I just finished it for the 2nd time, and gotta admit I like it now even better than before.
It was my first (and only) Silent Hill game I’ve played. Seeing it get 6/10s on Wikipedia is kind of sad. It feels like they put a lot of effort into this game.
I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to the Silent Hill movie, which I also haven’t seen. So yeah, I’m not that big of a Silent Hill fan, but if someone asked me “do I like Silent Hill” then I’d easily respond with “Yeah, I loved Homecoming.”
Is it that people think it’s a bad Silent Hill game? Do they think it’s a bad game in general?
And my biggest question, do you think the game is better in retrospect?
Because its not a good Silent Hill game.
The Good:
The graphics were okay if a little plastic-y. The transition to the Other World was cool. Some monster design was good and the soundtrack was great.
The Bad:
Pyramid Head and Bubblehead Nurses should not have appeared in it. Those were created for James Sunderland only.
The game focused way too heavily on combat, which could be chalked up to Alex being a combat veteran. Except the rug-pull ending says he isn’t. Also, while combat appears in previous Silent Hill games, it plays a de-emphasized role. That is, in most cases it is preferrable to the player to skip combat than spend time and health on combat. Its not supposed to be engaging, that’s specifically by design. Homecoming is more action-focused which goes against the design of survival horror as a genre, and Silent Hill as a series. Action focused gameplay is more appropriate for Resident Evil games starting with RE2, as those games always tried to be more action-focused.
Its also got a lot of technical problems, primarily random crashing being the biggest problem. Along with the awful medical advise that comes with removing the knives saving the police officer (in real life the opposite is actually true, leave the knives in to prevent further bleeding until EMS can remder aid).
QTEs. Works in some games like Shenmue, definitely does not belong in Silent Hill.