Just a simple 'yes' or 'no' (or 'unsure') question. Did the innovations in combat mechanics (both melee and ranged) enhance your survival horror experience in Homecoming?

Please feel free to explain why or why not. Otherwise, vote in the poll.

For me it's a "no". I found the combat made the game feel too action oriented. Normally that doesn't bother me for most games, but it just felt out of place for a SH game. Normally, in the other SH games, I'm able to lose myself in the story and atmosphere, but this time I seemed to focus more on combat than anything else. Of course, it didn't help that many of the monsters were ridiculously over-powered, etc. Don't get me wrong though; while there are things I dislike about the game, I still enjoyed it. Probably not as much as previous SH games, but still...

I don't see how it couldn't 'enhance' the experience. It's important that the combat is of higher quality.

The problem with Homecoming wasn't the innovations in the combat itself, it's that it was too combat orientated. I think they went in the right direction with the combat itself. They should have just toned the amount of combat itself a few notches.

The Hell Descent was a reasonably good example. The environment itself was highly oppressive and terrifying (in my opinion at least) but it had next to no combat. It didn't really need it to keep you on edge.

Whereas the police station wasn't really visually appealing but was monster after monster after monster. It was oppressive in a really annoying sense and not exactly all that scary.

Yes and no.

The combat gave me some push to keep going... but it didn't really make the core survival-horror experience any better. If the combat had been more like, oh, The Room or Origins, I might never have finished.

It pushed combat functionality a bit further than it needed to go, in my opinion, but that doesn't mean there aren't some good cues to be taken from it.

I agree about Hell Descent. Imo it was the best area of the game. Unlike other areas, it relied on atmosphere rather than cheap thrills and monsters to get a scare.

I agree with pretty much everything Tabris said.

The combat was the reason I really ended up disliking Homecoming so my answer is 100% no. It did nothing but make me angry which in the end actually took away from the story a lot for me.

Sure Homecoming had more enemies than other games, but there still weren't a lot of them. There were several areas/rooms that didn't have any enemies and usually I would think that an enemy would be right around the corner, and that wasn't always true. Having varied weapons and a dodge as well as a roll added to the combat. Definitely an improvement over combat in the earlier Silent Hills which didn't have that diversity and strategy.

I always thought that the combat system tied in with the storyline quite well, since, as you all know, Alex is in his mind, a soldier....

It didn't, but it was a step towards something better. I'm not a fan of how the older silent hill game's feel like "I press a button, and I wait, hoping, that my character attacks when I need them to."
Homecoming's combat wasn't very good, but the responsiveness was a much welcomed change. It doesn't have to be really intense or anything, but giving the player a decent amount of feedback and responsiveness is something that was sorely lacking in the SH games. At least, in melee.

If we're going to go in that direction SHF then I'd say the combat was foreshadowing the truth regarding Alex being a soldier.

I felt that the melee combat was refreshing, even if it did feel out of place in a Silent Hill game. The controls were decent and actually seeing the damage inflicted on monsters' bodies was satisfying. Sometimes the combo attacks created instances where Alex was whaling at enemies without them being able to dodge and counter, but that was to be expected with a new melee combat system.

Ranged combat was the biggest change for me to get used to. Having to manually aim guns at a monster's weak spot while they were advancing on you was a lot more tense than holding R2 and spamming X. Doubly so when there was more than one (which there often was). I was reminded me of a memo in Silent Hill 2.



I wouldn't mind seeing it return. In fact, I hope it does.

I would actually say that there were no innovations in Homecoming's combat. To me, added complexity does not equal innovation. I think that a simple combat system is what's best for a game like Silent Hill, and adding combos and a dodge button is hardly "innovation," it's more like copying mechanics from action games, and placing them into a game where they don't fit, which only serves to detract from the experience.

To me, adding what they did to the combat didn't really do anything to the game itself. But it changed the experience for me. I became more focused on whether or not I had a good weapon, whether I had enough ammo, what weapons I had in my inventory, all that jazz. In the older games I was concerned with the weapons, but my biggest concern was figuring out where I needed to go and what puzzles I needed to solve to get to the end.

So, in short, I have no idea how to answer this other than that paragraph.

The combat was "different" not "better". For the most part it was too easy, it was dumb, and so obviously forced. All sense of dread was essentially killed by it. It's not that you can't have "better" combat in Silent Hill, it's that you don't fucking handle it the way Homecoming did.

Of course this just fed the fuel for all that "HURR COMBAT WAS BAD ON PURPOSE" chicken shit bullshit that Twin Perfect seems to believe. What if a scary game with good combat is made, then what? Why can't that exist?

The words "survival horror" were what made me choose no. The combat changes made the combat more "fun", but the focus on it made it a worse survival horror game. Survival horror is about two things: 1. level design involving finding keys and solving puzzles and looking at maps and stuff, and 2. being scary. Fun combat really doesn't aid in either of those things, it typically takes away. The fact that my best memories of Homecoming involve fighting schisms is a bad sign.

Unfortunately, a lot of Silent Hill fans play the games purely for story and atmosphere rather than the complete package. It IS possible to play a game while being scared and having fun.

I don't get why some fans make it out to be that just because it's a story driven survival horror series it shouldn't take steps to upgrade itself instead of dumbing itself down to make things "easier" for people who are overly obsessive about immersion. I don't see anything wrong with having fun playing the game or fighting monsters. It's a video game. That's the entire point. I know some fans have thoughts that are something along the lines of "oh, you actually have fun beating all those monsters? That's so unsophisticated. Silent Hill isn't about fighting. You must like shooters and stuff."

It's kind of depressing there are fans that take some elements of the games seriously that they shut themselves off other aspects such as combat because they developed this idea that it's not supposed to be important.

I'd have to say yes. I hated the combat in this game. I dreaded facing enemies and they kept coming. That did add to the fear of playing this game. It also made me not want to play very often. It was more frustrating than fun at times. I wish it was more simple like SH2.

I think it's important to do combat right... and the right way to do it for a horror game is to keep it relatively simple. SH1-3 did it right. Homecoming did it wrong.

Homecoming's fighting mechanics weren't anything the least bit complicated. Like melee in the previous games they just required you to watch your opponents and learn to time your attacks and dodges.The fighting mechanics for the most part were fine barring some glitching that needed to be fixed. And I suppose they should have included an option to guard with your weapons since some people just can't seem to getting the timing down with dodging.

But keeping the combat stagnant runs a risk of making things repetitive since playing enough games with the same fighting mechanics can result in less strategy and tension because you'll already know what to do out of familiarity.

Homecoming for the most part did a good job of making the fighting challenging but not too difficult. What I think would have served the game better is having more elaborate difficulty settings like SH2 & 3 to better fit those who just prefer to play the game for the story and atmosphere. Give the player more health and ammo on the easier difficulty levels as well. Another good idea would be to implement Downpour's one melee weapon at a time mechanic along with breakable weapons. That would counteract people feeling too over powered.

But the answer does not lie in dumbing down combat. You can have fear and ease of exploration with ugpraded fighting mechanics. It just requires creative thinking.

The melee fighting in the previous games, while serviceable, just feels too clunky in comparison. And we need to leave that "needs to clunky to be scary" mentality behind because it's not 1999 anymore. Combat has been one of the primary problems the majority of people had with Downpour and rightfully so. While it fulfills that "basic" feel some fans like, it really could have been implemented better.