Silent Hill: Homecoming

WHEN soldier Alex Shepherd returns home to Shepherd's Glen, he enters a nightmare world where decisions made by his ancestors have apparently opened the gates of hell.

The town, named after Shepherd's ancestor, is shrouded in fog. The eerie streets are deserted. Alex lands at home to find his mother in a near catatonic state, mumbling incoherently that his father had gone out to find his brother Josh. But Josh died years earlier in a tragic accident.

In the best tradition of the survival horror genre, Alex sets out to discover the reasons behind the curse that seems to have befallen Shepherd's Glen.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is not a game for children, with scenes of power drills through skulls and evisceration. In the UK the game was passed uncut by the BBFC, but it didn't fare so well in several other countries and remains banned outright in Australia.

Silent Hill has always been the most adult of survival horror franchises, dispensing with the pulp zombie feel that relieved the tension in Resident Evil for a sense of deep unease and creepy atmos.

Homecoming is more of the same, albeit with better next-gen graphics and improved positional sound effects.

Interestingly, the game's plot develops according to the decisions Alex makes at key moments (do your put your mother out of her misery? Can you forgive your father's treachery? etc) and the ending isn't necessarily a happy one.

Bloody and scary, Silent Hill: Homecoming is one hell of a video game - quite literally.