Silent Hill 2 (2024)

Up until the end of Toluca Prison, Silent Hill 2 Remake is as close to a perfect horror gaming experience as you're likely to get. The stunning detail, the way in which Bloober Team has respectfully modernized the core experience while preserving the heart and soul of the game, is extraordinary. But even though Toluca Prison is capped by potentially the most harrowing boss encounter in survival horror, by that point the game's flaws had come into focus. Namely that there are too many enemies (which is problematic for a game with so few enemy types and average-to-decent combat) and the game is too long. The story remains impactful throughout, but the fetch-some-items-and-solve-a-puzzle loop that drives the non-combat gameplay eventually feels like busy work. My run clocked in at about 18 hours, which is too prohibitive an amount of time to encourage me to jump back in right away to get more endings.

None of this is intended to discourage anyone from playing this game, though. Considering the expectations, what Bloober Team has achieved is close to a miracle, and this is now the definitive Silent Hill 2 experience as far as I am concerned. Can't wait to see what they do with the original.

After the bitter disappointment I faced with Silent Hill f, my enjoyment of Silent Hill 2 Remake tasted even sweeter. Making a remake in this nostalgia-bait-ridden time is not the most novel of ideas but just to have a new good Silent Hill game makes me not care.

This is a brilliant, beautiful and faithful remake of one of the all time greats. There were only a few cheesy bits – the original isn't without its faults either – and audio bugs popped up here and there but other than that, I can't find much that I didn't like about this game. I especially liked how the game balanced feeling modern and classic at the same time. The environments were stunning too, especially the hotel area. And of course, handling the story with care and respect was a good call.

I was initially going to give this four stars but thinking about how the story hits even today made me bump it up a notch.

Easily the darkest narrative I've seen in gaming. Silent Hill as a franchise was inaccessible to me as a kid, being on a console I didn't have and a rating my strict parents wouldn't allow me to play. It had this air of forbidden, potentially tainted fruit - something both tempting and yet likely corrupted simultaneously. I'm happy to say that my absurd expectations for the "greatest horror game of all time" were largely met, and Bloober Team have really made something exceptional here.

The devil is quite literally in the details; in the way James' finger rests on the trigger (no firearm training), or how his hands shake later in the game. In the off-kilter speech of Angela. The rust and ruin of the other side. The crackling static of the radio. It begins with nothing but the franchise's signature fog, a piano motif, and an overlook above the forested outskirts of town. By the time you reach the town proper, the slow descent has begun, and the tension ratchets higher and higher as you inexorably slide into the hell of Silent Hill's other side.

No subject is taboo - child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault are all confronted head-on, with very little to shield the audience from their horror. The content warning is long and detailed, to Bloober's credit. It's a truly full-on experience and one I'm glad I was prepared for. It's not hard to see why the game is still talked about nearly 25 years on, and how it spawned an endless legion of imitators; The Last Of Us surely could not exist without Silent Hill 2.

I was satisfied with my ending - one of eight available, though certainly my preferred version of events. The combat was meaty and frightening while never truly challenging, leading me to die a handful of times on normal difficulty. That may be for the best, as 20 hours is a looooong time to spend in near-constant muscle spasm. (Game length is a tough one to debate - 10hrs may have worked better for the original, but it would feel wrong to pay full AAA price for a 10hr game.)

ENDING SPOILERS:

In Water feels like the definitive end to the experience, though I think Maria and Stillness both have merit - the latter allowing for James to live his final moments in fantasy, and the former showing a selfish and remorseless James continue his life with little shame. The Leave ending, often cited as popular or even default, is psychotic: it absolves James of the murder of his wife, and even implies that her death was something of an assisted suicide (heads up, it definitely wasn't). This ending then suggests that this 'repentant killer' now be the guardian of Laura, the unexplained child who has taunted him throughout the game. That's all truly cooked, gang, even if James remains trapped in the loop. The only way the ending can hit with the necessary force is not to pull the punch - to have Mary say, "James, you made me happy," as his car sinks slowly into the depths of Toluca Lake. Fuck James.

Article (spoiler warning): The Good Ending by Wesley LeBlanc

“This guy is going through it [...] and James finally beats Pyramid Head by basically volunteering himself to die. The final thing for him is to just be like, ‘Alright, let me face this thing head on. And I just thought that was a really cool concept and it just rang true for me because I feel like a lot of the healing I’ve done in my life has been about having to look head-on at the thing that really scares me. And it inevitably takes away so much of its power when you finally do face it.”

Purser’s “Leave (Good Ending)” is about this confrontation, the “good ending” of Silent Hill 2, and how it left her feeling when she reached the credits.

I'm not a stranger to survival horror.

I've played most of the Resident Evil titles, some standalone games like Alien Resurrection, and even ventured into the newer spins of the genre with the Amnesia series and Outlast.

Still, I had never touched a single Silent Hill game.

I knew to expect an oppressive atmosphere, but when I realized I had guns to fight back, I thought the tension would be lessened. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Even with my habit of checking every nook and cranny and keeping my inventory stocked, each new area managed to terrify me. Just when you think it cannot get darker or more disturbing, it finds a way to surprise you.

If what you’re after is heavy, suffocating atmosphere paired with a disturbing narrative, this game delivers on every front.

The gameplay loop itself is compelling. Each area feels tightly designed, exploration is well rewarded, and combat is consistently satisfying.

The narrative keeps you hooked as well. It constantly sparks curiosity, pulling you deeper and deeper into its nightmare.

Haven't play original, so this is my first experience with Silent Hill.

I thought the graphics, atmosphere and overall surreal and dreamy vibes were great. Enjoyed a lot of the slower moments exploring the town, and some sections were pretty darn scary (The prison section in particular).

The game did feel slightly too long. I enjoyed the combat a lot and the enemy types that existed were all really creepy, but overall there was not a ton of variety in enemy types. In the end combat started feeling a little too easy, especially with a very generous dodge mechanic. Definitely took a way from the scariness of many of the encounters by the end. I also had so many health packs that it barely mattered if I was hit. I finished the game with only 3 deaths in the end.

The Remake of Silent Hill 2 was a title destined to be controversial pretty much regardless of how it went. It's a remake of one of the most renowned classics of the PS2 era and is a game that has been discussed at length ever since its initial release. What the game did for the series, genre, and gaming is hard to understate and is not adequately captured by its sales figures or commercial legacy otherwise. Remakes of all kinds have some measure of controversy to them, but this one was begging to be viewed skeptically. The project was given to Bloober Team, a developer that to this point had mostly made walking sim horror games with uneven reception and there was a good deal of doubt as to whether they could pull off this remake at all.

I myself came to this from a somewhat weird perspective. Though I was a big fan of the genre and games of the original's generation at the time, Silent Hill was one of those series I really wanted to play but just never really got around to back in the day. It wasn't until just a few years before this remake came out that I played through the whole series and while I did love the original Silent Hill 2 and totally get its praise, I can't pretend to approach this remake with the same baggage of having known and loved the original for over two decades prior. That said, I was pretty disappointed with the Silent Hill revival leading up to this remake with The Short Message being a rather flawed experience—despite showing some potential—and Ascension losing my interest almost immediately. I was far from counting out this remake as dead on arrival—after all, Resident Evil 2 Remake is one of my favorite games of all time—but I wasn't particularly optimistic about it. Still, I couldn't help but be curious to see how this remake would go and its spooky season release date was all too tempting to pass up. Despite my rather neutral expectations, I'm happy to say that, despite a few gripes, I find this remake to be fantastic, a game that captures the original shockingly well and modernizes its appeal in several ways that for the most part maintain much of the draw of the original. I include this lengthy contextual intro because in a weird way, I don't have a ton to say about the game itself and in a way find it most impressive that it achieves its remake aims without any serious missteps, delivering about as good of a remake as we could've gotten for this game.

One of the most important concerns with a remake of a game like this is whether it can achieve the same atmosphere of the original. After all, one of the main things the original game is known for is its haunting foggy streets, decaying urban environments, and eerie soundtrack. This is a rather subtle and emergent quality for a game that depends on how well the elements that create it come together. Further, it's not one that can be cut and pasted from the original too easily given the significantly different tech, level of detail, and perspective in the PS2 vs PS5 eras. A bit of blurriness or vagueness won't look off or out of place with the lower res assets of older games. But with the greater detail in visuals with modern graphics, one needs to find a way to recreate the mysteriously disturbing imagery and feel of the empty town while leaving less to the imagination. Despite these challenges, I think the remake nails this. The fog effects in the streets look great. The disgusting otherworld locations don't shy away from detail, but still achieve a shockingly similar look upgraded with the new visuals. Other than a few tweaks here and there, the monsters, characters, and locations all look pretty faithful to the original but in a more graphically detailed and fleshed out—pun intended—world. Akira Yamaoka returns to deliver another iconic Silent Hill soundtrack. While I wouldn't say it's quite on par with his work in other games in the series, it still works well to achieve that discordant atmosphere without which this game probably wouldn't work.

While there were yet further doubts this remake would handle Silent Hill 2's story very well, I find it a bit more unsurprising that here too, the appeal of the original is pretty faithfully recreated. I say this is unsurprising because it's an area that's much easier to copy/paste, even across several generations of games. If anything, bringing the characters and scenes alive with more cinematic shots is even easier. The remake plays this pretty safe and mostly doesn't try to fix what isn't broken or deviate too much. Some of the script is lifted practically verbatim, and aside from shifting some events around a bit, it's pretty close to being like the original in this regard. I suppose if anything is lost, it's some of the uncanniness of the original's awkward voice acting, though even here, the voice acting still could've been better at some points. Despite the fact the bulk of players will be going in knowing where the story is going by this point, I still felt the chilling call of mystery as none of the game's events seem to add up quite right until you come to the eventual iconic revelation that fits the pieces together.

Now all that said, this remake doesn't otherwise play things entirely safe. While it respects the original a great deal and sees a lot of success in simply updating what was there, it has its own additions and modifications. Though the story beats, plot, and character arcs are largely intact, the exploration and gameplay are quite redefined. This isn't too surprising given the shift to third-person over-the-shoulder perspective and the limited city exploration of the original likely having more to do with design limitations than intention. I was hesitant at the idea of adding an "open world" or "side quests" to a game like this, but the implementation isn't nearly so shoddy as it may sound. This format change more or less just means there are more explorable areas of Silent Hill such as shop interiors and side streets unrelated to the main story that hold resources, puzzles, and challenges. There are certainly no cheesy quest-givers or point-of-interest map indicators. Instead, these detours are simply an expansion of the environments themselves and are likely the kinds of things the original would have had if it could have.

While it's less of a significant change, the individual environments have a bit more character throughout. Each of the different segments, the apartments, the hospital, the prison, etc have their own unique atmospheric themes to them. While that's true in the original as well, I feel like the character of the each location is immediately noticeable and distinct from others to a greater extent in this version. Even though the execution is a bit different, each of the locations is quite memorable in its own right. Segments like the prison have fresh mechanics and layouts that feel just as terrifying as the original even in totally new gameplay contexts. There's a lot of faithfulness to the original game, but this is an area it really feels like the developer knew where to depart and experiment and it pays off well. There are great puzzles that call back to the original at times and bring something entirely new at other times. Whether it was the main path or side streets, I really enjoyed exploring the various areas in the game.

The general gameplay is a point where the game deviates most significantly and my feelings here are much more mixed. On the one hand, I reject the view that combat in Silent Hill has to be "bad." I think that argument is just making excuses for a beloved game and an inability to accept that it had flaws that were just flaws rather than some deeper intention. But on the other hand, I have seen some horror games that make the combat a little too explosive and action-packed, even when the protagonist is not supposed to be a hardened bad-ass. Making James an action hero just for smoother combat would definitely have stuck out. Thankfully, the game does walk the line pretty well. Combat is fluid and feels fine with relatively fair dodging and countering that rewards some skill and rhythm, without feeling over-designed. But the animation and style of the interactions with monsters for the most part gives you the feeling of being "some guy" trapped in a nightmarish situation. I didn't love the combat in this, but it was pretty well-designed for the function it should play in the game.

What I disliked about this aspect is that there is so much of it and this I feel did take away from my enjoyment a good deal—not to mention it's not super thematically appropriate. The early Silent Hill games I ended up having so much ammo by the end, partially because I was playing them like Resident Evil even where it wasn't necessary. But the bulk of the corridors and city streets allowed you to quite easily evade enemies and to me, that seemed like what James should be doing. There might be times you would wail on an enemy in your way because it is dangerous or blocking the path, but I never felt the need to just kill everything. This version of the game however often makes eliminating enemies much more necessary. Enemies are more aggressive, will follow you more, and even the times you aren't forced to kill them all to proceed, you may find it almost impossible to navigate to the next area without doing so. Much has been made about how this remake is about three times as long as the original playtime-wise. While some of that is added content, I think this aspect is a big culprit for expanding how long the game is. Even if the combat is better and is okay, I did get pretty tired of fighting the same enemies over and over. While I wouldn't really love the game being super short, this isn't the kind of gameplay I'd prefer to be bloating the playtime.

The only other specific I want to hit on comes off of that last note: the game feels a little too long. This isn't a problem I normally have, but I kind of like how these old school Survival Horror games were relatively short, beatable in a dedicated night or two, or across a handful of sessions. It makes it easier to really dive into the narrative and just see it through start to finish fully engaged. Clocking in around about sixteen hours, that's much harder to do with this game, leading to me completing it over the course of a few weeks instead. I wouldn't say it grew stale, but it did make the journey feel a good more disjointed than I would have liked. This would also be eased if the game were extremely compelling to the point it flew by. While I don't want to overstate this problem too much—because it is a compelling game—as I said, most of what seemed to make the game longer was an over-emphasis on combat that I found kind of a slog after a while. Getting to a new area was always exciting, but if I'd already been playing a while, that was usually when I stopped because I felt tired after all the fighting. Even aside from why the game is so long, this somewhat tedious length is all the more absurd considering they gave this version like eight endings or something, so many I seriously doubt I will ever replay it enough times to get them all, which was a much more reasonable feat in the original.

As someone who doesn't have too much of a problem with remakes in theory, one thing I do hate is that reviews like these tend to spend most if not all the space speaking on how the game measures up to the original, rather than merely reviewing the game on its own merits. In this case, I don't mind doing that so much. The original has such clear acclaim and legacy that merely noting how the remake goes about recreating it will often tell you a lot in itself. In a way, I'd feel kind of weird writing this review trying to sell you on Silent Hill 2's chilling story or character studies. Afterall, my complaints about the combat are somewhat significant, but simply delivering on a remake of such a good game still makes this a comfortable 5 stars for me. While I think people who know only vaguely about the original's reputation will still have a great time with this one, I imagine in this case, most people are more curious how it measures up to its source material, so I've focused on that most of all. I'm sure this remake won't be for everyone in either camp, but whether you're a newbie or veteran to this series, I think the Silent Hill 2 remake is well worth a shot.

My other Silent Hill reviews:

Silent Hill: Homecoming ★★★

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories ★★★

Silent Hill: Downpour ★★★★

Silent Hill: The Short Message ★★★

I'm happy to report that my fears regarding the remake of Silent Hill 2, the original release of which is among my favorite games of all time, mostly didn't come true. This was handled with about as much respect for the original as I could hope for while modernizing where necessary to earn the coveted AAA price tag.

The atmosphere and tone are largely intact, and even dare I say improved here and there. The visuals are consistently excellent, and while I think something dreamlike and difficult to put into words from the original is lost in the high fidelity here, the environments and characters have been meticulously crafted such that Silent Hill is as ethereal, lonely, and sordid as ever. I want to say before I get into the nitty gritty that I really enjoyed this. It's a respectful adaptation and more than solid enough to be a great way for non-fans to first experience the game's story.

Now buckle up 'cause I took notes while I played and I'm gonna nitpick it to hell and back.

=== Gameplay ===

Silent Hill 2 Remake takes a page from Resident Evil and shifts from the classic top-down perspective to an over-the-shoulder one. This is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It enables the revamped combat to feel as visceral and brutal as it does (more on this soon) but also makes exploration and picking up resources kind of annoying to be honest. You need to be facing the object and also positioned just right for James to get the prompt to grab it, which means lots of swinging the camera around in cramped rooms. Dead Space gets around this by having resources pop up as diegetic holograms when you're near them regardless of your orientation but that works because of the sci-fi setting. There is no such luxury here.

The combat, often cited as a (deliberate) weak point in the original, has been totally revamped. Enemies now react to your attacks fairly dynamically. Mannequins will bob and weave around James's strikes and Nurses will sometimes grab his melee weapon before it can hit them and attempt to retaliate. This coupled with the new combat animations gives every encounter a really great, violent, back and forth feel. You need to pay attention to the movements enemies make to properly avoid their attacks and exploit the downtime between. It's far more engaging in a way that I think is very much a positive. Also I really like how quick and intuitive switching from melee to ranged is.

What's less good is how often this version of the game makes you engage with said combat system. In the areas around the middle of the game (Hospital and Prison) I felt like I was rarely given an opportunity to really take in the atmosphere, which is typically my favorite part of games in this series. It's great here as always, but constantly interrupted by enemies launching themselves at me. I miss the scariest part of the game being the things that couldn't hurt me.

The iconic radio static is also somewhat ruined by a combination of the copious amount of enemies and some odd implementation decisions. Environments were often quiet in the original game, which allowed tension to build. There were few if any jumpscares, but walking into a room and being greeted by radio static always filled me with dread. It meant there was something lurking in the dark corners of the room near me. I had to find it before it caught me unaware. Now, virtually every room has enemies and the radio picks up on enemies in neighboring rooms. So it's constantly going off and incredibly unreliable because of how common hiding Mannequins (which don't trigger the radio) are. I fully intend to turn the damn thing off in any future playthroughs, which seems like a shame.

The boss battles on the other hand, are absolutely excellent. Every one has been expanded upon, turning glorified bullet sponges into unique encounters with arenas that twist and shift as the fights progress. They make up some of my favorite moments in the remake and were often tense and harrowing to experience. I very much look forward to playing through them again...maybe soon, if I go for the platinum trophy.

And finally, before I move on I also think it's worth highlighting that this game does some interesting stuff with a particular underused enemy from the original. I mostly like what they did here, even if the strangeness of having said enemy only appear sparingly is kind of lost as a result.

===Plot and Characters===

Silent Hill 2 Remake takes very few liberties with the original game's plot, which is largely a positive for me. It makes sense they didn't want to mess with what worked so well before. There is a new scene or two but this balances out with what they removed to be about net zero in terms of change in number of "side character events," I think.

The characters have been redesigned somewhat and of course the voice acting is all new. I imagine the latter could skew positive or negative depending on your feelings toward the original VO. It took a while, but I did warm up to James's voice. It's actually very good, though different. Maria's feels like a step down to me, but only because I think the original is a master class performance. It's still very good here. Eddie and Laura both have strong voicework but didn't really stand out in any particular way to me. Angela's is odd, which might be deliberate I think? I feel like she always came across strangely in the 2001 game, but it often worked in its favor there. Not so much in this one if you ask me. Ultimately not bad though.

I was very impressed with how expressive the character models were! James in particular has such a fantastic array of emotions that would come through crystal clear even if the game were muted. Some of them in the latter portion of the game gave me chills all over. He looks totally haunted. I could feel what he was feeling just by looking at him. Maria's animation is also really great in this regard. I would say the same of Eddie and Angela to a slightly lesser degree.

Laura is also pretty expressive, but there's a key scene just before the end of the game (the videotape scene in the hotel) where she seems like... totally empty. I don't know what happened. She should really be showing some kind of emotion here. I found it undercut the effectiveness of the scene quite a bit that she hardly does. I don't think it was deliberate.

===Pacing and Game Length===

The pacing of the game's story is another sore point for me. Silent Hill 2 is not a long game. It took me 8.5 hours to play it when I did last year, and though it wasn't my first time, I was being pretty thorough. The remake took me over double that, at 19.5 hours. The story is still beat for beat the same for the most part, which means these beats are much more spaced out. I felt this was to the game's detriment. Especially early on it felt like characters were introduced and then not seen again for several hours of playtime. It was jarring.

Most of the padded playtime comes from the amount of combat and the environments which were expanded upon. I've already discussed combat above, but the expansions to several areas have me feeling mixed. I had fun with the new areas and puzzles but they really pushed some areas to where they felt like they overstayed their welcome. The Apartments and Prison got the worst of it, with me just begging for them to be over so we could move on by the end.

Several of the areas (the Hospital Otherworld and Labyrinth, mainly) also had their layouts "streamlined" so that there was less backtracking. Maybe the dev team felt this was necessary for a modern audience, but I really feel like it made these areas feel too "gamey." I'm exploring a corrupted town. It shouldn't feel like entire buildings are built such that I'm looping back to a central room, where the main puzzle is, every time I've picked up a key item even when the building in question isn't meant to be realistic.

On the other hand, I really love what they did with the outdoor town parts of the game. The visuals do so much to set up the atmosphere at work in these segments and exploration feels much more natural and rewarding. There are shops you can enter that purely exist for you to loot, which is very nice and fulfills a desire I've had for similar parts in each of the first three Silent Hill games. I wanted even maybe a little bit more of these parts.

===Conclusion===

Thanks for bearing with me if you made it this far. I hope the stuff I said doesn't come off as too pedantic. This is a far better remake than I was expecting, but it still could have been that little bit better than it is. Regardless, I think it's worth the time for longtime fans of and newcomers to Silent Hill to check out. The plot is still excellent, if a bit stretched thin, and the presentation is very very good overall. Here's hoping they tackle some of the other games in a similar style with the same love and care.

I was disappointed in the Prison area in this remake but what came right after was really excellent, so it softened the blow some. I love the rework of the Abstract Daddy fight. Truly harrowing to experience, even if a tad easy.

Following it up with a teaser of the start of the Labyrinth and then the scene with Maria? I could feel myself kind of shaking from the cocktail of emotions it all hit me with, haha. They totally nailed it. I'm sure I'll gush more about this in my eventual full review but just like in the original I love how unsettled that scene makes me feel. Like I care less about how she survived the incident earlier and moreso want to know what the fuck she really is, because she doesn't feel real (even having played the game before). It's the best kind of uncanny and they did a great job at recreating it.

This is surprisingly solid so far. And I say that as a big fan of the original that is definitely nitpicking the hell out of it silently as I play.

I do feel a bit weird complaining about a lot of a good thing, but Wood Side / Blue Creek Apartments just keep going and going. I'm nearing the 5 hour mark-- over halfway through the total playtime of my playthrough of the original last year-- and I'm still in the first major area somehow. It's making the pacing kind of odd to me but I also appreciate the new puzzles and corridors to explore.

Okay, so off the bat - I've never played the original. That's probably a cardinal sin or something in the gaming world, but I did know the story, or at least the broad strokes of it (the fog, the twists, the monsters), so walking into the remake felt sort of like returning to an eerie, familiar, half-remembered dream. And I think that actually worked in the game's favour.

For someone like me - emotionally prepared, but mechanically fresh - this was a haunting, melancholic, and at times surprisingly elegant experience. Not flawless, obviously, not even particularly scary in the traditional sense (though I suspect that might be the point). What grabbed me wasn't the horror, but the atmosphere, that sticky, creeping feeling that you've stepped into a town that's been holding its breath for decades, waiting for someone like you to arrive and exhale all the pain you didn't realise you were carrying.

There's something genuinely impressive about the world design, the way the fog doesn't just hide things but suggests them, the way every creaking hallway and peeling wall seem like they're watching you back. It leans into this oppressive sort of beauty, and I wandered through it all not just with tension but fascination. I wanted to poke around in every decrepit corner, read every scrap of paper, piece together every lingering ghost of what happened here and why it still matters. And honestly? That's the magic of it. The horror is deeply psychological, less about the monsters in the halls and more about the ones in James' head. The town just gives them shape.

I can't compare this to the original, obviously, but I can say that, while the combat feels kind of clunky and stiff, that stiffness sort of works, because it keeps you grounded in the skin of a guy who's not a soldier, not a fighter, just someone stumbling around in the dark trying not to fall apart. It's frustrating in parts, sure - some enemies feel more like inconveniences than threats, and some camera angles have minds of their own - but that slight awkwardness feels authentic to the world somehow, like you're never supposed to feel comfortable here.

The story is devastating, even when you already know the big twists. Watching it unfold in this updated format gave it a new weight, like seeing an old play restaged with modern lighting. It's not subtle (it never was), but it is sad, and sincere, and strangely beautiful. The ending I got sat heavy in my chest for a while after, even though it was probably the most optimistic I could get - and, really, that's the mark of good storytelling. Not that it shocks you, but that it sticks with you.

The remake isn't perfect - there were moments where the pacing dragged or the tension kinda fizzled out, and some of the voice performances lacked a raw, jagged edge that I think it needed - but even in its missteps there's something admirable about it, a deep respect for the source material paired with just enough modern polish to make it accessible to someone like me who came late to the party (but still left haunted by it).

I don't know if I'll ever go back (maybe I'll delve into the rest of the series sometime), but I'll be thinking about Silent Hill for a while.

Silent Hill 2 is a no-brainer for anyone who simply enjoys exploring creepy places and everything that goes along with that. I also heavily recommend it for anyone who likes Resident Evil, because it does so much that the RE games do, equally as well, but is a completely different atmosphere. Whereas RE grounds itself in the realm of science gone wrong with zombies and corporate bioweapon viruses running amok, the world of Silent Hill puts you in unreality, creating a sense of dread rooted in that uncanny dissonance one finds only in dreams and nightmares. Reality, if it can be called that, is fractured and rearranged, and James Sunderland finds himself lost and mostly alone in it.

As mentioned, it does a lot of things the RE games do, those charming 'videogame-isms' like unlocking doors through intricate puzzles, sometimes combining items for said puzzles, and having nooks and crannies to search for documents and ammunition.

The story is bleak--deliberately so, hats off for hitting the mark--and commendably deep, though I'm not sure it quite goes as deep as it wants you to think it does. Nevertheless, it presents a lot to chew on and impressively touches on controversial subject matter without it feeling like a gimmick. I'll be analyzing it in my head for a while yet.

I've never played the Silent Hill games. I've only ever known about them, and mainly in relation to their contemporary, RE. The first hour or two felt a little slow to me but once I reached the apartments, I was fully committed. It took me a while to get through because I refused to play it with distractions going on, so I had to carve time out when the house was quiet and dark.

Performance wasn't great but it was not enough to deter me from sticking with it. There was a lot of trial and error with the settings but I eventually got it where I wanted it and it stayed there most of the time.

I'm glad this game was created and I hope more are coming. I'm sure I'll revisit this one again one day. Obviously, SH and RE are not the same, but I think they're similar enough that it's fair to draw a lot of comparisons. I'm a huge RE fan, but I don't know if I could pick between the campy zombie action of RE or the melancholic surrealness of SH2. It would probably depend on the day.

Luckily, I don't have to.

As a PC-only gamer, this is my first foray into the Silent Hill series so I can't really compare it to the original. Incredible game, truly one of a kind in dealing with certain elements of the human psyche. Main criticism is probably...too much combat? by the end I just wanted to be immersed in the eeriness of the locations and I was constantly disrupted by over-zealous enemies playing for the jump scares.. and maybe too many contrived puzzles. I understand some where even added in the remake. But is minor criticism when talking about a total masterpiece.

I was not excited about this remake. Silent Hill 2 is a personal favorite of mine and has been for over twenty years, but from the few trailers I saw this looked rough as hell and Bloober Team's track record is less than great.

Fast forward to last week. Aside from those trailers, I went into the game more or less blind. I assumed the game would get a few things right but overall would completely misinterpret the soul of the original game. Turns out, I was as far off the mark as I could possibly be. The game gets a few things wrong, but I'll be damned if it doesn't look and feel like the Silent Hill 2 I know and love. It's not as scary. It's not as artful. But its soul is intact. Dare I say that the core dramatic beats of the storyline may even be slightly improved? I won't go that far, but I'm surprised that I'm even compelled to consider it.

I don't want more Silent Hill remakes, I'm not that much of a remake dude anyway. However, for the first time since their inception I am looking forward to what Bloober Team does next.

This is a good survival horror game. Not a great one and definitely not one of the greatest of all time. I don't know if that's because this remake didn't capture what was special about the original or if I would've felt the same about the original. It's not that it's doing anything wrong. It's that it rarely does anything exceptional.

The combat is good. It has satisfying gun and melee sound effects, but there isn't any special mechanics or weapons to make it stand out. The game also stops introducing new enemies after the hospital, the second major location, leaving a lack of enemy variety. It's difficult to scare when the enemies are all so familiar. I had issues with a few of the boss fights in the game where it became difficult for me to tell if I was shooting an enemy in the right place. It could've used more visual feedback to let me know if I was doing damage or not like some blood splatter or something. There are other boss fights in the game where it does show blood splatter, so I don't know why that wasn't consistent for all of them.

The puzzle and exploration deliver on what you'd expect: moving through rooms, unlocking doors, gathering items, and putting them together. My one criticism of this is most of the locations are similar. The apartment building, hospital, and hotel are all full of small rooms and narrow hallways providing the same experience. The prison and the labyrinth are the only locations that shake things up.

The prison is the standout of the game. It's the third major location. It's mostly dark leaving my flashlight to provide limited view. An enemy type I've been fighting since the early parts of the game gains a new ability to crawl around on the walls. I can hear them crawling all over the place making me on edge the whole time. What's worse is that the walls go so high that they can crawl outside the reach of the beam from my flashlight. This section was intense in a way that reminded me of The Evil Within. This is high praise from me because that's one of the best horror games I've ever played.

The story never grabbed me. Maybe because this is my first Silent Hill game and it's the second game in the series, but there was a lack of questioning what the fuck is going on that struck me as weird. The game was trying and failing to create some intrigue. The strange characters take me out of the story more often than they pull me in. I did find the ending satisfying at least. I hear there are eight different endings, but this game isn't worth revisiting to see them.

What more can I say about this game that hasn’t been said. It is another outstanding game, in a long line of classic survival horror revival. Along with the Dead Space remake and the Resident Evil 4 remake, Silent Hill as a series has finally found its footing again.

What makes this game extra special is how little expectations everyone had going into it. Not only has Silent Hill been a series long left astray, with every entry and attempt at revitalizing it being a disappointing failure. But you also have Bloober Team, who have a track record of lackluster titles such as The Medium, Observer, and Layers of Fear. And finally, you have a ravenously skeptical fan base, stacking the cards against Konami, Bloober, and anyone who dared believe the game would be halfway decent.

Amidst all the pressure, Bloober delivered a game that 100% nails what made Silent Hill such a unique, important, and beloved series. They also made a game that is a landmark for modern horror, with its expert storytelling, unbelievable art style, and atmospheric sound design and music.

The puzzles, the combat, and just every single little detail has so much care put into it. It’s truly one of my favorite games this year, and I’m so happy for the dev team and for Silent Hill fans getting the experience they’ve been waiting for. It’s dark, depressing, ominous, and totally unsettling. But it’s also a deeply satisfying piece of art, and I highly recommend it!

This is not the Bloober Team of the cheap jump scares in Layers of Fear. This isn't the Bloober Team that tried to make us empathize with an abuser on The Medium. This is an studio that learned from their past mistakes to make a masterpiece that not only respects the most influential horror game in history, but makes it even better.

Here's my full review in spanish.

Also, I think I'm in love with Maria.