Silent Hill 2 (2024)

(available for PlayStation 5 and PC, PS5 version used for this review)

This Silent Hill 2 remake was made by developers Blooper Team in conjunction with Konami and was one of several Silent Hill projects announced last year, as part of a big push for a franchise comeback. The reception was rather mixed, people were worried that there was an over emphasis on combat, and that some of the trailers didn’t make the games look great. I, however, was rather interested to see how all of this was going to turn out.

For the record, I’ll be approaching this mostly on the basis of what this game changes or does slightly differently from the original. Though I do suspect that many people will play this as their first Silent Hill. I will say ahead of time that I think you should play this over playing the HD remakes- but if you have access to a PS2, it’s worth trying out the original before this one.

The story hasn’t changed at all, so if you’re unfamiliar, it is about a man named James who travels to Silent Hill after his wife (who died three years prior) tells him to go- so no questions asked. If you’re not aware of the story and wonder why James would follow something that sketchy, just trust me that it makes a lot more sense in the story, especially in the later parts.

I would stress that I think Silent Hill 2 has one of the best stories of all horror games, and I think that people were worried about what changes the development team would make. But I am happy to say that they change very little, and most of the changes are for gameplay. This one moves to an over-the-shoulder view, similar to the Resident Evil remakes.

PROS

• Graphics in Fidelity Mode

I want to say that fidelity mode is what I’m specifically referring to, as there are some issues with Performance Mode, which is how I played most of the game. But in Fidelity Mode, it looks astonishing, especially the cutscenes.

The excellent motion capture performances have been done very well, and the actors are great too. The environments look really excellent too, and this is a game that can make fog look really good!

I do want to stress, however, that I wouldn’t suggest playing the game in Fidelity Mode as it tanks the framerate. At this point, I would also like to point out that I don’t believe that the game hasn’t received a PlayStation 5 Pro enhancement upon that version of the PS5 coming out.

I will also say that Performance Mode looks fine. It does a really good job, it just seemed that early on there were some issues, like shadows being pixelated. But as a whole, I think it looks really damn good.

• Updated Gameplay

I personally think that the developers have updated this game really well. It retains a lot of the classic Silent Hill puzzle structure and keeps the fact that your character is not that strong.

Despite what some of the trailers that emphasised combat were showing off, you really want to avoid combat! The game is very stingy when it comes to health pickups and you don’t get any of the good weapons until way later in the game, and certain enemies will become the bane of your existence, in my experience it was the dagger wielding nurses that were really deadly to deal with.

And by the way, the monster designs that have been updated are excellent! This is especially the case for the most iconic monster of Silent Hill, Pyramid Head.

I would also stress that one of the great decisions was to keep the difficulty separated between combat and puzzles- you can set the difficulty to Easy, Medium, and Hard on either end. But I will warn, if you choose a difficulty in puzzle mode, you’re stuck with that decision for the entire playthrough, but this isn’t the case for combat.

But because the game makes you want to avoid combat, it makes the time where you need to run away REALLY scary, especially if you’re on low health. I would say this is the case particularly in the latter portion of the game.

• Story

As I mentioned before, the story has been pretty much untouched. Some of the dialogue has had slight changes in the re-recording process, but as a whole it’s pretty much exactly the same.

It does have some slight changes here and there, but it stays mostly intact. Despite the fact that there have been some dialogue changes, some of the iconic lines are still in there. I particularly noticed that a few of them got repeated during the boss fights in the later portion of the game, if you know what I’m on about, you’ll know what lines I’m talking about.

If anything though, I think they tried even harder to make James somewhat likeable, but they also hint at some of his insecurities this time around. I also make note of the fact that he seems a lot less angry this time, and I actually think they did a pretty good job with Eddie, who I think this time around is one of the most interesting characters in the game, especially when you contrast him with James.

MIXED

• Boss Fights

While I do think that they amped up the difficulty in several areas involved in the combat, I don’t think this was the case for the boss fights. The game gives you way more ammunition than usual at these points, and the bosses have very easily readable patterns, so I didn’t feel very threatened by any of them, with the exception of the last two but even then, I only died once on the final boss fights.

If anything, the only boss fight that gave me any trouble was the one at the end of the prison sequence. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does take away some of the fear factor because these bosses are sometimes the easiest things you have to fight.

CONS

• Overuse of Repeated Jump scares

I’m looking at you, the mannequins that don’t set off the radio and then jump out. That got repeated so often that it stopped being scary and just became annoying.

I won’t say that this game isn’t scary, there are some sequences that are really frightening, particularly the labyrinth sequence. But as a whole, I did think that they repeated a few scares too often.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Silent Hill 2 is an excellent remake. If it had a little more polish for the early portions of the game when playing in Performance Mode, and if it didn’t repeat a few of the scares, I would be saying that this game was damn near perfect. I think that it can go toe to toe with the Resident Evil remakes, and I think that the story and performances were top notch. The gameplay was really good, and I think that it did a great job bringing Silent Hill to a new generation. If you’re on the fence, I would recommend picking this up as a first dive into the franchise or as a repeat trip.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10