Silent Hill 2 (2001)

I am trying to escape the woodside apartments towards the blue creek apartments. I have the fire escape key but I can't open the fire escape door with it as I am supposed to. Do I need sth. else before I can open it? I also got the old man coin out of the trash and the snake coin. My game is in japanese so that doesn't help.

Any suggestions anyone? :3

Well, we started to play this last night—but for some reason, the controls for the Xbox 360 gamepad (apparently the best pad option for the Enhanced Edition) seemed to be playing up...

... until I eventually worked out that it was because I had Steam running in the background, quietly interfering with its own controller configuration.

D'oh. The game seems good, though—even though I'm not the greatest lover of 'tank' controls (and camera-relative control just doesn't work with the fixed, cinematic camera angles).

Managed to acquire the PC version of this (specifically, the German release, sans instruction manual—on CD-ROM, how quaint!), and just installed it with all of the Enhanced Edition extras (excepting ReShade). I think there's a reasonable case for the PC version of this game being treated as abandonware (Konami even lost the final version of its source code—ironically the article reporting this appears to be no longer available on the 1up website), but I decided to buy it anyway, given that I was fortunate enough to be able to source an expensive-for-its-age-but-not-unreasonably-priced copy.

I've never played a Silent Hill game in its entirety—I'm not usually the greatest fan of survival horror games, but the especially high praise for this one (including that from Tale of Tales) as a watershed in videogame narrative makes it seem vital. Looking forward to it.

(Heads up for those looking to it install the Enhanced Edition: at the time of writing, the link to the 'SH2 Enhancements module' in the SH2:EE installation guide is incorrect/outdated—it should point here.)

Pyramid Head is now on Dead by Daylight. That's cool and all, but I can't stop thinking about how little sense this character makes outside James Sunderland's story. Konami practically destroyed his background to make him the series mascot.

As usual, I wrote about this in GamerFocus. (in spanish)

But I want to know, do you agree that Konami should have left this character alone after SH2? I know his design is amazing and there's nothing inherently 'bad' about changing an element in a video game to fit what the devs want. But the inclusion of Pyramid Head on movies, comics and other games seem to me like a corporate mandate instead of a real interest of the artists to keep using him.

I don't know, maybe I'm making much ado about nothing. What do you think?

pro tip from Saturday: if you just had a massive earthquake the day before with continuing aftershocks and it’s now super windy, which also means spooky noises, that is not the smartest context in which to play a Silent Hill game unless you actively want to be keyed up and jumping at nothing

which, I mean, that probably helps for making the experience more authentic but it’s not great on the nerves

for real though the whole Silent Hill 2 level (levels?) between the Historical Society and the docks are just. absolutely nuts. you start in a slightly weird if relatively normal building on ground level and then

• walk down a looooooooooooong stone stairway. no. longer than that
• go through a couple doors
• find a deep dark pit and jump down it
• wake up in the bottom of a well, find a door, go through some more doors and hallways, find a key
• which unlocks another door. that is in the floor. covering another deep dark pit
• shrug, jump down it again
• wander around a prison. why is there a prison so far underground? it’s Silent Hill. it be like that sometimes
• find a trap door covering another deep dark pit
• “Do you jump? Yes/No” I mean I guess I could finally chicken out at this one and just sit here
• more doors. another deep dark pit to jump down
• MORE DOORS. ANOTHER DEEP DARK PIT TO JUMP DOWN
• A N O T H E R D E E P no wait this time it’s…an actual elevator
• that just. keeps going. and going. and g o i n g
• hell is a labyrinth and you’re here forever now
• oh you made it. guess what’s at the end. GUESS
• ANOTHER DEEP DARK PIT TO JUMP DOWN
• BUT THIS TIME
• IT’S YOUR OWN GRAVE
• doors. boss fight. doors
• surprise!! you’re back outside at ground level. isn’t the lake just lovely tonight

The best horror game of all time. What made this horror game special is the focus on the psychological aspects; not just on the atmosphere but also on the characters and their motivations. The town itself becomes a physical manifestation of a person's (also protagonist James Sunderland's) subconscious rendering much of the horrors of the town as well as the characters that inhabit it. This is a must play for any fans of horror games!