"The foggy streets and haunting music—we all know where this is." No formal introduction is necessary before the disturbing images of a town ravaged by horrific creatures and dark secrets flood the massive projection screen behind Lead Designer Jason Allen. The fifth installment of Konami's lauded survival-horror series comes with high expectations, something that Allen understands all too well.
Silent Hill: Homecoming represents a step forward for the series visually, despite holding onto a formula cemented in tricky puzzles, suspenseful exploration, and visceral combat. Although changes to the combat system and an increase in the visual quality thanks to advanced hardware give the game a boost into the current generation, the game promises to stay close to the series-faithful approach.
Retaining the feel of previous Silent Hill games was a priority, Allen states. "It's been really important to us that we get it right." Before diving into the mechanics of play or crafting an engine to bring life to the dirty, decrepit town, the team focused on the narrative backdrop. As a young soldier discharged from service following a series of horrific nightmares, Alex Shepard returns home to find his family fractured. His younger brother Josh has disappeared, their father having gone out in search of him. Emotionally drained, their mother sits at home contemplating suicide. Alex leaves his mother to track down Josh and their father, hoping to restore normalcy to the family. What he discovers is an underlying world of dastardly secrets. Allen explains, "The game really is a vehicle for telling a deeper story about the town."
Exploring the foggy streets of Silent Hill requires more than just a penchant for storytelling, though. Combat, while not the central focus of previous installments still holds an important role in the game. Confronting the demonic denizens of the siren world constitutes some of the game's most intense moments. Alex's training as a soldier provides him with an advantage previous protagonists failed to possess, but that still doesn't make him out to be a superhuman fighting force. Enemies are still incredibly lethal and avoiding combat remains the preferred option. "This isn't a combat game, per se," asserts Allen. "We wanted players to think about avoiding enemies because they're overpowered and frightful."
Should you get drawn into a fight, Alex does entertain a wide range of abilities that ensure you'll hold your own. Light and heavy attacks are pulled off when holding down the L2 shoulder button and the face buttons. Pressing down on X, for example, enables you to charge up an attack; however, the charge up time leaves you vulnerable to attack. Stringing together light and heavy attacks yields simple combination attacks, which naturally are more effective than a single attack alone. Finishing moves specific to each weapon trigger gory animations. Fighting off a bloodied dog creature called a feral—Alex chops off its head when executing a finishing move with an ax.
Defensive maneuvers are making their way into the series as well in the form of dodges, blocks, and counterattacks. Two types of dodges enable Alex to decrease the amount of damage incurred by enemy attacks. A perfect dodge causes Alex to move to skirt to the side to completely avoid an enemy blow; on the other hand, an imperfect dodge will allows Alex block the attack with his arms at the cost of a small amount of damage. Whenever you successfully complete a perfect dodge, you have the option of triggering a counterattack.
Light and heavy counters depend on which face button you press, with heavy counters obviously requiring longer to execute but yielding greater damage. The depth here is all subtle, so it's entirely possible to run through the game button mashing through combat. Of course, getting through the more difficult sections of the game will be easier when utilizing the advanced mechanics.
