In one of life’s unexpected twists, my forgetting to ask for super early review code actually worked wonders for my Silent Hill 2 playthrough. Listen and learn from my idiocy to also have a brilliant time come October 8.
To begin with, the need to play catch up forced me out of my comfort zone—an all-nighter run was required. For an already hair-raising survival horror classic such as this, that’s the best-case scenario environment.
Better yet, dead of the night gaming in a house full of people meant my typically TV speaker-using self had to put on headphones. With the underestimated benefits of 3D audio tech and one of the most unnerving soundscapes ever devised, our best case elevates to a brown underpants case scenario. This remade soundscape is nothing short of a masterclass.
Marry the above with an obvious desire to develop a remake right—with rejigged puzzles, expanded levels, and new ambushes—and Silent Hill 2 wins you over quick. Decades of disappointments have made me naturally skeptical of any reduxing of a classic, but this got under my skin quicker than a mutant nurse with a kitchen knife.
Basically, developer Bloober Team and the venerable Unreal Engine 5 have hit a home run on all fronts. It’s a result highly reminiscent of Capcom’s RE Engine refresh of Resident Evil 2 (2019).
a home run on all fronts. a result highly reminiscent of Capcom’s RE Engine refresh
I’ll get into the upgrades in a sec, but for now, we should set the grisly scene for any newcomers. At launch, the OG Silent Hill turned gamer heads like Reagan from The Exorcist; however, it was the 2001 sequel (and the visual leap to PS2) that truly put this upstart series on the map. Most notably, Silent Hill 2 takes a more psychologically disturbing route compared to your more action-heavy Resi Evils. Decades later, it’s more or less remembered as the best entry in this franchise.
In it, we play James Sunderland, a grieving widower who, along with a small handful of other unfortunate souls, is lured to the titular burg via ghostly correspondence. What are the must-sees of this lively tourist hotspot? All pervading mist, shambling horrors, and a tendency for everything to reconfigure to suit the messed up proclivities of any who enter these city limits (but rarely exit).
That’s all you really need to know in terms of the basic premise. As for execution, Silent Hill 2’s many bread-crumbed mysteries remain the interactive equivalent of a page-turning Stephen King novel. Hell, even more so now, thanks to its weird NPC denizens, streets, and pop-up purgatories dripping with photorealistic detail and extra menace.
I do have to admit, though, that the original script requires some suspension of disbelief in spots. James and the people he meets make some teen-in-a-horror-film decisions and seem entirely too okay with not discussing (or even acknowledging) the eldritch horrors that are hunting them. That being said, I do think these recast voice actors do a great job of making the clunkier lines work better.
Speaking of which, the act of dispatching these demonic bastards has been tightened up considerably. For starters, their phenomenally f’ed-up designs have been allowed to shine like never before in UE5—I must have 2×4’d and stomped hundreds of these freaks back in the day, but even I got the chills during this reunion. The fusing of sexy and grotesque is timelessly disturbing.
Better yet, the menu-heavy combat has been streamlined to remove the need to constantly press start to switch weapons, reload, or guzzle health drinks. Everything bar poring over maps and reading notes is handled in real-time. James also contextually knows when you want him to belt things with melee or start blasting with his (very, very low ammo) firearms.
Oh, and it’s also worth noting that the latter are now manual aim affairs, as opposed to the auto-aiming of yore. As you’d expect, over-the-shoulder shooting with a need to pause to attain accuracy is way better. Mind you, when some of the new enemies begin to exhibit xenomorph levels of mobility, you will miss those magnetic-aims when these buggers claw at your head from some darkened ceiling.
On the topic of head-scratchers, combat in this game really does take a back seat to Metroidvania-level exploration and baking your noodle with puzzles. Konami makes it harder on you Googlers by having answer variations that are tied to specific difficulty levels, and a few solutions and setups seem completely different from the original game.
It’s worth noting that the expanded complexity and added fetch-questy / backtracking of these affect the runtime a bit. A bit of extra busywork—and overall larger environments—balloons the 8-hour original to something closer to 12–13 hours. And this is even before we start talking about multiple endings and NG+ challenges that come with special new items to find and use.
When the sun went down on my time with Silent Hill 2, as an eerie as hell air raid siren sounded, I was mighty impressed with what I’d played. Everything Bloober Team could have improved—audio/visuals, VO, combat, and puzzles—has been enhanced across the board with aplomb. Most impressive, however, is how they’ve managed to give the player more “modern agency” without watering down any of the edge-of-seat, creeping dread of the original.
If you never played Silent Hill 2 back in the day, you owe it to yourself to see what all the prizes and plaudits are about. If you’re a tourist who somehow escaped its city limits before, I’d trip advise you to book a scare-bnb at this expertly reconfigured town.
This review was made possible by a digital code provided by the publisher.
