#CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SH2 AND SH4#
(A NECESSARY) INTRODUCTION
Firstly, I know that games are made to make money. Much too often the most important thing for the creators is to pander to the tastes of the AVERAGE gamer, who often thinks, "Hey, I fork out my parents' hard-earned bucks and I want to get what I already know and like fog, flashlight and Pyramid Head, 'cause he was sooo cool and I wanna be like him! Oh, and make it all more accessible, 'cause the previous games were too weird and open to interpretation. I just wanna shoot some monsters dammit!"
Secondly, I realize that most games are made to entertain. Fine by me.
However, I always thought SH was an exception to the rule. I felt that Team Silent's primary ambition was to create ART and not pure entertainment. They were willing to share their own artistic vision with us, and were not afraid to challenge the fans of the series with new (and sometimes risky) ideas. They could have just repeated the well-tried formulas over and over again. They didn't do it. Each of the first four games offered something new and unexpected. Each new installment thrilled and surprised the gamer. Team Silent concocted four highly ORIGINAL and INVENTIVE works of art. They never compromised their creativity because they never completely succumbed to the casual gamer's expectations. In other words, they had the balls to defy our wishes.
I mean, if you want to create true art you should never listen to the masses, but to your own sense of artistic sensitivity. Be like Zappa, Zorn or Patton. Be like Lynch, Bunuel or Jarmusch.
I never wanted SH to be tailored to my demands! I wanted it to surprise me, shock me, make me FEEL and THINK and REEVALUATE my ideals. Well, that was the case with the first four SH games. Now, with Origins and Homecoming it's over. SH is officially dead to me.
THE REVIEW PROPER
I feel that with the new team the main concern was how many bucks the next SH game would/should earn. It's like they wanted to play it safe and their main goal was to please the old fans and at the same time make the game attractive to casual gamers. They had no true artistic vision of their own they just reverently imitated and combined the "coolest" elements from the previous games to suck up to the fanboys and added some "in vogue" novelties to broaden the target market. Hence, to me Silent Hill is no longer about art or new ideas it's about making easy money through imitation rather than creation.
Here's what I find wrong with SH Homecoming:
In short, the game is well-produced but STALE.
In more detail:
1) FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT
It's repetitive all the trademark features of the previous SH games are used in a basically unchanged way, which makes the game dull, predictable and unscary.
Cases in point: flashlight, fog, locations (hospital, sewers, prison), monsters (nurses, dogs, straitjacket monsters), music (exactly the same ambient stuff we've already heard so many times before) and the most important thing: storyline (an ugly imitation of SH2 story and some elements from the movie). The problem lies in rehashing the same things for the FIFTH time without adding anything substantially new to the ATMOSPHERE or the STORY!!!
I know they've improved the fighting system, introduced dialog trees, changed the viewpoint, etc but these things are just small cosmetic changes that can't hide the fact that the franchise suffers from stagnation it's got stuck in a rut!
I mean, how many times can you fight the nurses? How many times can you visit hospitals? How many times can you listen to the same ambient tunes during conversations? Jeez, the overexposure just makes the game BORING.
2) TWO IS A COMPANY, THREE IS A CROWD
There are too many characters in Homecoming (I think around a dozen in total!). SH was about isolation and solitary quest for the truth, here we get a team effort. It was an interesting idea to introduce more characters, but come on! The game is "teeming with unnecessary people"! Some characters are totally irrelevant to the plot and you can't help but wonder why they're in the game at all. This overabundance makes the game less creepy and claustrophobic.
3) BOO! GOTCHA!
The game has a very tired approach to inspiring fear in the gamer. Namely, there are a lot of jump scares and loud action scenes reminiscent of typical Hollywood film productions. Again, all this is too familiar and derivative to produce true fear or excitement.
4) I WANNA PLAY A GAME
In all truth, the game is more gratuitously disgusting than scary. It bows more than once to the trendy sub-genre of torture-flicks there's blood, guts and cutting and drilling aplenty. In my humble opinion, the graphic nature of some of the scenes is out of place in a game like SH. (Do you remember the subtle way they showed James's crime in SH2? Or when in SH4 they only showed the deaths of two of Sullivan's victims? The other three acts of violence were implied!) Please, don't turn SH into "Hostel", for Mary's sake!
To sum up, although well-executed, the game is derivative on all fronts and doesn't introduce anything substantially new to the series. If you enjoy the feeling of deja vu in your gaming experience you will probably like this game. If you crave for something original, surprising and inspiring you are in for a disappointment.
(A NECESSARY) INTRODUCTION
Firstly, I know that games are made to make money. Much too often the most important thing for the creators is to pander to the tastes of the AVERAGE gamer, who often thinks, "Hey, I fork out my parents' hard-earned bucks and I want to get what I already know and like fog, flashlight and Pyramid Head, 'cause he was sooo cool and I wanna be like him! Oh, and make it all more accessible, 'cause the previous games were too weird and open to interpretation. I just wanna shoot some monsters dammit!"
Secondly, I realize that most games are made to entertain. Fine by me.
However, I always thought SH was an exception to the rule. I felt that Team Silent's primary ambition was to create ART and not pure entertainment. They were willing to share their own artistic vision with us, and were not afraid to challenge the fans of the series with new (and sometimes risky) ideas. They could have just repeated the well-tried formulas over and over again. They didn't do it. Each of the first four games offered something new and unexpected. Each new installment thrilled and surprised the gamer. Team Silent concocted four highly ORIGINAL and INVENTIVE works of art. They never compromised their creativity because they never completely succumbed to the casual gamer's expectations. In other words, they had the balls to defy our wishes.
I mean, if you want to create true art you should never listen to the masses, but to your own sense of artistic sensitivity. Be like Zappa, Zorn or Patton. Be like Lynch, Bunuel or Jarmusch.
I never wanted SH to be tailored to my demands! I wanted it to surprise me, shock me, make me FEEL and THINK and REEVALUATE my ideals. Well, that was the case with the first four SH games. Now, with Origins and Homecoming it's over. SH is officially dead to me.
THE REVIEW PROPER
I feel that with the new team the main concern was how many bucks the next SH game would/should earn. It's like they wanted to play it safe and their main goal was to please the old fans and at the same time make the game attractive to casual gamers. They had no true artistic vision of their own they just reverently imitated and combined the "coolest" elements from the previous games to suck up to the fanboys and added some "in vogue" novelties to broaden the target market. Hence, to me Silent Hill is no longer about art or new ideas it's about making easy money through imitation rather than creation.
Here's what I find wrong with SH Homecoming:
In short, the game is well-produced but STALE.
In more detail:
1) FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT
It's repetitive all the trademark features of the previous SH games are used in a basically unchanged way, which makes the game dull, predictable and unscary.
Cases in point: flashlight, fog, locations (hospital, sewers, prison), monsters (nurses, dogs, straitjacket monsters), music (exactly the same ambient stuff we've already heard so many times before) and the most important thing: storyline (an ugly imitation of SH2 story and some elements from the movie). The problem lies in rehashing the same things for the FIFTH time without adding anything substantially new to the ATMOSPHERE or the STORY!!!
I know they've improved the fighting system, introduced dialog trees, changed the viewpoint, etc but these things are just small cosmetic changes that can't hide the fact that the franchise suffers from stagnation it's got stuck in a rut!
I mean, how many times can you fight the nurses? How many times can you visit hospitals? How many times can you listen to the same ambient tunes during conversations? Jeez, the overexposure just makes the game BORING.
2) TWO IS A COMPANY, THREE IS A CROWD
There are too many characters in Homecoming (I think around a dozen in total!). SH was about isolation and solitary quest for the truth, here we get a team effort. It was an interesting idea to introduce more characters, but come on! The game is "teeming with unnecessary people"! Some characters are totally irrelevant to the plot and you can't help but wonder why they're in the game at all. This overabundance makes the game less creepy and claustrophobic.
3) BOO! GOTCHA!
The game has a very tired approach to inspiring fear in the gamer. Namely, there are a lot of jump scares and loud action scenes reminiscent of typical Hollywood film productions. Again, all this is too familiar and derivative to produce true fear or excitement.
4) I WANNA PLAY A GAME
In all truth, the game is more gratuitously disgusting than scary. It bows more than once to the trendy sub-genre of torture-flicks there's blood, guts and cutting and drilling aplenty. In my humble opinion, the graphic nature of some of the scenes is out of place in a game like SH. (Do you remember the subtle way they showed James's crime in SH2? Or when in SH4 they only showed the deaths of two of Sullivan's victims? The other three acts of violence were implied!) Please, don't turn SH into "Hostel", for Mary's sake!
To sum up, although well-executed, the game is derivative on all fronts and doesn't introduce anything substantially new to the series. If you enjoy the feeling of deja vu in your gaming experience you will probably like this game. If you crave for something original, surprising and inspiring you are in for a disappointment.