard over the Silent Hill 4 graveyard any day. And Alex's house is successfully depressing– bleak, foreboding, eerie, and a general emotional drag to explore (yes, that's a good thing!). The set-up of the first encounter with a Smog monster is horrifying, even if the actual design of the Smogs is a bit ridiculous, excluding the fact that they seem to be sizzling, which was a great idea.

There's also the fact that I'm way more inclined to play Homecoming than LittleBigPlanet, which has enjoyed much better critical reception (LittleBigPlanet has been a LittleBig let-down so far– more on that later). So that has to mean something.

At this stage in the game, I've decided that Homecoming was a great opportunity for Double Helix, and evidence enough for me that they could create their own really good original horror game. In many ways, the addition to a cult classic series was an even bigger undertaking that setting their own rules– they couldn't be too much like older games, because then fans would call them uninspired. And they couldn't be too different, because then everyone would complain that it "wasn't Silent Hill." I believe, if even Team Silent wasn't able to live up to the crescendo of the Silent Hill series, perhaps no one else should bother trying. I'm as reluctant as anybody else to see it go, and I can't say I don't want more, because it's become a twisted little town of nostalgia for me. Even if Silent Hill: 0rigins, for example, wasn't as wonderful as SH2, it was good enough that I got my Silent Hill "fix" from it. But I guess I would rather see creative people looking for what's beyond Silent Hill. It's too bad we have to leave...



(Then again, surely there are enough creative people in the industry that I can have both, right? Maybe, one day?).