My Homecoming Experience

[Roxton]

Well I rented this on ps3 when it came out. While not liking it quite as much as the original Silent Hill titles as it wasn't as challenging to me. I did however enjoy it. Saw it on Steam for $10 and I figured that's a steal since I don't own it on ps3, I rented it. And I figured I'd buy it. But upon reading the forums I was horrified at how many people say it's unplayable. So many. Not just a few. But alot. Well I figured I'd bite the bullet. It's just $10 right? I've spent alot more on truly horrible ports *cough* Resident Evil 4. Well I was surprised. I bought it, downloaded it, and ran it. Didn't do anything special. I immediately went into options and raised the graphics to max and set it to my 1920x1080 native res. It runs flawless. Zero lag, fast load times. No tearing, no sound issues. No graphics issues. No black bodies while flashlights are on. No crashes. While I haven't beaten it yet I'm over halfway through the game and still haven't encountered a single issue. Not even 1. I'm glad I didn't make my decision based on only bad reviews. To all those that actually are having issues, my condolences go out to you as I have bought many upon many of games that simply did not work no matter what I tried. This however was not one of them. I am very happy with my $10 purchase. Just an example to not always go based on horror reviews. If you're concidering it and you have $10 to risk throwing away, I say go for it. I spend more money at Mcdonalds on my way to work. If you're wondering what my specs are I will post them as I'm sure it'll prolly be asked. It sure ain't no supercomputer, but it's not a Dell either. lmao. If for whatever reason it does crash or screw up or any of the things I've read in the forums between now and me completing 100% I shall post it here. But so far so good.

Windows XP Pro SP3
MSi 785GM-E65 Motherboard
AMD AM3 Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 3.1 ghz stock
4gb Kingston DDR3-1333 ram.
Sapphire ATi 4850 HD 1gb
regular ol' Sata 3.0 WD 7200 rpm hdd
24" LCD Display 1920x1080 HDMI
Integrated Realtek HD 7.1 audio

[QuickCam7]

Same story here. Bought this game for 10 bucks (despite all the bugs mentioned) and it runs just fine.

Im playing the game on the hardest difficulty right now, and I must say, its excruciatingly hard, but rewarding.

[Hiero_J]

I really like this new one, it bums me out the it got trashed so hard, I like it alot more then silent hill 4 which was still cool, but just not very fun to play

[QuickCam7]

I really like this new one, it bums me out the it got trashed so hard, I like it alot more then silent hill 4 which was still cool, but just not very fun to play

For some reason, Silent Hill 4 really "got" me more than the other silent Hills (even though the other Sh's were more fun). The story made more sense and the whole switching back and forth between Silent hill and the apartment made for a more "convincing" Silent Hill.

[Nickq2007]

So I just got RE5 from that sale the other day. I gotta say that game has given me far more issues just to get it running than Homecoming ever did. Homecoming ran just fine for me, the most I get is some minor slowdown if I play it for extremely long amounts of time at once.

Overall, I really enjoy Homecoming. It's not as terrifying as the first four games, but it's a good mix of horror and mainstream gameplay appeal. It has good writing and excellent acting... It's very surreal and has its fair share of disturbing details.

[Roxton]

Well as promised I said after completing 100% of the game I would come back and post any issues I may have had. And here we go. I beat the game, 5th time now if you count PS3, 1st time for pc. Did I have any issues like all the horror story reviews flooding these forums? Well.. I did have a couple I suppose. But they weren't game ending. The first thing I noticed was a minor sound issue. This issue only persisted during cutsceness, where the voices were lower than the rest of the overall sound. While this was a tad annoying it was fixed with simply raising my speakers till the cutscene was over. I had this same issue with Mass Effect so it's more than likely something in MY pc rather than being the game's fault. Second issue I had only occured once. When you first reach the police station and find Elle nailing flyers on the wall. It didn't exist. Half the world was gone, just poof. Not talking the broken bridges, just gone. I could walk through it as if it was really there, even though it wasn't. But again, that'd be a graphics loading issue. I was prolly just playing too long. It only happened once so I'm not worried about it. The only glitch I've read from the forums, which I can confirm 100% is the alt-tab crash. But I wouldn't call that a glitch either since that happens with alot of fullscreen games. Just don't alt-tab. Plain and simple. The game will crash. So I suggest you close your messengers or anything else that -pops up- prior to playing the game. Aside from MINOR and non-game ending issues. I give this game my full support and would recommend it to friends. Especially at the $10 pricetag.

[MrXGamer]

Yes, I never listen to user complains until I try the product myself. On PC gaming, majority of issues come from users' end with hardware and lack of software installed. For instance, any gamer needs to have Windows fully updated, .NET Framework 3.5/4.0 + SPs, Direct9.0c full package, Visual C++ 2005/2008 redist, updated video drivers, Adobe Flash, OpenAL and latest audio driver for mobo/soundcard.

There are more, but these are just off the top of my head. Install them on your PC and majority of your problems will be gone! Now with that said, this Silent Hill Homecoming isn't a bad deal for $10. If you are a fan, get it and judge for yourself.

[Dead-Boy]

Actually I had windows fully updated, and still had tons of bugs.

No Sound at all as well as other bugs.
If a game needs Visual C++ and other such programs to run correctly... then it should install or at least let you know that it is required before you buy the game, or at the least have a version in it to load into your computer.

If you buy a product and it doesn't work out of the box, then its broken, even if it comes with patches later, this means that the company was too cheap to do even basic quality assurance and play testing.

Also you assume that everyone payed only $10 bucks.. I paid full price for this POS because I WAS a fan of Konami and of Silent Hill, but no longer.

Exchanged information with a Konami tech and they basically said "we don't know whats wrong with the game or why you are not getting any sounds... please accept these xbox games as compensation.".

woohooo.. so now I have 2 xbox games for a system I no longer play.