Silent Hill: Homecoming -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me is Silent Hill: Homecoming for the Xbox 360. It's been a while since we've had a console version of Silent Hill. A proper Silent Hill, if you will. But that's part of the debate about Silent Hill: Homecoming now isn't it? You see this is the second game not produced by Konami and more specifically Team Silent. Which in all honesty is a good thing. Because as much as any other fanboy out there I'd love to see a Silent Hill game from the members of Team Silent circa Silent Hill or Silent Hill 2. But here's the thing, Team Silent, they don't want to make Silent Hill games. In fact Team Silent doesn't even exist anymore. So that's why we had Climax's Silent Hill: Origins and that's why we have Double Helix Games' Silent Hill: Homecoming. Climax played it entirely safe with Origins. How are Double Helix Games going to handle things? The hardware of the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 are going to allow them to at least be a bit more bold than Climax and change some things. And from my initial impression they have done that. Most obvious being the game has a new 3D camera that changes up the dynamic considerably. They've also beefed up the combat skills of the main character, Alex Shepard. He's not as entirely plodding as the other main characters. He can dodge and roll. I'm not sure what to make of the combat just yet. The game starts out in the town of Shepard's Glen, a town just seemingly down the road from Silent Hill. Another subtle but interesting change is the main character dealing with characters he's familiar with. People he knows from his past and people from around town. The story itself has Alex seeking his brother and returning to Shepard's Glen from time in a military hospital where he ended up from injuries received in the war. He comes home to find things considerably amiss as you could imagine. So far the story is off to an interesting start. We'll have to see where it goes. I'm not sure what to make of the game's graphics as they seem a mixed bag. The sound is all around awesome though. Which shouldn't be a surprise with Akira Yamaoka returning to handle the score. I have to say that my initial impression of the game is pleasantly optimistic.