Silent Hill 2 (2024) or: The SH2make

Despite many people's skepticism around a Silent Hill 2 remake by Bloober Team, I remained optimistic. Luckily, my faith wasn't misplaced.

I played this on my PS5.

This game is great. To some extent, I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise. I thought the original was fantastic when I played it a year or so ago, so while a remake would have very big shoes to fill, it would also be building on some incredibly strong foundation. Bloober Team was, against all odds, able to make something that comes close to the original and that should be commended.

I suppose I should start with the narrative. Well, it's Silent Hill 2. In most ways it's a pretty direct remake, with the same general events and locations appearing in the same order, with the same characters and a lot of the same dialogue. The performances within are solid, though only one in particular stands out to me. James's voice and character feel notably different than the original. In that, he gives off the impression of someone wholly detached from the events going on, of someone who's seemingly dissociating. This new James, by comparison, feels more like an active participant and, as a result, more human. That's not necessarily worse than the original, but it is a noticeable change and I for one like that they didn't simply try to recreate what the original game did. It may have the same, or at least a similar, script, but they were able to squeeze a new performance out of it. Changes like this are what make a remake interesting to me.

This scene had a totally different vibe to me, when compared to the original.

In a lot of ways this feels like a game designed for fans of the original. There's a series of collectible "echoes" that are, essentially, nods to the original game. When you encounter a location that was notable in the PS2 game, but not necessarily important in this remake, there's an onscreen effect that'll highlight that area as a way of letting a player know that its significance was not lost on the developers. While puzzles may have changed and the progression has been tweaked slightly, these Easter eggs function as a way of rewarding people who remember the original. I suppose I'm not explaining it well enough, but in practice it's a pretty elegant way of having their cake and eating it too when it comes to wanting to do new things with an old experience without ignoring what came before.

The first "echo" I encountered.

The most noticeable change to this game is in how it plays. The combat is... good? Melee combat can still be awkward (at times, at least) but the movement and mechanics throughout all contribute to a better feeling game. There's a dodge (with i-frames!) and all weapons feel appropriately weighty and impactful. There's now a standard third-person camera which makes seeing what you're fighting far easier, even if it does lose some of the original's fixed-camera charm. 

In addition to better combat, the boss fights are also drastically improved. All of the boss encounters are noticeably better because each has some sort of progression or gimmick to it. They're not all just "whack this guy with a pipe in a small room", there's multiple phases, or different arenas, or something to keep things interesting.

This fight is actually a lot of fun now!

One last note, the sound design and visuals are incredibly strong. The quality of these sorts of things can be hard to convey over text, but just trust me when I say the audio is effective and the game looks great in motion. For the visuals, one thing that makes it so stark when compared to other games is in how it's willing to let the game look dark. Without your flashlight, in certain areas at least, the game is nigh pitch-black and I love that they trust the player enough to navigate its environments despite this. The atmosphere here is immaculate. The sounds, too, add to this, with returning sound effects from the other games complemented by solid and convincing environmental cues. This game is very well put together.

 I've included my results screen(s) below.

My only real complaint with this game is that, by being a retread of something so beloved, it's forever in the shadow of one of gaming's juggernauts. It can be hard to judge it on its own merits when it'll always be compared to the original game, but if you haven't gathered this already, I loved it despite the massive expectations I had going in. While I wouldn't consider it a replacement to the original, it's a worthy recreation that fixes some of that game's issues while keeping most of what made that game so special. I'd still recommend people play the original, but if someone nowadays is looking to play something Silent Hill they'd be hard-pressed to find a better, more accessible entry than this.

I have to add: this remake adds even more holes for James to reach and/or climb into.

And with that, my voyage is done. I've now played all of the Silent Hill and Resident Evil games (with only a few exceptions). This blog has largely been a chronicle of my journey through those games so now that I've finished them I'm not quite sure what I want to do with this place. I imagine I'll still log some of the games I've been playing but it feels like I'm closing the book on something here, and I think I should honor that somehow. I'll probably do some sort of reflection on these last two years, but I'm not sure when I'll get to that or even what form it'll take. Regardless, this has been a fun endeavor and I'm glad I started it a little over two years ago. Silent Hill and Resident Evil are each noteworthy and I feel ever so slightly more cultured for having played through both of them.