I just beat Silent Hill: Homecoming, here is a review of what I thought about the game

Silent Hill has always been known as one of the more scarier survival-horror games to grace our consoles and pc's. Having played all the Silent Hill games (besides "Origins"), you could have guessed I was extremely eager to play this new Silent Hill game and my anticipation was pretty high.

Homecoming was made by Double Helix studios, making it the first American made Silent Hill game. You could easily tell that the game had been created by a USA based studio due to the fact that it had been completely re-vamped. The combat system, the items menu, and the over-all story was all different. The game had also borrowed a few elements from the movie, such as the Pyramid Head design, Nurse designs and the new addition of "Order Members" as enemies.

The Story was extremely simple to understand and it had a mild "twist" in the end. This is where Homecoming lost its edge, the story was by far one of the weakest in the series, and by weakest I mean that it lacks the creativity we all yearn for in a Silent Hill game. The Silent Hill story line has so many possibilities, but Homecoming just did not deliver any of those possibilities.

The Story: Your name is Alex Sheperd, a soldier returning home from the war only to find out your brother is missing and your father has left to go find him in a town called "Silent Hill". After seeing your hometown "Sheperds Glenn" over-run with monsters, you begin to search for your brother, only to find yourself venturing into "Silent Hill".

The Gameplay in Homecoming was a great improvement from the other games, besides a few minor flaws when fighting some bosses and some enemies, the new combat system makes the game enjoyable and allows the player to be more involved instead of just running around and randomnly beating things on the ground. The new game allows you to dodge and do two melee attacks, a light attack and a slower but more powerful heavy attack. The over the shoulder camera is a nice improvement as well. The new items menu also solves the problem of having to slowly open the menu through the pause button just to use a health item or to equip a weapon. In Homecoming, the two top bumpers are clicked for a quick access menu for healing items, puzzle items, and weapons.

The Music isn't as nice as most Silent Hill games, but it was good enough to pass off in this game. I say this because the sound effects were not as eerie or mysterious as it was in other Silent Hill games. Music is one of the most important parts of any game, but this rule is especially important for survivor-horror games. Without the ambience of ghostly tunes, what would have in a survivor-horror game? Well, nothing really.

Finally, the concept, the over all concept. Does it feel like a Silent Hill game? Yes and No. Yes it has the ghostly fog, the chattery radio and the dim flashlight but its missing the demonic presence in the story, its missing the great creature concepts and interesting character stories. Homecoming has it's positives and negatives, but overall my feelings for the game were more negative than positive. I just didn't feel at home in "Homecoming".

Pros: New Combat system, Easier access of items, Great graphics improvement, Better Controls

Cons: Simple Puzzles, Weak Creature and Character design, Bad Story, Too Short and Too easy

Overall Score: B-