I’ve been to Hell it’s almost like coming home

“Silent Hill” is a great psycho-spiritual survival horror franchise. Sure, they’ve had their high points like “Silent Hill 2”. They’ve also had their strange, broken low points like “Silent Hill 4: The Room. Silent Hill 5: Homecoming” is in a weird state of limbo, being one of the best and one of the worst in the series thus far. The story is very much like the story of “Jacob’s Ladder.” You play through as a veteran of war who returns home to find out that his little brother disappeared and his father is dead. Something sinister is circling around the plot that doesn’t seem quite normal, even for a “Silent Hill” game. That something sinister is the topic of whether or not you’re actually alive while trying to survive this little slice of Hell on Earth. Gameplay is done in a very new way compared to the games of the series. Conversations have been adapted into trees, like those in “Mass Effect.” Different branches/responses will garner different reactions. They will also have different effects on gameplay, depending on how you treat the characters. One of the things that most people both loved and hated was the fact that the combat controls were revamped to be more fluid and natural than in earlier games. Rather than combat controls playing like you’re someone who largely survives on dumb luck, you’re playing a soldier, so it would only be natural that you’d at least know how to fight. Still, this made things a bit easy to play through, and that could be maddening. You can also better survey your surroundings, since movement and camerawork are controlled with the analog sticks rather than being locked in certain places. There is also the ability to look at the world in first-person view. Music and sound are usually the high points of the series. The music has been suffering a bit since they started incorporating lyrics, forcing out the emotion of certain songs. Also quite a bit of the soundtrack tends to sound like variations on the general score for “Jacob’s Ladder.” Sure, it worked, and Akira Yamaoka is still a genius at inciting emotion. It just doesn’t work with the songs that have lyrics. The sound design and the acoustics of the environments are creepy, as they usually were. Visuals are both a high point and low point for the series. The visuals can be beautiful, but in some ways they are nowhere near “next-gen” graphics. The environments are huge. The degenerating world when it shifts to hell and regenerating back is gorgeous and is done in real-time, much like the movie. Fog effects are almost on par with the original game. Lighting effects are getting better and are casting more ominous shadows. Character animation is about on par with “Silent Hill 2.” Monster animations at times are much better. Other times they are about on par with “Silent Hill 3.” Sometimes it works. The visual atmosphere is still pretty creepy as well. The game works as what it is. It just isn’t something that really sets itself up as something special. This is only a buy if you are a diehard fan of series. If not, just rent it.