Silent Hill 2 Remake Review
“Exceeding my Foggy Expectations” Written by: Hunter (@ReaperHunter23)
The remake of Silent Hill 2 was announced in late 2022. Its announcement came during a special presentation from Konami detailing their plan to resurrect the series from its, at the time, decade-long hiatus. The reveal of the game also detailed that Bloober Team, the studio responsible for games such as Layers Of Fear and The Medium were going to be the ones responsible for this remake. The two years since this announcement have been a roller coaster of expectations for me. At first I was mostly just pleased to see Silent Hill making a comeback. Eventually though, my worry started to get the best of me. It seemed rather unlikely to me that a remake of one of the best horror games ever made was going to be able to live up to the original. And I was not super confident in it going in a different enough direction to stand on its own either. Well the game is out now. Was I pleasantly surprised? Or were my worries confirmed? Let’s take a look.
Image Credit: Bloober Team, Konami
Silent Hill 2 follows the story of James Sunderland. Prior to the events of the game, James received a letter from his wife, Mary, telling him that she would be waiting for him in their special place in the town of Silent Hill. The only problem is that Mary has been dead for three years. In spite of that, James finds himself compelled to search for her anyway and the adventure goes from there.
The game remains largely pretty faithful to the original story. There are a few new scenes and a couple new endings. Thankfully they all feel pretty consistent with the rest of the game. I don’t think I would be able to tell they were new if I didn’t know any better. The new takes on the characters are pretty well done too. I think James comes across as much more sympathetic in this version. Angela and Eddie’s stories also both come across pretty well, and even Laura feels like she has a better rapport with James this time.
It's honestly very impressive that the story is still as good as it is. The landscape of the games industry was substantially different in 2001. So the PS2 version of Silent Hill 2 could tackle its more difficult subject matter and be the weird arthouse restless fever dream that it was and the series would survive the mixed reception it got at launch. These days, games are rarely afforded the same chance to have a slow burn to find their audience. Which is what had me worried that the game would have the more difficult aspects of the story scrubbed from it in order to be more palatable to a wider audience. Thankfully that didn’t happen and the experience was all the better for it.
Image Credit: Bloober Team, Konami
The biggest change that the Silent Hill 2 Remake introduces is in how it plays. The game uses a behind the back third person perspective rather than the old fixed camera style. If you’ve played a modern Triple A horror game, Silent Hill 2 controls about how you would expect it to. The aiming is responsive but the tight camera still adds an element of claustrophobia to the combat. Melee combat is a bit more complex than it used to be. In the older games, I was mostly able to coast on using the steel pipe in perpetuity. It is not as easy in this version. Rather than wildly flailing, you have to actually stick and move when attacking. The opening for a safe attack can be deceptively short sometimes but each enemy did have an attack pattern of some description. The overall balance of the combat is really well done. The game hands out health items and ammo pretty frequently. The trade off is that you will go from swimming in supplies to barely scraping by in just a few encounters if you aren’t careful.
The way this game handles enemy variety is interesting. There’s really only five or so regular enemy types. The Lying Figures, the Mannequins, the Bubble Head Nurses, and a couple others. Each one has its own unique properties. Lying Figures have a ranged poison spit attack. Mannequins don’t set off the radio so you’ll constantly be playing a game of peekaboo with them and potentially ignoring the second creature in the room because of it. And the nurses have the highest damage output and the biggest health pool so they are just generally rather dangerous.
The game avoids having these limited enemy types become stale by mixing in a couple of variants to each of them. For example you’ll get the Lying Figures that take a few hits and will then proceed to penguin slide away from danger. Or the ones that explode into a cloud of poison when you kill them. The penguin sliders were especially annoying when exploring the town. The number of times one would emerge from under a car to hassle me was more than I care to admit.
The level design in Silent Hill 2 is really solid. The game is fairly well put together. I was mildly disappointed by one of the later segments in the game but overall I really enjoyed the game’s exploration. Whether it was the more open ended town sections or the more dungeon like sequences, I was inclined to scour every corner of the map. They managed to achieve this without ever making me feel like I was lost on where to go as well. James constantly updates the map when you find a locked door or a hint in a document. If you don’t have a way forward that’s immediately obvious the game will usually narrow down your options in short order.
I think one thing this version did pretty well was taking the puzzles and centralizing them all a bit more. I felt like there were more organic cues on where to go from point to point in a lot of instances in this game. One example of this would be the clock face puzzle in the Otherworld apartments. The segment made it pretty clear which room you would be returning to, how many times you would be coming back, and providing the appropriate tells to push you where you need to go.
The lock box in the hospital is another puzzle that benefited from this change. The original version of this puzzle was one of the quintessential “Video game moon logic” kind of puzzles. In this version, it's the central thing that you are coming back to in the level. There are diegetic tells in the environment to guide you to go where you still need to be without beating you over the head with it or locking you on rails to your destination.
Image Credit: Bloober Team, Konami
The presentation of the Silent Hill 2 remake is excellent. It was always going to be the most make or break aspect, and the game certainly rose to the occasion. Every element of the presentation is pretty superb with a couple notable exceptions.
The visuals are immaculate. The fog cloaks the town wonderfully in this game. The whole visual theming of Silent Hill 2 is waterlogged dilapidation and it is captured perfectly here.I could almost feel my socks getting wet during the walk from the forest into the town. Nearly every interior environment in the game looks like it would smell like a damp basement. There’s something so oppressive about so many of the environments in this game. For example, during the apartment level, I very often would forget that it was still daytime. The hallways and rooms of that building are so dark that even though I was dipping into a courtyard every now and then, seeing the sun was always a surprise.
The updated monster designs are really good for the most part. I think the Lying Figures still look a little too rubbery, but the Mannequins and Nurses both look like the proper sort of decaying waterlogged masses of flesh that they should.
Obviously, the most important creature in this regard would be Pyramid Head and this game knocked that design out of the park. I was a little worried going in the updated visuals would make him look a little too clean. Thankfully, that was not the case. In fact, I think the first introduction to Pyramid Head in this version was really well done. Because of the switch in camera perspective, you see him from way further out this time. He’s still behind the bars and under the same red light. But he comes into focus real slowly while your radio just wigs out as you approach him. I think it was a really well executed update to that scene. I know most people who play this game will probably at least have seen Pyramid Head before, but I imagine that would be bone chilling for someone going in 100% blind.
The sound design in this game is top tier. Playing the game with headphones is a treat. Part of why the forest trail walk is so effective is because of the squelching sound that accompanies every step that James takes. Before you even get to anything horrific you have to trudge through something unpleasant. The radio that alerts you to danger has always been a genius concept and it is done very well here. The fact that the little beetles can set it off is a good detail. It works to make the tension of the unknown all the more palpable. If you hear the radio going off but don’t see anything yet, you have know way of knowing if you are about to deal with a Lying figure, a nurse, or just a simple bug. The mannequins being immune to the radio is another lovely addition to the uncertainty.
The ambient sounds you’ll hear when there aren’t monsters to set off the radio are almost as threatening as the danger static. Oftentimes you’ll still hear something shuffling or shambling out of sight. There are certain rooms in the game that have the chance to trigger a disembodied voice just whispering sweet nothings to you. This is one of the first games in a long time to make me take a second to go “Huh. Didn’t like that.” So well played.
The performances in the game are great. Almost everything is played straight in this version so there aren’t very many instances where the game feels like a weirdo fever dream. Whether or not that is for the better or worse is up to your own taste. Luke Roberts killed it as this version of James. He captures the exhaustion and despair really well. But also manages to play James in a way that comes off as a bit more human than his PS2 counterpart. I think this mostly comes down to his interactions with Eddie and Angela. He addresses them in a way that feels more like he sees them as equals. Rather than talking to them like a disappointed grade school teacher.
I think Eddie, Angela and Laura were all backed up by great performances as well. Scott Haining brings an energy to Eddie that felt more genuinely nervous and much more sympathetic. Gianna Kiehl’s take on Angela is more subdued in a lot of places than the original performance but still just as effective in the poignant moments.
The only performance I’m not too big on is the one for Maria. I’d say this is more a problem with the direction given because there are moments where the actress does a really good job. In fact I think most of her lines as Mary are great. And even some of the exploration banter as Maria is good. It’s just the game’s general direction for Maria wasn’t all there. She’s supposed to be like a bizzaro facsimile of Mary and very often comes off as feeling too normal.
And finally, the music in this game is exquisite. At this point, Akira Yamaoka is just stunting on folks. Silent Hill 2 already had an all timer of a soundtrack. This game, rather simply having updated recordings, sports brand new arrangements for all of the music. Some songs get re-imagined and repurposed. These new arrangements are as good as the old versions and very often good in different ways than the old versions. The new version of the Theme Of Laura is not something I ever thought I needed but I have not stopped listening to it since finishing the game.
Image Credit: Bloober Team, Konami
Summary
I am elated to say that the Silent Hill 2 Remake blew my expectations out of the water. Silent Hill 2 in any acceptable state is a must play for horror fans. And this remake does the job and then some. It remains true to the core aspects of what made the original great: An incredible story with a haunting self reflective atmosphere. It does this while also providing a new flavor to the experience with the gameplay changes and new performances. All wrapped up in what is one of the best soundtracks in video games. I loved it as a long time fan of the series and original game. It also works just as well as an entry point to the series for newcomers. It is truly a game that goes beyond my wildest and most restless dreams.