Earlier this year I wrote about how the Silent Hill series played a large part in defining my tastes in horror. As I sit down to start writing this, I’m wearing my Pyramid Head shirt in my office with a map of old Silent Hill on the wall. Nine times out of ten, when you ask me what sits at the top of my ever-shifting “Top 10 Games of All Time” list, Silent Hill 2 is my number one. So when Konami announced that Bloober Team would be remaking Silent Hill 2, I rolled my eyes. Ever since Team Silent stopped working on the series, it feels like they’ve been trying to recreate the themes and iconography of Silent Hill 2 in each entry of the series, whether it felt right or not. Of course they would try to restart the franchise by just banking on the entry that most people cite as the high watermark. To say I was skeptical would be an understatement; cynical may have been a better word for it.
Tons of developers have also been trying to recreate the vibe of Silent Hill 2 in their own games, and Bloober is definitely one of them. I really had a great time with The Medium’s take on those inspirations, but I haven’t really connected with many other games from the studio. So much digital ink has been spilled discussing whether or not they were the right team for the job, and now that I’ve got my hands on their new version I can say they’ve made a beautiful companion piece to the classic.
It’s hard to imagine someone visiting the video game section of a horror website and not knowing Silent Hill 2, but I’ll give a quick recap of the game for the uninitiated. You play as James Sunderland, a man who is drawn to the quiet tourist town of Silent Hill by a letter from his dead wife. When he arrives, he finds that the town is overrun by strange monsters, and his journey leads him into a psychological nightmare. To make your way through, you’ve got a small flashlight to light your way through the darkness and a radio that blares static whenever a creature is nearby. It’s equal parts surreal loneliness and visceral terror. If you happen to be new to this game, don’t worry, this remake is a perfect way to experience it, but if you’ve played the original, this game will reward you with the way it both respects and remixes history.
Early in the game, I was walking through the familiar streets of Silent Hill, appreciating the new questline that I was on to find the key to the Woodside Apartments, taking me to all sorts of small new locations. Near the end of this quest, the wind picked up, blowing the gorgeously rendered fog around furiously. It immediately upped the intensity in a way that I wasn’t expecting, catching me off guard in a story that I’ve been familiar with for the past 23 years. This moment is a perfect example of the things that Bloober Team did right with this game, presenting you with familiar elements, then twisting them to add their own stamp on it in a way that’s both reverent and transformative.
The remake runs about fifteen hours, which is almost double the length of the 2001 original, so there’s a lot that they’ve added to the game in ways that are surprisingly additive. Each of the major areas have been completely redesigned from the ground up, still featuring locations and moments that you know and love, but also adding places that feel perfectly in line with what Team Silent made. New and old areas alike are absolutely gorgeous, creating chillingly abandoned spaces that morph into rusty nightmares. Even with areas getting bigger, you never find yourself lost because each area has its own little touches that help distinguish one section from another. And of course, the series’ signature fog looks absolutely stunning.
You’re also seeing the world from a new perspective, dropping the semi-fixed camera angles that the original used for a modern third-person over-the-shoulder view, and it works great. As someone who loves the old style, I was worried it would lose that hand-crafted cinematic feel of the visuals, but the tight camera of the remake helps Silent Hill feel more claustrophobic than ever before. It’s terrifying to whip your flashlight around as your radio crackles, searching every corner while trying to tell the difference between a creature’s silhouette or just another shadow. On occasion, the camera gets caught in tight areas and has trouble, but for the most part the new perspective feels good.
The atmosphere created by the new look and perspective is further enhanced by a revamped score from Akira Yamaoka, a man who is synonymous with the series as a whole. Not only does it hit the same wonderful tones as the original music, going from light piano tracks to clanging industrial noises, but there’s new songs in there as well that blend in perfectly with the established soundscape. There were times that I stopped in my tracks at the sound of a new song, giving myself time to soak it in and see how it enhances the new areas. The sound design of the game is equally excellent, creating terror with the unsettling noises of the enemies as well as little touches like whispers in the dark.
After the initial trailers for the game that were meant to show off the combat, I was nervous how it would feel, because it didn’t show well. Silent Hill 2 was never really about combat, but interacting with enemies was still an important part of the overall game. Despite not having combat in their other games, Bloober Team managed to make a modern-feeling combat system that feels perfectly at home in the world of Silent Hill 2. Melee combat feels extremely impactful, making for high-stakes encounters that are brief but dangerous. There’s a wonderful bit of decision making when you find yourself face to face with enemies. You can probably take one of them in melee, but if there are a pair of them in the mix it might be better to try to handle at least one of them with your pistol before cleaning up the other with a swift hit from your lead pipe. All these choices play into encounters, keeping you constantly checking your ammo and health items as you travel.
The different monsters you’ll run into all need to be dealt with in different ways as well. They each have their own attack animations, and you’ll need to be able to identify their tells accurately in order to be able to successfully evade them with the surprisingly useful dodge button. Not only do each of the enemies look grotesque, they also perform different functions in an encounter, keeping you on your toes with various combinations. One type can do ranged attacks that keep you at a distance, while one can hide from your radio detection by remaining motionless, making for some great jump scares as they pop out from a darkened corner. There’s even a small bug creature that’s very easy to deal with, but just enhances the tension by setting off your radio to put you on edge without actually being much of a threat.
While I think the combat all feels great, I do think there’s a bit too much of it. Since every encounter is one that could end up being lethal if you don’t take it seriously, the game feels very scary as you’re slowly exploring the areas, and that tension can be a bit exhausting because of the density of enemies in the game. In the original, and in a lot of other classic survival horror games, you had the option to avoid enemies by maneuvering around them and getting away, but in this remake they are able to pursue you a lot more intensely, making that not really an option. Almost every time I ran into an enemy, I had to kill it before moving on, which got to be a bit much. If it was just toned down a little bit it might help the pacing of the game, but this could just be a taste thing, because the combat is fun overall.
Getting around the beautifully rendered environments is also a joy thanks to great classic survival horror style level design. Each of the main locations of the game are gloriously interlocking areas that slowly expand as you find keys and solve puzzles, using shortcuts that loop back around and make returning to earlier areas a breeze. You’ll become so familiar with these locations as you backtrack through these spaces over and over again to solve puzzles, making your mastery of the location feel rewarding.
And those puzzles are one of the most iconic things from the Silent Hill series, often focusing on a surreal dream logic that reflects elements of the horrible landscape of the town. This often goes beyond just collecting items, asking you to solve some clever logic puzzles to complete them and progress. What’s even more impressive is that they take some of the iconic puzzles from the original game and remix and extend them in clever ways. The signature Henry Mildred Scott clock goes from a little puzzle in the original to a centerpiece of the apartment complex, involving many steps to complete. It’s yet another way that the game pays respect to the original while still allowing Bloober to make it their own.
In order to keep track of all the puzzles and location, the game features a great map to help you out. As you read notes or find clues, James will actually do a quick little animation where he draws a mark on the map to remind you where you need to go. I’ve said this before, but opening up a map and planning a route through a space is one of my favorite things in video games, and Silent Hill 2’s map has such a unique tactile feeling to it. My only small beef with it is that the button for the map in the original game (triangle on a PlayStation controller) is the same button that uses a healing item in this new version, so I found myself wasting health items while fighting my old muscle memory. Not really a knock against this game, but something for fans of the classic game to watch out for.
One of the main reasons that the original game is so highly acclaimed is for its nuanced and complex story, and Bloober Team knocks it out of the park by recreating and adding to the narrative. New cutscenes give the side characters more room to breathe, and the excellent performances add weight to the existing story beats. There is a certain amount of intangible dreaminess that’s slightly lost in the new versions, but overall the nuance they gain makes it a worthwhile version of this tale. Angela’s story, one fraught with very sensitive subject matter, is handled particularly gracefully, with a powerfully heartbreaking portrayal.
For people who played the original, there are little Easter Eggs you can find that reference moments in the original games that have changed for the remake. When you come across one of these, there’s a small static-y zoom that lingers for a moment. It’s unclear if this has any more significance or if it’s just a little nod for fans of the classic. This remake contains the six endings from the original, and two additional endings, so I’m very curious to see fans discover its secrets, as they did with the original.
It’s a lot of endings to try to achieve, especially with the expanded runtime. I do think that some of the additions to the game have an effect on the pacing. I feel like the main locations run on a bit too long, especially with the density of combat. It’s a hard situation because I don’t think any of the new content is bad, but it does sometimes feel like it drags on the pacing just a little bit, especially when contemplating doing New Game+ to try to see more endings and find everything.
After Silent Hill: Ascension came out last year, I was fearing the worst for the future of the series, but Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 has restored my faith in the franchise’s possibilities. It’s a loving remake that mixes modern gameplay concepts with the elements that made the original a masterpiece in the first place. Walking through those foggy streets again felt exactly like I remembered it, and the new combat mechanics made every encounter fraught with danger. Bloober did such an amazing job of learning from their past missteps and handled a mature, psychological story with care and nuance, and the new actors found new ways to affect me in a story I’ve known for more than two decades. Even if I hadn’t been a fan of the original, this is a terrifying horror game with a complex narrative that impresses on all levels.
Review code provided by publisher. Silent Hill 2 is available now on PC via Steam and the PlayStation 5. Also check out Aaron’s appearance on the Safe Room Podcast talking about Silent Hill 2 with Jay and Neil.
The post Bloober Team’s ‘Silent Hill 2’ Remake Delivers on All Levels [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.