Silent Hill

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
$29.99
The story follows Harry Mason, who wakes up after a car accident to find that his daughter Cheryl is missing. Harry will wander the snowy streets of Silent Hill searching for answers of her disappearance, but when the world freezes over, he will need to escape the lumbering demons that haunt his steps. Harry will need to navigate both worlds to discover the truth; not just about his missing daughter, but also the type of person he actually is. Choices they make will shape Harry Mason, as well as the people he meets and the places he visits. The enemies evolve as well, taking the form of the player's deepest fears. Silent Hill promises to be more terrifying than ever.

Silent Hill: Sinner's Reward
$17.99
Brilliant and a must have for Silent Hill fans!

Great for fans of good writing, as well!

My highest recommendation! 5 stars!

Silent Hill
$19.99
Silent Hill. What can you say? I remember being so excited to get this back in February of 1999. The commercials on tv looked really good and I loved the first 2 Resident Evil games that were out at the time.

This game is NOT a Resident Evil clone. There is no item management. It reminds me more of Clock Tower than Resident Evil. The environments look excellent with the fog and it only ups the tension. When it changes to night or dark, the game just gets better.

The so called "clunky" action is perfect. Harry is not a S.T.A.R.S. member or trained with a gun, so why would he be a perfect shot? We normal people certainly wouldn't.

It's obvious the creators love the horror genre...all the streets are named after famous horror and science fiction authors, there are movies references (Psycho is the only one I'll give you...the hotel...the final staircase...oh come on go watch a classic movie, people!)

Highly recommend this as only Resident Evil 2 is a better representation of the survival horror genre when it was at its peak in the late 90s.

Silent Hill: Homecoming
$29.99
It's hard discussing homecoming. It is a game that has come with its' fair share of controversy. The reviewers who supported the game said "If you are a SH fan you should enjoy homecoming". How premature and short sighted that statement actually was. Sadly many of the most "hardcore" thus "jaded" Silent-Hill-Heads didn't like Homecoming. You could say many of them decided to hate it even before the game came out. However I'm a bit proud to say while I love SH I never took the franchise too seriously. I enjoyed every title for different reasons and I own every game but the very first one. (I even have the port of origins for the PS2)

Moving on I'm going to address the main complaints people had with the game and debunk them one by one.

Complaint # 1 The game burrowed too much from the movie.

Homecoming burrowed aesthetics from the SH film. However before the whining crested to the highest wave of angst many people actually said the film was one of the best game to movie adaptations + the costume designs and creature models were actually very faithful to the games. In lu of that the same can be said of homecoming....the creatures capture the spooky haunted atmosphere of SH perfectly. In truth the only few nods to the film are the shift to the otherworld, nurses, order cultists, and Pyramid Head. The rest of the creatures are 100% original and the story line has nothing to do with Alessa's alternate self Sharon or any of the main protagonists and antagonists from the film. If you are expecting to see Rose and Cybil Bennet running around you are in for a shocker because they are NOT in Homecoming.

The plot concerns itself with Alex Shepherd and his desperate search for his younger brother Josh. On the surface this may seem like a repeat of the Cheryl/Harry dynamic but as we've grown to expect the story takes a turn for the weird later on. In many ways the revelations are more akin to SH 2 than SH 1. While The Order is present the big chunk of the story centers around Alex's troubled home-life and the mystery of what is going on with his younger sibling. It is hinted Alex was the "black sheep" of Shepherd's Glen and both of his parents always put Josh first. There is a disturbing and sickening reason behind all that but I'm not going to spoil it for you here.

The supporting cast are all original characters. (Except a cameo appearance from Travis Grady) Judge Holloway is the mother of Alex's child hood friend Elle and she's eerily calm despite everything going on. Deputy Wheeler worked with Alex's father who was the sheriff and is a bit suspicious of Alex's motifs. Alex's mother is in a dream like state and sways in her rocking chair while mumbling about being left all alone. There is also the Mayor and the repair man Curtis who are abrasive and paranoid to say the least. Of all the faces Alex encounters Elle seems the most helpful. She is putting up posters in the town about disappearances but is a little wistful Alex left Shepherd's Glen without telling her. Homecoming finally addressed adding more people to interact with and furthermore how you respond to them has a direct impact on the game. While it can be argued this has been done before in other mediums of digital entertainment it is a welcome change and very befitting of a SH experience.

From all this it's easy to debunk SH homecoming is a complete rip off of the movie. It tells its' own tale.

Complaint #2 Alex is too combat capable!

Fans have argued being a helpless average person is the big appeal of a Silent Hill game. However in truth none of the protagonists have been powerless. In each game there were weapons to find. Heather's trade marks are the uzi and katana and event scrawny James got his mits on a chainsaw. SH 4 the room introduced a way to charge attacks so they did more damage per swing and Travis could throw televisions and toasters at oncoming beasties.

Alex is not far removed from his past cohorts. He can roll or dodge out of harms way and much like Henry Townsend he has fast yet weak attacks and strong yet slow attacks. Alex can get guns but as is tradition with SH his first few tools of pain are a simple combat knife and a lead pipe. Beyond that I have not seen anything super-human about Alex. In the beginning he takes out weak enemies easily but later on as more disturbing, grotesque, and lethal monstrosities are encountered he has to struggle to gain the advantage and as has always been the case sometimes it is better to run than it is to fight.

One nice nuance is every weapon has a use to aid Alex is exploring. An axe can cut down boards, the knife can slash apart paintings or other obstructions, and the pipe can pry things open.

Homecoming suggests Alex has military training but even that aspect of his past is a little questionable. Bottom line is Alex is no Chris Redfield. Verdict? Complaint debunked.

Complaint # 3 Homecoming Americanized Silent Hill!

Considering Team Silent was motivated by Lost Highway, Jacob's ladder, and even The shining there was a western influence to the series from the very beginning. It is true there were Japanese themes that slipped in. For example Alessa's story is about reincarnation. However beyond that even the deities in silent hill have similarities to western spirituality. Valtiel is based on the angel Valet. James' wife is hauntingly similar to the virgin Mary. Alessa is metaphorical of being akin to a female Christ. The Order sect had rites which were a cross between Native American shamanism and Catholicism.

Fans have often argued SH favored symbolism over gore. But honestly SH has always been about symbolism through the use of gore. Heather rejected God by coughing up a dead bloody baby fetus. Pyramid Head raped mannequins and slaughtered Maria many times over. Walter Sullivan murdered people to enact rites to bring his mother back to him. Vincent suggested the "things" Heather was beating to death were actually people. Silent Hill was always a twisted, maddening, sick, graphic, and disgusting carnival of flesh and blood. This did not begin with Homecoming though the latest installment is guilty of continuing to flaunt unsettling imagery.

My only critique is Homecoming's blatant use of dead corpses. There are some places you find bodies where it is unnecessary and their presence does not do much to make the game scarier.

Overall despite the occasional poorly executed shock tactic Homecoming still has many layers of depth. There is less of a difference between western horror and eastern horror than the elitists care to acknowledge. Both parts of the world have their deep and profound scary movies and their shallow bloody titillation torture flicks. Occasionally a chilling endeavor will have a little of both of those aspects woven together but because no one really gets hurt I don't see what the big deal is. "Fear" is universal to us all and no place on the earth capitalizes on "doing it better" than everyone else.

End Verdict? If you think all western horror is like Saw or Hostel I strongly suggest seeing stir of echoes, Stephen King's It, 6th sense, or any David Lynch offerings. It was the meaningful western horror Team Silent was inspired by. Double Helix is an American group but they continued team silent's proud tradition. Homecoming is not all Boo scares or slasher stupidity. It's merits should be considered as much as its' fleeting flaws.

Complaint # 4: The creatures play on kinky innuendo or are plain meaningless

Pyramid Head does have a meaning in homecoming. It actually ties a bit into the "executioners of the past" story line but he is referred to as the boogie man. Certain SH buffs were angry over this description though his title as "red pyramid thing" wasn't much more eloquent. This was a fan service everyone clamored for after SH 2 but they seemed pretty damned disappointed once they finally received it. As the proverb says "careful what you wish for...you just might get it!". Frankly this version of Pyramid head is not as deeply metaphorical as the one that was James' personal tormentor. Yet if you pay attention to much of silent hill's lore that is open to interpretation there is no denying "creatures" or "men" whom looked like Pyramid Head did exist before James' variation of him came into being. Because PH was also present in the SH arcade shooter it is doubtful he was meant to be a one hit wonder.

The second huge beef of the bestiary are the nurses. Yes, they are the movie variants. However those versions were in fact inspired by SH2. End result? We get SH 2 nurses with bigger breasts. Yet for those protesting too much "sexy nurse monsters" were in SH 3 too. SH 1 featured red clad barely legal nurse intern Lisa Garland. Lest we forget The Room even had a kinky nurse costume un-lockable for Eileen. "Nurses" have constantly been a symbol of sexual tension and hidden murderous intent for the series so blaming double helix for exploiting them is ludicrous. SH 2 was entirely about James hidden naughty fantasies and denial issues. Eroticism always snuck into Silent Hill through the back door so we should come to terms with it already!

Luckily there are many "original" monsters too. The lurkers have worm like lower bodies, human torsos, and clawed fingers. Smogs writhe in agony as their organs glow menacingly while they attack by spewing toxic fog. There are also "dog beasts" referred to cryptically as "Eddie's legacy". The biggest complaint people have brought up is the monsters do not spawn from Alex's own psyche. This is an instant comparison of SH 2 but the creatures in other games were not the result of the protagonist either. In SH 1 the creatures were from Alessa's imagination instead of Harry's thoughts. In SH 3 Heather was fighting monsters who were either twisted members of the order or manifestations of her other self whom wanted to prevent the god from being reborn. In SH 4 the denizens reflected victims of the cult as well as the people murdered by Walter Sullivan. The only other game that spawned terrors from the mind of the hero was "Origins" but some of them were Alessa's too.

By comparison the creatures in Homecoming represent the twisted mythos of silent hill in general and many of them are the legacies left over by other characters in the past who found themselves trapped in the town. That's right. There is reason to the rhyme.

Why do other people see the monsters?

One complaint was because every main character in SH can see the monsters it is not as personal of a journey to the main protagonist. However I think fans have forgotten more than one individual saw the monsters in other games too. Dr. Kaufman saw the monsters in SH 1 and was even dragged off by Lisa who was becoming a type of "damned denizen" herself. In SH 2 James finds a bloodied letter on the ground of a victim's diary chronicling the sightings of monstrosities. Douglas mentions seeing creatures in SH 3 when talking to Heather. In SH4 the room Henry had to lead Eileen around by the hand and protect her from the things lurching towards them. Bottom line is it's a weak argument to claim Silent Hill can only effect one person in any given story arch. The opposite is actually proven to be the case.

The game is too hard!

There is some logic behind this argument. SH homecoming is not a forgiving survival horror game. Both the bosses and standard creatures are tough and you will die many times even on the normal setting. Every monster has patterns and weak spots but exploiting them takes practice.

Do not fret! With perseverance you will get further into the game. The good thing about this game's difficulty is it is not hard because the odds are unfair.....rather it is hard because it demands you think hard about your combat strategies. Going into a fight haphazardly swinging is not the way to survive. Every monster is strong and weak versus different weapons and their movement patterns have to be observed meticulously if you want to hit them in the proverbial soft spot or weave around their attacks.

I actually agree with other gamers on this one. Homecoming is very frustrating on certain occasions even though thankfully it is not impossible. Personally for me this challenge is what makes it a more genuine survival horror experience.

The characters don't act in accordance with what is going on

It is true some of the characters in homecoming act odd. Judge Holloway carries on normal routines as if nothing is out of place. Curtis sits in his shop idly fixing things. However as the story rolls on we learn this menagerie of "Cool fa���ades" are gradually cracking and by the time Alex gets to the Mayor the man has completely lost it. Even in psychology studies show people occasionally handle shock and trauma by either ignoring their circumstances or continuing tasks which make them comfortable. These are all adults living in a nightmare who were forced to give up something very precious to them. Why would they want to admit their beloved town has become the maw of hell itself? I thought Deputy Wheeler and Alex's mother acted very genuine to the situation right from the start. Wheeler opts to find answers and survive while Alex's mother is so messed up she is practically comatose. Homecoming expresses everyone copes with circumstances in their own special way and that is very accurate to real life.

Do not forget what they said about SH 2 back in the day...you will be shocked !

Instead of the brain-bending adventure with scares and gore that I had so desperately hoped for, it turned out to be a sloppy, monotonous bore that nearly put me to sleep." -- ~Game Informer

"Silent Hill 2's gameplay mechanics are no different than those of any other game ever slapped with the 'survival-horror' tag. You'll whack legions of the same four or so enemy types, using the same familiar array of blunt objects, pistols, and shotguns; get Medallions A, B, and C; put them in Statue D, which opens Door E; walk through Door E; repeat until numb. You'll fight awkward camera angles as much as freaky bad things... fans of the original will be disappointed that not much is new." -- GamePro

"The action, though, is simply repetitive, as even the most common creatures must be bludgeoned repeatedly to 'kill' them (and there are a lot of creatures)." -- Next Generation

"The pacing can be a little languid at times, and the combat and movement controls could use some tweaking. Also, this game feels a little linear and lacking in extras when compared to the original." -- GameCritics

"Flawed, frustrating and contrived, but as an experience it's one of the most emotionally engaging games in existence." -- GamesRadar UK

"Silent Hill 2 doesn't break any molds or revolutionize the survival-horror genre in any particular way..." -- IGN

"Silent Hill 2 is a much prettier, somewhat smarter but less-compelling game than the original... The game's storyline makes more sense in the end of this sequel than it did in the original, but unlike in that game, it never creates the pressing need to understand it in the first place." -- GameSpot

My point? You can pick apart even a master piece if you want to be over critical but why do that when it is more fun to actually enjoy a game despite its faults?



Overall impression/ judgment: Normally I list pros and cons but I've taken up a lot of text already. The bottom line Homecoming IS Silent Hill worthy. Akira is still doing awesome music scores. The locales are still spooky and brimming with small details and obscure references to other games. The monsters are still terrifying. The story is solid. The voice acting is great. The game mechanics are improved. To put it bluntly if double helix lied and said team-silent made the game I bet more than half of the people slamming it would have sung of its' praises instead.

Overall grade: 5 out of 5 stars or a solid A

Criticisms (and they are trite): My only complaints are too many random corpses and the faces were expressive yet at the same time a bit animatronic. (Aka the eye movements and lip animations seemed stiff at times)