Story is not even close to the best of the series, but great atmosphere and eye-catching visuals make it worth a try
As new developers, it's clear Double Helix stuck pretty close with the series formula to play it safe, and for the most part we have done this before. But as much as I love the experience of Silent Hill, I didn't mind the familiarity, and the visual and mechanical upgrades gave me reason to keep playing.
Everyone seems to be complaining most about the story and combat the most, so I figure I'll address these first.
GAMEPLAY
To series n00bs: The combat feels distinctly clunky for your standard video game. Dodging, gunplay, and melee are noticeably sluggish. I also found the camera turn speed quite restrictive for a 3rd-person shooter. But what we must take into account is that this is a puzzle/survival horror game, and not action survival horror games like Dead Space or Resident Evil, then these begin to feel like more rational design choices, meant to feel limiting on purpose, and in essence adding to the game.
To series vets: It does away with the dreadful tank-like walking of previous games, so this is a plus. Movements are faster than your typical Silent Hill game, and your chained melee moves in particular make you feel unusually powerful. But at the rate they hand out ammunition and health in this game, the pace feels just right. It obviously makes things feel more threatening if you can't jump and roll around and bounce off walls like Lara Croft. Therefore, to me it feels much more tense than the much faster-paced Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, in which danger didn't seem imminent at all by comparison.
STORY
To series n00bs: The famous series symbolism is here, and all the cheap horror I disliked in the opening sequence faded to the background on my second playthrough as I realized the significance of many of these moments. Other parts are admittedly cheap without excuse though, and much of the gore in later parts of the game feels superfluous. To elicit psychological horror, the best scares often result from what you don't see. That is one of the only things that hold this game back from being more artful than it is.
To series vets: The story is nowhere near the lofty psychological heights of SH2 or SH: Shattered Memories. It is nearly guaranteed not to blow your mind, and some may find the twist quite predictable, especially you SH fans. But in perspective, it is also a better story than 80% of video games and movies, so I'm not complaining. Though I am a particularly story-driven gamer, I overlooked the bit of weakness in this aspect for the amazing atmosphere, which I found was most if not all of my motivation to keep playing, even if the story itself is less than stellar.
Now for my own honorary mentions.
AUDIO
As usual, audio is for the most part brilliant. The music is positively unnerving in the best way, and literally sent chills down my spine, the first game to do so. Akira Yamaoka, the sick genius behind it all, deserves much credit for bringing the best audio to a horror game to date in my opinion. After all, who thinks of taking clips of heavy breathing and screaming, reversing it, and mixing it in with their music? Outside of action sequences, the music is more serene, but still somehow unsettling. About ambient noises, there are a couple retreads, such as the inexplicable sound of an unseen child crying, but some of these could be excused as significant to the story this time around, depending on one's interpretation of these details.
VISUALS
Lastly, the visuals deserve mention. The lighting is dynamic, the character models are good for their time I suppose, and the art and monster design is fantastic. Some puzzles are pretty well-designed visually, and add to the psychological aspect. The trademark noise filter looks better than ever, bestowing a strange cinematic quality to an already impressive-looking game. There are some animation hiccups, and the real-time lip syncing during player-controlled conversations is shameful; they could be speaking another language and you'd barely notice. But this is nitpicking, as the cutscene lip sync animation far outweighs the real-time.
Overall, I think Silent Hill: Homecoming is an underrated entry in the series. It was underrated by critics, and many fans passed many rigid judgments before giving it a second chance. But considering it was the first SH not to be made by Team Silent, Double Helix deserves at least some credit for making a game more fun than SH4: The Room (although not as good a story). All things considered, most gamers should definitely give Silent Hill: Homecoming a try; survival horror fans specifically will get at least some thrills out of it, save for the most unforgiving of SH purists.