Silent Hill: Homecoming [#12] - Lair / FINALE

If I hear someone say "It's a good game, just not a good Silent Hill game" one more time... Full playlist:    • Silent Hill Homecoming Let's Play   Super-playlist:    • All of my Silent Hill Let's Plays in order   I definitely think this game's positives greatly outweigh its negatives. You have an amazing soundtrack, amazing sound design, cool visuals and art direction, great bosses and general monster design, an interesting story, butter-like controls, and fun combat. I will admit, I'd much rather this combat be in a different game than a Silent Hill game, and the animations where Alex flips are dumb. But, I do find the combat fun for what it's worth. I was super rusty in this let's play, since I haven't played for a good while, but back when I was actually good at this game I thought the combat led for a ton of replayability and I thought it controlled pretty great. I remember I could melee a smog with a pipe without taking damage and I actually preferred it to gunning them. Pro-tip: Do not influence the direction of Alex's dodge with the analog stick. When you want to dodge, just press dodge. Alex will dodge in the best direction for a counter attack automatically, or he'll block. Also, spam the dodge button inbetween swings. Alex will cancel his attack swing and avoid damage. I like the little quality of life improvements. Text has a black outline around it so it's easier to read, doors no longer need to fade to black, weapon switching and healing is faster than ever, and checkpoints are more generous. I personally like how there is no run/walk button, the analog stick can go through all speeds. I'll even defend the linearity. Sure, the Hotel, Police Station, Sewer, Hell Descent, Town Hall basement, and Prison are some of the most linear levels we've ever seen. But otherworld Shepherd House and the Lair are pretty inspired in terms of level design, imo. I would even say the Hospital and Church aren't totally linear. And the street portions of the game are about as linear, if not less so, than the Team Silent games were. You even have a whole optional side quest for a rifle, and almost every room in the Town Hall and Shepherd House is optional and only for world building. There's also optional goodies and a photo if you bother to backtrack to Curtis' shack after Hell Descent. Really, I think the only egregiously linear parts of this game are the dungeons I mentioned at the top of this paragraph. Apart from that, this game isn't the hallway everyone says it is. My biggest problems with this game are the lack of save points, the lack of flavor text in the 2nd half, the uninspired puzzles, some of the ridiculous combat animations, the animation and character models sometimes looking bad in cutscenes, some cutscenes are unskippable (and the unskippable cutscenes tend to be long), the lack of colors, and that it's kinda empty and bland at times. Also, this game is dark. Literally. If you play this game how it's supposed to look, you can barely see anything at all. If you "adjust so the left bar blends completely into the background" then you're going to play the most visually dark game I've ever seen. Though this isn't really too big of an issue since you can just... Not do that. Remember how Alex's eyes looked bad during the first cutscene in the Lair? One of his eyes had glitchy lighting/shadows. That's only because I'm playing the game brighter than recommended, so you can see that weird anomalies like that... But thing is, the game is almost unplayable without the brightness turned up. And one more thing... This might be my #1 issue with this game. No new monster in final area. Silent Hill games tend to introduce a brand new non-boss monster in the last dungeon. Silent Hill 1 - Stalker Silent Hill 2 - Mini Abstract Daddy Silent Hill 3 - Scraper Silent Hill 4 - Bottom Origins - Two-Back Downpour - Prisoner Juggernaut But Homecoming just makes us fight Order Soldiers, arguably the worst enemy in the entire series. Just take Alex, put him in a cult skin, and spam him in the level a dozen times. Lame. But I really do believe this game is underrated. Alex and Wheeler are some of my favorite Silent Hill characters, and I do feel like the developers cared about what they were doing. Even if you hate this game, and everyone who made it, and every one who likes it, and the families of everyone who hates it, and the families of everyone who likes it, and every retail worker who ever gave this game to a customer, and every customer who ever purchased this game, and the families of... Where am I going with this again? I think I'm just describing the average Silent Hill fan, but I'm not sure what point I'm trying to get at. Anyway Silent Hill 3 has more similarities to both SH1 and SH2 than Homecoming has to SH2 but no one wants to have that conversation. P.S. If you interpret this as me hating on SH3, you are a loser. Thanks for watching ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ