Silent Hill 2 Remake Full Review

Summary

• 🎮 Name of the game: Silent Hill 2 Remake
• 📅 Launch date: October 8, 2024
• 🏢 Developer: Bloober Team
• 📌 Publisher: Konami Digital Entertainment
• 🖥️ Platforms: PlayStation 5 and PC
• ⚔️ Genre: Survival horror
• 🌍 Context: Direct remake of the 2001 classic Silent Hill 2 with improved graphics, new perspectives and modernized gameplay.

History and narrative

The game once again follows James Sunderland, a guy who travels to Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his deceased wife, Mary. The premise of the game is interesting and at the beginning it captures the attention, as he starts looking for his wife who passed away 3 years ago in a town, because he received a letter from her telling him that she was waiting for him in his favorite place. This alone for me was more than enough to leave me wondering what was going to happen and how the story was going to unfold. Let's see, a guy tells you: “I'm looking for my wife who died 3 years ago” any sane person is going to say: “this guy is crazy or something happened to him”, and you'd have him from afar. Besides, I wouldn't even go to Silent Hill, an abandoned place with a dark history.

The story itself can be a bit slow in the way it is told, mostly because there are rhythms of the game where it falls off and it's a bit hard to pick up, however, it always keeps you intrigued as to what is going on. The narrative is what really stands out in this game, it is excellent and one of the best I've seen. In my opinion, it's the best in a horror game: very deep, with a fairly detailed analysis, where if you pay attention to the details, you'll see that the events of the game are much more disturbing than what you're told through the dialogues. The narrative was what really drove me to finish the game, because I said, “something worse is happening here and I'm not even aware of it.” Sure, once I finished the game I said to myself, “I was right”, but I still didn't expect certain details that I couldn't figure out or that left me with doubts, and after researching I realized that events in the story had a brutal psychological analysis that I hadn't seen in any other game.

I've seen a lot of horror movies and games, but Silent Hill 2 is pure terror, and not because of its monsters or the town itself, but because of what is behind the minds of the characters and how the town brings out the deepest thoughts of each one. That's what's truly terrifying. And yes, Silent Hill is a manifestation of the subconscious: be it trauma, guilt, desire, redemption. Every creature we see is designed to confront what the character doesn't want to accept, and that's why I say the narrative plays a huge role and does so incredibly.

Regarding the characters, beyond the enemies we see in the game we have James, Angela, Laura, Eddie, Maria and Mary. Each character has a different situation. Starting with James, I didn't like his character as such; I feel he lacks a little more humanity. I say that because he looks dead inside, and you can understand why, but let's be honest: the guy doesn't look scared with everything he's seeing and living in Silent Hill. I'd be terrified if I were him, and more so when it's superhuman stuff. I feel like it lacked more emotion, because he doesn't seem to question anything either. I mean, he sees people there and there's no question of how they got there, when we went a long way to get to that part. Nor is there any question as to whether what is happening is real or not. Personally, I was not convinced by his character.

Angela was the most interesting to me from the beginning, also looking for her mother. She sounds weird and has atypical behaviors, even worse when you learn why she ended up there. Eddie, well, I don't have much to say beyond that he's a deranged guy because of others' teasing of him. Laura is surprising: a girl in a place like that, so ugly, and she moves on like it's nothing. Maria, with a very seductive attitude towards James all the time, attracts attention and it's weird how she behaves with him; then you understand why. Each character has their essence, but at least just their reasons for why they are there made them appealing in the narrative. Beyond that, I didn't empathize much with any of them, I just understood them.

Spoiler warning:

As you progress through the game, you realize that it simply can't be real what is happening, and you begin to suspect that James is hallucinating or having some disorder, especially after Maria's first death and reappearance in the maze. That's when you realize
that James is wrong. At first I thought Silent Hill was like some kind of underworld where Mary's soul was trapped and we could rescue her, so I said, “well, let's be the hero,” until I saw the tape at the Lakeview Hotel and said, “I've been with the killer all this time.” I wasn't so much surprised that James had killed Mary, but why he did it.

Anyone would think that he did it out of compassion, out of the pain of his wife's illness. However, the motive was out of hatred towards her... and not so much hatred, but rather tiredness and physical and mental exhaustion. I understand that, but I don't justify it at all. Although, if you have ever lived as a caregiver of a sick person close to you, you will know that it is not easy at all: it is an incredible wear and tear. Whoever takes care of someone sick knows what it implies, and here this detail is what made me think: this game presented me with a very human story, with real problems of many people who struggle with these situations.

James kills Mary because, after years of helping her with her illness, he ends up exhausted from not being able to have a healthy person for an everyday lifestyle. He feels he doesn't have a life, as his wife limits him and robs him of that. In fact, there have been many stories of people giving up their life for the care of another, and
over time that caretaker begins to wear down. The right thing would have been for death to take Mary, but James intervenes by smothering her with a pillow, which makes him a murderer. That feeling of guilt is what drives him to Silent Hill.

It's clear to me that he did love her, he was just a person who couldn't take it anymore and committed a crime. What I loved is how Silent Hill punishes him for what he did, reminding him that what he did wasn't right. The disturbing thing is that James had killed her shortly before arriving in town, only the act was so strong that his mind repressed it and he refused to think he had done it. Silent Hill forces him to accept the truth.

The game has several endings:

• AbandonmentJames accepts the truth, says goodbye to Mary and leaves Silent Hill. Its emotional significance is more of
  redemption, acceptance, hope. Mary's actual letter did generate for me
  a lot of connection and I felt every word.
• In WaterJames commits suicide by diving into Toluca Lake with Mary's body, which he always had in his heart.
  the back seats of his car. Here James feels extreme guilt and
  punishment, he is unable to move forward and decides to drown himself next to his wife's corpse.
• MariaJames denies the truth and goes with Mary, who is a fake woman product of his subconscious, created by Silent Hill as the idealized version of Mary. James wanted to see in Mary what he saw in Mary, that's why they are physically similar. Unfortunately that fantasy was false, due to Mary's illness. In this ending, James continues to deny what he did and enters a vicious cycle, where Mary at the end coughs, indicating that she will also get sick like Mary did.
• RebirthJames attempts to resurrect Mary through an occult ritual. This shows obsession, extreme denial, regret.
• New blissJames achieves emotional peace and accepts his past without evasion or punishment.
• SerenityJames remains in Silent Hill in silence, not seeking redemption or punishment. He demonstrates stoicism, passive acceptance and resignation.

It turns out that each character sees the world differently. It is revealed to us at the end that Angela always saw fire and James fog. Laura, being an innocent child, saw the town as normal, and so there was no real danger. Angela's story is the most disturbing.

What was the role of Pyramid Head? It is the representation of James' desire to punish Mary for her illness and what it had caused in his life, in addition to his sexual repression and aggressiveness, and his need to face the truth. That is why you see Mary killed up to 3 times: it is a way of forcing James to relive his guilt. When James accepts the truth, the pyramids take their lives, as they lose their purpose, which is a mega detail.

As I mentioned, Silent Hill 2 is a real horror game with an excellent narrative, which if you investigate it and pay attention you will realize that it is created in an impressive way. The downside is the pacing of its story, which, at times, because of its gameplay, falls off and can make you lose interest.

Gameplay

Incredibly, this is the game's weakest point, which, for a single-player title, has a lot of room for improvement. I understand why the 2001 game is like this,
but now they took it to another level and not as good as it sounds. For starters, our character's camera is over the shoulder instead of fixed angles. This type of camera can sometimes be a challenge to see what's behind us or to the side, a change that was made from the original. Combat is basic and simple: it focuses on dodging and handling melee weapons, where we can use a board with nails and a pipe, which by the way are the most resistant board and pipe I've seen in a video game, they never break. We also have firearms: a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle, which is more than enough to have a little more variety in the game. The bad thing is that aiming is still a bit difficult and I think it's intentionally done this way to make us feel more vulnerable. Even though we have guns, the game creates this mechanic so that the gun doesn't give you security.

The combat has a serious problem: the variety of enemies, the quantity and how repetitive it becomes in a short time. Silent Hill 2 has 5 types of enemies, 2 of which come out until you get tired of them. There comes a point where fighting them feels like wasting time. I'm referring to the mannequins, The game is a resource to scare effectively, but after advancing, instead of achieving it, they end up annoying because they become even predictable. Sometimes there are games that implement loot for each defeated enemy and thus feels valuable to eliminate them. Not here: ammunition can only be acquired by exploring every corner of the map. This makes it more realistic, but let's be serious: Silent Hill is not realistic, it doesn't play by the same rules as real life, and that's clear. There are enemies that are hidden and come out a lot; already after a few hours it becomes tedious to fight them and the best thing to do is to pass by.

The most controversial aspect of the gameplay is not so much its combat, but its puzzles, which become excessive, and the maps that, compared to the original version, they expanded too much. Each zone, or chapter so to speak, was extended much more, to the point of making it too overwhelming. Don't get me wrong: the problem is not the quality of the puzzles, but the quantity and how they play with the player, making him move from one side of the map to the other. Many times you're going to get lost. The first area is the town of Silent Hill, then the apartments, where everything was fine and I even found it fun. Brookhaven Hospital already started to feel heavy, but I thought, “well, it must be a dense area of the game and then it gets better”. Until I got to Toluca prison and here the situation got complicated.

Many players, like me, will understand that the hospital is long and with a lot to decipher. The ideal is to give the player a break from so many puzzles and labyrinthine areas. But the game decides to take you to an exaggeratedly dark subway prison, which is no longer just a matter of solving more puzzles, but now you'll be doing it in the dark. And here, my dear reader, the experience drops a lot: from being a survival horror game it becomes a mental survival one. Already at this point I started to consider using guides, but I still made it through. After the prison, you jump into the void and it turns out that you get to a maze. Have you ever seen when there's a fire and someone, instead of putting it out, makes it bigger? Well, that's what this remake does with the maze. The prison is torture, not because of the terrifying atmosphere, but because of the mental demand you must have to not get tired of seeing where you're going or getting lost along the way. The maze makes it doubly worse: dark, long, confusing, with more enemies and more puzzles. By this point I had had enough and decided to use a guide.

Then you get to the Lakeview Hotel and here the experience improves, to a certain extent, because while the pacing is different now, there are more puzzles. The worst part is that each area feels very standard and with the same objective: a central object that basically allows you to advance from area to area. To unlock it, you have to run around the entire area a thousand times to find a key or code. A code unlocks a lock to a key, the key unlocks a place where you get another code, and so on. The idea is always the same. And once you get everything, you solve a puzzle to get another puzzle and that's it: you advance. Add to that the fact of going around the map a thousand times and you'll see how tiring it gets. The game feels stretched out to justify its price and that it's not as quick to finish, but this was not a good way to do it. Simply put, the gameplay becomes exhaustive, to the point that in my case I had to take breaks because it overwhelmed too much.

I understand that these games should have puzzles, it's part of their essence. But Silent Hill 2 Remake takes it to the point of being overwhelming and tedious, so much so that by the end you just want to finish the game because what really engages you to continue advancing is the story and narrative.

Another point: the controls are improved, but with room for improvement. Many times, if an enemy you eliminated near a window and you needed to break that window because maybe there was ammo or a health potion, James didn't get what you wanted to do right and kept hitting the monster, when you actually wanted to break the window. The same goes for grabbing an object or opening a drawer: it's not very precise. That said, I consider it has a very easy learning curve. There are few buttons you have to use to play and it all boils down to the same combat with the same technique and puzzles.

The bosses are very good and are quite fun. After suffering through so many puzzles, some action was necessary. For me, the gameplay is the weakest point of the game and by far. It's not the worst thing I've ever played, but boy is it a huge point to improve, because anyone playing it for the first time and without guides is going to know what it's like to feel overwhelmed and frustrated in a video game.

Graphics and visual design

The graphic quality is excellent, with detailed modeling, realistic textures, oppressive fog and implement the use of Unreal Engine 5, widely used in games this year and that looks very good. Graphically it is excellent and is at the height of many games of its style or even better. Of course, the best thing is its artistic style: a dark and oppressive realism that is faithful to the original. The bad thing is that, for the times of today, you can tell that there is a lot of censorship. The original was more terrifying and misses several visual details that could be more frightening, such as the first time we see the pyramid head.

Let's talk about the design, which, although it takes what was already created in the original, adds more details. Each enemy represents something:

• Lying Figure: It represents the sense of helplessness and emotional suffocation felt by James during Mary's illness.
• Mannequin: Repressed sexual desires for Mary and frustration with the lack of intimacy during her illness.
• Bubble Head Nurse: A mixture of attraction and repulsion towards health personnel, in a certain way an eroticization of hospital suffering.
• CreeperJames' mental rot and attrition in Silent Hill, which is why they appear later on.
• Pyramid Head: He is the executioner; he represents his desire to punish Mary and a combination of sexual repression and aggressiveness.
• Flesh Lips: The trauma of the image of Mary trapped in a hospital bed, which also reminds him of Mary's insults to James, much to his frustration. Hence the lips like this.
• Abstract Daddy: Undoubtedly the most disturbing of all, it even gives you goosebumps. It depicts Angela's trauma, although James actually sees something less ugly than she did.

All these designs and the details of the areas make it an artistic work that visually tells its own story. Graphically it is excellent and artistically it is even more so because each design has a meaning and purpose.

Sound and music

The game's soundtrack feels imperceptible throughout most of the game. Almost everything is an uncomfortable silence and only in cinematics or very specific moments a song plays in the background. I highlight Promise, which is very good, but in general the soundtracks are nothing remarkable. Promise alone is an exceptional piece.

The sound effects, on the other hand, are very good. The horror atmosphere manages to constantly generate tension; sometimes you feel defensive because you hear some monster or some object falling on the map, which achieves its purpose very well. This sound design is its strong point, unlike the soundtrack.

The voice performances are good. In my case the English ones were very interesting. I don't single out anyone in particular, perhaps James, although as I mentioned, his character doesn't allow the voice actor to be as expressive and human as I would expect him to be in the situation he was in.

Difficulty and accessibility

Overall, the difficulty of the game is easy. Combat-wise, it's fairly easy, but the puzzles can be the heaviest part of the game. There are a lot of them and sometimes they are not so easy to deduce, and by adding a labyrinthine map in every part of the game, it can become more complicated or overwhelming. The advantage is that you can choose the combat difficulty and puzzle difficulty. However, the exploration can be the hardest part and the patience you have to have in order not to get lost.

As for accessibility, I saw many details: it has interface presets, subtitle size, aiming aids, visual aids for people with some visual condition, among others. Overall, it is up to par and meets the accessibility expectations for a game of its year.

Additional content

The campaign can take between 15 to 20 hours without seeing guides, although I recommend you see one or another, because solving puzzles can be very heavy and the labyrinth that becomes the whole game makes it even more complicated. I took 15 hours. It has no activities or side quests, beyond collectibles that perhaps give you more context of the town's history, but in the end they are just that: collectibles. Nowadays it has no DLCs.

As for replayability, it is low, beyond other endings, but nothing that with a video you can not see and thus save several hours of labyrinthine gameplay. The most it offers you in the new game plus is a chainsaw and other endings that are not easy to get, so I did not see anything attractive to play again.

Technical Aspects

Available on PS5 and PC. In my case, on PS5 the game ran well, although I prioritized graphic quality over performance and even so I perceived that the performance was fine. On PC I have read that some users had problems maintaining 60 fps, due to optimization issues.

I saw a few bugs, mostly in the enemies: once eliminated, they would sometimes bug on the ground. Also, in melee attacks, James would almost teleport to another enemy to hit him. Still, these are minor bugs that didn't ruin my experience. Loading times were very fast. At least on PS5, I consider it had a good optimization.

Value for money

The launch price was 70 USD, which seems very high to me. I say this because it is an adaptation: the story and narrative are already written from the 2001 original with some additional details. We already saw that the gameplay can be very overwhelming, tedious, tiring and repetitive, so sometimes it's not going to be fun.

At a technical level it should be at the height of games of its level, and the graphics are very good. It's a short game and you practically finish it and there's nothing else to do. Paying 70 dollars for a game that looks great, without analyzing the rest, seems to me to be giving money away. I bought it at $35 and I feel it's hardly a fair price compared to other games, considering its gameplay problems, lack of content and repetitiveness. The game has good graphics, puzzles that can be good and others not, and an excellent narrative. Having only these elements, I recommend you to definitely buy it on sale, because it is not worth it at full price.

Trophies / Achievements

Conclusion

This new version of Silent Hill 2 is a technically modern take on a survival horror classic. Bloober Team manages to recreate the original psychological nightmare with improved graphics, sound and gameplay, but without radically transforming the experience. The game stands out for its narrative, design, graphic quality, atmosphere and sound effects, however, its gameplay is very heavy and tedious which subtracts many points, also although it has many positive elements it is still an adaptation where the original version is the one that still takes the applause, more at the narrative and artistic level. I consider it a game recommended for lovers of the genre, it is not for everyone. Also, being very transparent and honest, I think the scores and reviews are too high for what it really is.

My final rating for Silent Hill 2 Remake is:

4.0/5