Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he’s coming early, with big sacks full of SIlent Hill: Homecoming, the game that makes it easy to love Silent Hill again.

And when you get a look at some of the screenshots on this beauty, you get the immediate sense that this is, indeed, a Silent Hill game. I mean, let’s be honest. Some of the previous games have been a bit…shaky…in that regard. Between the mallrat and the apartment with the lease from hell, Silent Hill games haven’t really, truly, been SILENT HILL games for some time. That’s just me–I personally don’t feel like I’m playing a Silent Hill game unless I can walk down Bachman Street and blow past Midwich Elementary. I want to be in Silent Hill when I’m playing a Silent Hill game.

And that’s all right. There’s plenty to do in Silent Hill yet; hell, half the time we couldn’t even go in most of the buildings, and with next-gen processors on our hands maybe, just maybe, we’ve finally got access to some of the other stuff going on in Silent Hill. We haven’t been through half of that town yet, and we could spend a couple games just wandering, Oblivion-style, through the town.

Okay, maybe we won’t get that far. But there’s still plenty to like, by the look of it, about the coming eventually Silent Hill: Homecoming.

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