Silent Hill Homecoming

Being a fan of all the other Silent Hill games, I had wanted to play Homecoming for a long time. However, after seeing the poor reviews, I hesitated and kept postponing it. With the Silent Hill 2 remake out and Silent Hill f in production, I figured now was the right time — even if the game is a bit outdated.

Once you get past the crashing issues (don’t alt-tab, make sure to install all the programs Steam asks for during the initial setup, and use the Unknownproject patch if necessary), the experience becomes much smoother. The game definitely feels old-school, but it still carries the same eerie atmosphere and unsettling storytelling that Silent Hill is known for. The scenario was surprisingly engaging, and I found myself hooked, eager to unravel the mysteries of this particular chapter.

I’d recommend this game to fans of horror games, and especially to Silent Hill enthusiasts. Sure, there are a few gameplay flaws and its age shows, but if you can look past those minor downsides, there’s a lot to appreciate. The story alone makes it worth playing, and I was genuinely intrigued to discover what was happening in this haunted town.

If you’re not afraid of outdated graphics and gameplay, I believe Silent Hill Homecoming is still a solid and enjoyable horror experience.

Unplayable in its current state. Can’t recommend.

I don't think I like this.
It isn't like terrible. But It's a little bad.

Bad port. Controls are clunky and unresponsive. It was a better game on console, which is where it should have stayed.

ABSOLUTE GAMING

This and Outlast are the only games that made me scared

It crashes quite often to pass without mentioning it. The combat mechanics are not friendly and you will be frustrated specially when dealing with bosses. It has a good story as a whole but the characters are a bit superficial and they come and go too fast. It is worth paying but at the right price which in my opinion is less than $10/£10. From 5 stars i would give a 3. Play at first on medium so you won't be stressed and frustrated haha.

Hola

I find it funny that Konami advertises this game on steam even though it is a broken port for an already terrible game.

Playing on PC is a totla pain. The controls are clunky and often unresponsive, leading to unnecessary death and having to restart

This game is cool if you are a silent hill fan but it is very buggy if you crash after the attic puzzle non stop download the 2.5 update and if it keeps crashing after that lower your resolution like way down and put the graphics on medium that worked out for me to pass the game.

A fundamental misunderstanding of the Silent Hill’s essence, and broken beyond repair...

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Silent Hill Homecoming is a game that consistently feels like it was a fanfiction written by an occasionally semi-competent team of developers who lacked the talent to produce a proper entry in the franchise, but desperately wanted to take a crack at it anyway. Which, of course, makes it all the more baffling that this ended up being an actual mainline Silent Hill game. While not always outright a bad game, Homecoming never strays away from making sure you know the designers had very little know-how of what made the series accrue a cult following.

“I do love my son, Father. I love both my sons. But I had to make a choice, and the only way to live with that was to make sure my son never loved me. I had to make sure that he would never feel joy or compassion, all the things that make life worth living. You must understand, I was only trying to make things easier for him…. and for me.

And for this selfishness, I ask forgiveness.”

Generally speaking, Homecoming is what you get when you assemble a team of passionate developers who harbor deep love and admiration for the source material but don’t really understand its overarching themes, symbols and meaning(s). Furthermore, the game suffers from the same affliction as the first Western Silent Hill game, Silent Hill Origins – every post-Team Silent developer seems to have been really obsessed with Silent Hill 2 and its approach to the story, and honestly? I get it. It was the most beloved entry in the series and one of the most influential game of all time, but its story was a good one-off, not something to be re-hashed over and over again. Yet here we are, fans of the original who wanted to make their own SH2 while possessing only a surface level understanding of it.

Homecoming could have worked - exchanging the usual "just a regular guy" archetype of a main protagonist for a soldiers, someone who is equipped to at least in part handle the horrors thrown at him by the titular town while also suffering from war-related afflictions (which would bring it close to one of the primary influences of the very first Silent Hill, Jacob's Ladder) has definitely served as an intriguing premise. Unfortunately, the execution falls completely flat, not in small part thanks to  the fact that Alex Shephard is, at the end, just a regular guy who deluded himself into being one . This hurts all the more because the beginning of the game is actually promising, featuring the signature gloomy and uneasy atmosphere, an excellent soundtrack, and some decent character interactions. I mean, the first time you visit Alex's home, you get the familiar tingles that only a Silent Hill game can deliver. However, the more you advance through the story, the more frustrating and mentally exhausting the whole experience becomes.

The game simply has too few redeeming factors and every pro comes with a sore con. A decent enemy variety is hampered by the fact that some of them have been imported straight from Silent Hill 2 and thus are completely out of place, captivating bosses are brought down by an abysmal combat system, interesting areas to explore clash with obnoxious progression and stupid puzzles, and a well-setup story takes a dive for the worst thanks to poor writing and inconsistent characters. This makes it difficult to praise any singular aspect of the game that has potential, because that potential largely remains unfulfilled and always comes with a negative and prominent asterisk. Add to that the fact that this is a shoddy PC port that simply doesn't work without copious fixes and even then you'd be lucky not to run into some kind of annoying issue and you've got and alright game at best that few would be hard-pressed to recommend going out of your way to so much as launch.

It really is disappointing to see that Homecoming is the only (older) Silent Hill game on Steam. While it is not necessarily the worst game out there, it definitely is the worst Silent Hill game...

Positives & Negatives

[table]
[tr]
[th] Positives [/th]
[th] Negatives [/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]+ One thing Silent Hill game can never get wrong is soundtrack - Akira Yamaoka is a master of his craft[/td]
[td]- The game looked out-of-date graphically even at the time of its launch and aging has certainly not done it any favors[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]+ Intriguing story premise[/td]
[td]- Atrocious combat system, which is funny as Silent Hill has always had clunky and annoying combat, but never to this extent [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]+ The first 1-2 hours manage to evoke the proper Silent Hill-esque feelings and emotions[/td]
[td]- Utterly broken PC port that even community fixes could not patch together[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]+ Some of the multiple endings are actually interesting[/td]
[td]- Bad animations, both combat-related and facial[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td]- Disappointing story and plot twist execution [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td]- Boring and inconsistent characters, including the protagonist[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

Pretty awful game on it's own, but the fact that this port is completely busted and unplayable without fan patches makes this an experience you should skip.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is a vile stain on the Silent Hill name. It’s a betrayal to everything that made the franchise legendary. Whoever thought this was a good idea should’ve been banned from ever making a game again. The atmosphere? Nonexistent. The dread, the psychological horror that made Silent Hill a masterpiece? Completely butchered. What we’re left with is an embarrassing, soul-sucking mockery of a horror game that doesn’t deserve to share the same name as the classics.

The story is a convoluted mess that insults your intelligence, and the characters? They’re cardboard cutouts with as much personality as a wet rag. The combat is sluggish and frustrating, it’s like they took the most annoying parts of early Silent Hill games and amplified them to make you want to throw your controller at the screen.

This game is an absolute dumpster fire, a pathetic excuse for a Silent Hill title. Avoid this trash at all costs. Silent Hill: Homecoming is an insult to fans and a disgrace to the genre.

2/10
Pretend this game doesn't exist.

Great game great story and environment. But the steam version is sadly unplayable junk . They need to fix it

Silent Hill: Homecoming is a survival horror game in the Silent Hill series released in 2008, developed by Double Helix Games and published by Konami. The game follows Alex Shepherd, a former soldier who returns to his hometown of Shepherd's Glen to search for his missing brother and deal with his past traumas.
Although it was received somewhat easily for its story and tense atmospheres, the game was extremely criticized for several aspects. On Steam, it has a "negative" media review, with many players pointing out flaws in the gameplay design, imprecise controls, and a frustrating combat system. Furthermore, the game distanced itself from the psychological and atmospheric style of previous games in the series.
Although Silent Hill: Homecoming has been widely criticized for its bugs and technical flaws, there is an unofficial patch created by the community that aims to fix most of these problems. This patch, available on forums and websites dedicated to the series, resolves issues such as performance glitches, control issues and graphical bugs, providing a more stable and playable experience. However, it is important to note that, despite these improvements, the game still suffers from some limitations, such as the distance from the psychological style characteristic of the series and the combat that still does not please all players.

unplayable, apparently you have to fix it. Done that, took 15 minutes came back to the game typed in the code to joshes door, boom im stuck.. pick up a console to play this game instead

Please don't buy this game. It continually crashes, therefore making it unplayable. It's unfortunately been in my backlog too, so no chance of a refund for me.

Bought it for 1 dollar, should have spent it on a kebab.

Game is unplayable & trash, crashed few times and the last one even frozen my PC. After i looked into it why it does this i found out that it's a bad port... actually this is worse than bad.

terribile pc port and optimisation, not worth it

This is effectively one of the worst games I have played; so bad that I completely removed it from my account rather than just uninstall. It controls horribly and the story is not worth the migraine you'll endure.

My opinion for this game is somewhat neutral, I don't think its the worst thing ever, but its definitely not something I call "great".

I don't know, just don't buy this expecting it to be like other Silent Hill games.

awesome game, the story is great although the combat animations could use a bit of work. After all it is a classic so playing it at list once in your life is a must

Ok so the port isn't perfect its beyond buggy and maybe even randomly difficult (That one is a silent hill classic though) but i do think fans of silent hill especially the movie fans should at least take a look at it when its on sale. Or play the ps3 port as the story is actually quite interesting and the combat is kinda goofy but a little bit of fun shines through.

Honestly? I have mixed feelings about this game..

The story was really good and the plot twist was really good, caught me by surprise.
Gameplay wise.. i dont really know, the combat system is really bad and the enemies are really stupid, i mean they can keep u stun locked and you can't do anything.
You also have the ammo issue even on normal mode, by the time i got to the Scarlet boss fight (it was hell) i was low HP and left with only melee, struggled for 3 days to beat that boss fight.

I would still recommend getting the game just to experience it, because the story was good and so were the characters, its just that combat system/Scarlet boss fight that made me annoyed with the game.

So wanted to love this game.
Got it on the Playstation and love it.
Really wanted to play it on the PC, but it's unplayable.
If you want to play it with keyboard and mouse ! Don't, just don't.
The port to PC is utterly sh*t and not playable at all without a controller.

What a waste of $40. I downloaded the patch and it's still crashing, freezing, and let's not even talk about how the mechanics are complete garbage. I could enjoy the game if it would simply RUN! Can't believe they're asking for that kind of money when they KNOW the game doesn't even function most of the time. 0/10, do not waste your hard-earned money on this crap PC version of this game. This is a perfect example of why you should be able to request a refund. I feel like my money was stolen.

5 finales y ni uno bueno pero me salió menos que una coca chica asique dentro no sé. 5/10

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☑ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☑ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☑ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs (since 2.0)
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☑ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☑ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

Now that konami is trying to revive the Silent Hill saga with the remake if SH2, and new releases they should fix this piece of garbabage this port is. i give it a chance and bought it in an offer for like 2€ and still i feel robbed. Use the money to either buy 4 on GOG or SH2Re.

I see lots of complaints about this game, but i play other games(EVIL WITHIM) with the same issues, glitches and bugs, and guess what? They(other games) have an overwhelmingly positive reputation, so my advice is, if you have a real decent and updated system setup, just put a very decent ssd on it, because 80% of these issues(problems) will disappear.


And here is a fix for the black screen:

if you still experience black screen on launch.

Go to \Engine\
Open vars_pc.cfg file with a text editor.
Change ScreenResHeight=
ScreenResWidth= to the desired resolution.

Notes

Resolutions above 1920x1080 may cause the map and examined inventory items to not display properly.

if a vars_pc.cfg doesnt exist in engine folder create it and add desired screen resolution



OBS: It's the closest decent thing near the "OUTLAST" experience, but with guns. And if this isin't enough 4 u, then i advice you to watch a movie that goes by the name of, "House on Haunted Hill", the 1999 version, and look for a character that goes by the name of,
Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt, and not a RPG game claiming to be a horror game.

great game, it crashes :3

Team Silent should never have stopped making SH games. I have been a fan of Silent Hill for 20 years, but I lost interest after Origins. I never played Homecoming or Downpour as the OG games (1-4) are simply king. I decided to try again, but Homecoming is a broken game to say the least. it does not support controllers, which for a start is scandalous, and trying to use the Steam Input Translation mapping does not work and leaves the combat knife constantly equipped, so I can't interact with the environment and just keep swiping the knife everywhere rather than reading documents or moving over obstacles etc. Also it appears that an equipped weapon cannot be unequipped, so I am immediately uninterested. Do yourself a favour and play the original and best games from the days of yore, and avoid this nonsense.

This port is god awful. Borderline unplayable. It would be nice if Konami would update the game and fix it but I doubt that will ever happen.

Loud Mountain: Welcome Mat is not very good.

Runs extremely poorly on my system, and not due to lack of specs. Combat is unsatisfying, the psychological scares are gone, the story is more fit for a D-list straight to DVD horror film than a Silent Hill game. Also, spoilers [spoiler]: You don't even play an actual war veteran. Your character just LARPS as one. Can you imagine what the OG team silent could have done with a war veteran's PTSD? [spoiler]

Fix probably is capping fps in the pc graphical options such as nvidia panel/graphic setting/program setting/silent hill homing/max fps 30 or 36 ... save... and still don't enjoy this game... but hey, OG experience without crash issue

Played through the game on xbox, was curious if the PC version offered more fixes for the graphics. It did 'kind-of-sort-of,' but an already lame carbon copy of a silent hill game won't be fixed by graphics. I don't know how to sugar coat this; the games bad. I used to describe it as a fan game made by a generic western studio. Now that time's passed, even the things that were good or passable about this game have shrunk. It's just boring and insulting to both the player and to Konami. Easily the worst game in the series. 3/10 for the crashes and how poorly it's aged, it's still a complete experience but man you can be doing literally anything else with your time.

Such a fun and scary game, there's so many twists and turns that make me jump out of my seat. 10/10 would recommend.

Terrible buy It glitches so much and kicks me out before i can save i had to re due so many parts of this game not worth 41 bucks

Please Remake This Game... pretty good story, cool monsters, interesting places to explore... but ruined because this game is broken as heck and riddled with technical issues!!!!

I love this game but once I got to the graveyard it just freezes and crashes the game. I tried using Unlnown projects patch to fix this and it helped a bit but now the screen just freezes on cutscenes and I have to restart from the last save just for it to freeze again. I play on a MSI PC and it’s new with high graphics card, so I don’t understand why this game isn’t working. I can easily play games like COD and Fortnite but not this. Id love for this to be fixed.

What can i say about SH that hasnt already been said before. Great game still worth playing today.

and i thought the xbox 360 is bad for a game like that but this was even worse on pc.

Add more Silent Hill games to steam

Got this game on sale, is worth the sale price not the original price. Controls are very sucky just another thing to get used to and dodge action is not always so helpful ecpically when it lags. But so far i have really enjoyed this game, very atmospheric and jumpscare like.

i love the silent hill series so i was very excited to see this one 40% off!! now i see why this game is broke it doesnt even work half the time the controls just wont work its so annoying having this game on my screen makes me irritated.

N O T O P T I M I Z E D.

I played some of the older games, but this.. this is completely unplayable for me. I played it for 42 minutes , trying to play with settings cuz my character would not even attack when i press it like 10 times, controles changed every time the game crashed. And crashing of this game.. oh my gosh. In that 42 minutes it crashed 8 times.. when i alt-tabed , when i tried to do controls in options, when i died cuz my character just would not attack.. i love silent hill with my whole heart but i probably never saw game this bad optimalized.

CIK