My Weekend In Silent Hill

So Gamefly.com delivered for once in quick fashion and dropped me off some goodness on Friday afternoon.  Silent Hill: Homecoming.

Now I haven't played a game of silent hill except for the very first one on the PS1 back when it was just the Playstation and then I played Silent Hill:  The Room for the original Xbox (which I was really not thrilled with and only played for maybe a hour before I got tired of it)

Anyways, I have to say I really liked SH:H.   It had a nice creepy slow paced vibe to it that I really enjoyed.   The omnipresent fog/ashe is present but looks so much more murky than any of its earlier brethren.   

SH:H places you in the role of a character Alex Shepard, just back from the war after spending some time apparently in the hospital from being wounded in "battle",  From there you start off chasing after your little brother Joshua, in the typical survival horror staple if player one is looking for his sibling/spouse ect, no real ground breaking pplot advancment in this game to start off with.  Without spoilling any of the plot developments, there are a few (1 or 2) plot twists that hit right in the last few scenes of the game.

Anyways, back to the meat of the matter, the game itself. 

Pluses:   Great sound effects, good ambient music sets the tone.   Visuals are what you would really come to expect at this point from a game for the 360, no real breakthroughs in special effects like in Condemned 2, but they still look good.  It gives you a real  gritty, dirty, something is messed up look.  The puzzles are nothing to scoff at, there are only a few of them in the whole game, but I have to admit, they really took me a while since I had no idea what in the hell I was doing with them, but you can get them through trial and error and just sticking with them.  The boss battles are deceptive, the very first boss is a pushover, I had it beaten pretty quick, the second boss was a damage sponge though, it took forever to defeat her and ALOT of attempts.  The bosses seemed to go in waves, hard, easier, harder, easier, blah blah blah.

Negatives:  There are only maybe 6 different types of enemies and once you get the hang of them, they aren't all that hard to beat, I think I took out most of them with nothing but the knife and the dagger, saving up ammunition until the boss fights.   The BIG ONE, the camera angle....not being able to invert it made the game take alot longer than it should have.   But you can invert the aim for your weapons....the guns and what not can be aimed like normal, which saved some of it for me.   The game is also fairly short, even with the camera throwing me into seasickenss on occasion, I managed to get it done in just under 8 hours or so.

All in all, it was a pretty good game.  I really enjoyed it for what it was. a rental, I would't suggest buying it, its definately a gamefly or rental purchase.

On a creepy scale, I would give it, 4 out of 5 Hack's mothers.