Silent Hill Homecoming PC

Graphics

Homecoming is a console port, and while it arrives on the PC some months after it was launched on the Xbox 360, there are few concessions to high-end PC graphics hardware. Very few, actually. In fact, there are really only two graphics detail options – resolution, and an all encompassing quality setting.

As mentioned on the first page, we initially encountered a bug when we tried to change graphics detail settings. Launching the game from within the directory it’s installed to, rather than from Steam, solved this.

Throughout, the game appears to be capped at 30fps. It's fair to describe the game as not exactly being all that demanding on a graphics card. The levels aren't huge, there aren't many characters on screen at once and there's very little in the way of lighting effects as there's very little in the way of light in the game. HDR sunlight wouldn't exactly be appropriate.

Homecoming does support a range of resolutions though, including widescreen ones, so we had no problem getting it work with our 22in test screen. As for the quality setting, you can check out screenshots below.


The quality setting can be set to either Medium or High. On Medium, texture quality is slightly degraded, but you don’t have to contend with the horrible static snow that only appears on High. Presumably it’s supposed to look like Left 4 Dead’s film grain effect, but all it succeeds in doing is making you think your monitor cable is about to die.

Disappointingly, there's no way to enable anti-aliasing in the game, and as you can see from the screenshots, Homecoming could benefit from it. Switching to High detail does seem to enable improved filtering though, so while you have to cope with the ropey film grain, it is an improvement overall.