The human mind is one of complexities, flowing ideas, morbid thoughts that shouldn’t see the light of day, and curses that devour it like a plague. The mind, much like the human it is encased in is beautiful, complex, and filled with mystery. Much like a symphony this game is a cacophony of beautifully timed chaos that engulfs the player and makes its grip tighter the deeper we get into the maze of Silent Hill Homecoming.
Silent Hill Homecoming is a game that I went into with trepidation, excitement, and nervous laughter of what-ifs, and do I really want to deal with possible camera angles that make a roller coaster look easy. Homecoming came out in 2008 in a time when gaming starting to really take shape in my opinion, it started to form into the adult it is now. Homecoming really showed me the truest beginnings of decent camera angles and full storylines that are well woven within the gameplay. I consider gaming in the nineties to be the “baby form” of when gaming was just starting, it had its big bang moment so to speak, it wasn’t very well thought through and had a lot of missteps. Gaming in the early 2000s is it’s the teenage years of gaming, it still hasn’t figured itself out quite yet, but is starting to come into its own. The gaming world in the early 2000s was getting more of an identity for itself, especially horror niche games. And now gaming is at a point where it's in the young adult stages of life. Gaming is in its prime right now, going from an unsure adolescent to a well-formed 20 something year old. Seeing gaming as a teenager who knows what it wants out of life, but still has a ways to go has me feeling like a nostalgic parent. Hopefully personifying the development of gaming has shed new light on how I think of “retro games” especially this one. So when you see a retro game, see the progress not the age. Let’s continue
With progress come stumps along the way. The only critique I have about this game is the controls as far as the combat goes, and minor glitches. You thought I was going to say the camera angles weren’t you, no not this time! There would be moments fighting a boss and Alex would just lay there. No, it's not time for a nap, it's time to fight your inner demons. He would stop short a lot of the time leaving plenty of room for the enemy to attack more than needed. Other times it would just be as simple as Elle freezing in places, walking into walls, or even showing up in a savepoint she didn’t belong in. I am talking about when Alex and she are in the sewers and you have to fight off needlers while she was opening the gate. I, at one point, went into the save point I had made AFTER beating the needlers and she showed up. Elle, are you a secret boss or something girl? Other than that it was smooth sailing, the mechanics made it so you really couldn’t really avoid enemies which I like, they were too easily avoidable in silent hill one and two.
Silent hill homecoming was one that some of my friends had told me I wouldn’t be able to finish because it was “too difficult” the bosses, the characters you meet along the way even the lessons you learn. Yes, all difficult but for another reason entirely. This game is one that can be finished in a few days if you really sit down and are not bothered for a solid few hours. My friends, while they have good intent don’t realize that you can finish any game. Yes even getting over it with Bennett Foddy. If the game weren’t meant to be finished it wouldn’t have been made, or a game would have been this weird one-off philosophical game where the dev had already decided that it would be an abstract piece if anything. Silent Hill Homecoming was mentally difficult because it further discussed psychology in a way that made it more real to an extent. More difficult in the sense that Kojima and the writers were really pushing the emotional envelope that would get people moving further away from their screen but closer to the edge of their seat in anticipation.
The psychological aspects in this game are some of the most INTENSE I have ever seen, and we went through silent hill two…Silent hill homecoming had these moments where you were tested. Much like Hercules, Alex is tested, he is manipulated by people and his own mind leading him to different conclusions at every turn. Is josh dead, is he alive is he just within his reach? He goes through different bosses that symbolize his life in different ways. Now, this next part is my opinions and theories, don’t take this for a fact since a lot of this is my own hypothesis, mixed in with psychology. Sepulcher is Alex carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, the different sacks you have to get rid of before you take on the demon itself is all of his worries I believe. Taking away the extra issues so you can get to the source of the problem. Scarlett is josh. I mean this in the sense that Alex tries to save the doctor, and tries looking for his daughter. Which by the way, the boss Scarlett is the only boss battle in silent hill homecoming that is named after a deceased child. The daughter being fragile like porcelain, and being one of the children sacrificed to appease the gods in silent hill or to appease Alessa? Im not entirely sure. Asphyxia, she is more in-depth. Her name comes from asphyxiating, so Alex being that he has this delusion of being in the army, taking on so much, fighting for his life from his father and mother he feels like he can breathe in a way that he is being suffocated. Curtis is the representation of his father I believe. He is there to remind Alex of his mortality, which is why this is the only human boss battle. And lastly amnion, the pregnant robotic humanoid spider? It’s a mouthful I realize this. This boss appears after Alex remembers everything, and by everything, I mean him accidentally killing his brother which this boss could be a manifestation of since it is carrying josh. Amnion could also be derived from the word amniotic sack, which is what is carrying josh/a a child in the womb and is carrying the guilt Alex feels as well.
This game obviously has a lot of symbolism, but one that I would really like to cover next is the pyramid head. A lot of people consider pyramid head to be fan service within the game. This is not true, on so many levels. Ive come to gain a deeper understanding of pyramid head, that it's not just a character that embodies some horrible aspects of the protagonist but is also a symbol of one’s own strength and prowess in one mind. Im about to get a very deep, psychological, and philosophical hang in there it will make sense I promise. The pyramid head for James was the worst part of him, it was the rapist, the misogynist, the killer of his wife. In Alex, it is the egotistical human who’s looking for answers within, the pyramid head in Silent hill homecoming is the human looking for clarity in their own mind. The pyramid head kills off Adam, the father, symbolizing that Alex has forgotten him. The pyramid head showing up midway into the game, and Alex cowering behind rubble shows us that Alex is afraid of what he could potentially become (depending on your choices in the game of course). The pyramid head/boogeyman character serves a dual purpose, one of penance to a degree for Alex's father since he was the kneeling man who we could either forgive or not, and Adam was the one the pyramid head killed to symbolize the act of emotional removal. The boogeyman/pyramid head/the red pyramid thing, all different names but serve the same purpose. They all serve as the subconscious way of realizing you are human, you’re not perfect, and that your flaws make you or break you. If you get the ending where Alex turns into the pyramid head (which is the one I got) two pyramid heads stand next to you and turn you into your worst you, or the part of you that you have accepted. Strange that two pyramid heads stand beside Alex, the way they stood beside James, except the two pyramid heads killed one another in Silent Hill Two, and in homecoming, they create them through themselves, which turns into a loop. You choose who you become good you choose bad you become bad. But, in my view, since you could easily interpret the helmet on pyramid head as a notion of being “trapped” you are literally trapping yourself in whatever state of mind you choose.
There are different mental traumas that Alex has that I could go in-depth here but I will save that for a psychologically gaming episode where look into the mind of Alex shepherd. To briefly explain, when Alex awakes in the otherworld it could be considered a form of disassociating. Not remembering where he last was, clips of moments in his mind that are taken from different moments in his life compiling together like a movie that doesn’t make sense. He also suffers from PTSD, flashing back to different moments in his past that trigger to go to the other world, disassociating from the current one.
In my view, Silent hill homecoming is one of the best silent hill games I have ever played, from fighting bosses that took me an hour to fighting smaller creatures like needlers and rotting dogs. This game will keep you on your feet, on the edge of your seat, and begging for more. This is another silent hill game that I feel needs a remake, imagine Homecoming in VR? Yes, I would like ALL of that, please.
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