Warning: this text incorporates delicate thematic and atmosphere spoilers for Silent Hill 2.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is probably the most depressing expertise I’ve had with a recreation in current reminiscence.
With a gap sentence like that, you’re in all probability anticipating to learn a really adverse critique of developer Bloober Staff’s recreation of Konami and Staff Silent’s survival horror traditional. However, on this very uncommon incidence, full and unrelenting distress is definitely a constructive. The unique Silent Hill 2 is maybe the bleakest, most sombre recreation ever made and Bloober Staff has efficiently preserved its depressing magic, guaranteeing this remake is a deeply efficient descent into genuinely uncomfortable terror.
That journey begins with sound and imaginative and prescient. The thick, opaque fog that conceals the city of Silent Hill is a part of the story’s immediately recognisable iconography, and the remake’s spectacular fashionable volumetric results imply it feels thicker and extra isolating than ever. Transferring away from the monster-infested streets ought to really feel like an escape, however as an alternative you’re pressured to seek out shelter in a few of the dankest, most depressingly disgusting residences you’ve ever seen. A lot of Silent Hill 2 is themed round a descent, and there’s a transparent gradient within the visible texture of every space that communicates that downward spiral. Places initially really feel unkempt and deserted, reminiscent of condo blocks with peeling wallpaper and empty cabinets. However push onwards and the structure turns into more and more oppressive. Recognisable shapes and textures are changed with rougher, damaged options, and finally all the space turns into a rusting, decayed husk. What begins as unnerving transforms into actually nightmarish the additional you dare to press on.
Contributing to all this, as horror custom calls for, is minimal lighting. You’re locked inside darkish buildings for almost all of the sport’s prolonged runtime (something from 12 to 18 hours, relying in your playstyle). This turns into more and more distressing, notably throughout exploration of Toluca Jail – the ability’s lights can solely be turned on for a number of seconds at a time, forcing you to dash between breaker switches in a largely doomed try to carry again the darkness. Being starved of the solar for such lengthy stretches implies that the mere sight of daylight is like gasping for air after spending what seems like days beneath water. It’s deeply, unpleasantly efficient.
That visible palette is accompanied not a lot by a musical rating, however by probably the most oppressive assortment of noises your ears have ever suffered, offered as soon as once more by authentic Silent Hill 2 composer Akira Yamaoka. It’s notably efficient within the late recreation, when what feels like an approaching beast is dynamically woven into the orchestration throughout occasions of excessive rigidity. It makes you second guess each sound you hear, and over time it grinds away at your sense of actuality. It’s not simple to simulate madness, however this soundscape is as shut as you may (un)comfortably get.
Efficient artwork and sound design has been the flagship characteristic of many horror video games, however these disciplines are the floor of the expertise. I don’t imply that disparagingly – the floor is important – but it surely’s what’s beneath that actually cements the phobia. Video games like Resident Evil 4 and Useless House are, in actuality, motion video games with horror masks, and so are hardly ever ever actually scary. Silent Hill 2, alternatively, is a horror recreation proper right down to its nerve endings and bone marrow. Its atmosphere and goal design pull on related threads to the artwork and sound, always looking for new methods to unnerve you. Every location visited is an obtuse puzzle to be solved. You’re pressured to stroll circuits of every flooring, backtracking to seek out keys or hidden entrances to rooms that can as soon as once more ship you backwards to progress. This nearly spiral-shaped route by means of the flats, hospital, resort and extra forces you to endure rising psychological exhaustion.
This fatigue, mixed with the seemingly relentless size of every space, robs you of hope. It’s notably horrible within the remaining third, whenever you’re pressured to navigate the jail and the next labyrinth back-to-back with completely no respite. These places characteristic lengthy stretches of near-impenetrable darkness, thematically grim puzzle work, and probably the most aggressive, grotesque enemies in all the recreation. The ensuing emotional toll successfully communicates the psychological area that the protagonist James Sunderland finds himself in. And that’s Bloober’s, and by extension Staff Silent’s, most spectacular, unsettling achievement: the flexibility to inflict empathy by means of gameplay design.
The depressing tone of Silent Hill 2 is maintained by means of plenty of different gameplay methods. As talked about earlier, the story revolves round James’ descent into horror, and that’s represented each metaphorically by means of the visible design, and actually by means of a frequent want to leap into pitch-black holes. Every leap requires you to press the motion button a few occasions, replicating his hesitancy and reluctance to leap into the unknown.
Because the ambiance turns into more and more insufferable, there’s nothing constructed into the marketing campaign to supply any levity or safety. Within the Resident Evil collection, as an example, you steadily accumulate an more and more highly effective arsenal, permitting the late-game to be an thrilling, explosive romp by means of blood and guts. It additionally toys with its dialogue and monster design, typically choosing goofy characterisation that secures the collection its beloved ‘tacky horror’ credentials. Final 12 months’s Alan Wake 2, regardless of clearly being impressed by Staff Silent’s work, options absurdist humour and Lynchian path to lean into the bizarre as an alternative of horrifying, permitting for laughs to chop by means of the stress. Silent Hill 2, although, has none of this. For probably the most half your weapons are a damaged pipe and a pistol, and even whenever you do get entry to one thing somewhat extra hard-hitting it’s nothing greater than a easy shotgun or rifle with an extended reload time and restricted ammo. Alongside a problem curve that sees acquainted enemies change into erratic, wall-crawling freaks, Silent Hill 2’s ambiance persistently finds methods to suffocate you.
It’s not common for an evaluation to make use of phrases like ‘suffocate,’ ‘oppressive,’ and ‘depressing’ as positives, however horror just isn’t a common style. It’s one in every of solely two leisure classes constructed round eliciting an uncontrollable response from the viewers (the opposite being comedy). Horror is an emotion-manipulating machine, and the style’s only tales can power us to expertise emotions we sometimes do not encounter in our on a regular basis lives. Horror movies spend their complete runtimes exerting completely different ranges of strain with the intention to obtain that manipulation, and the simplest etch photos in our thoughts that frequently reappear when the lights exit.
Video video games are a really completely different medium, although, and their experiential nature permits them to govern us in additional intense methods. Relatively than ask us to look at, they demand that we work together, sometimes for 4, 5, generally even 10 occasions longer than a median scary film. This could power us to expertise a really completely different actuality. Whereas there’s a frequent insistence from some components of the participant group that video games are solely about enjoyable or escapist leisure, that’s typically not the aim of many builders. Typically that aim is speaking uncomfortable concepts, and the trail to that’s by means of exposing us to a actuality that’s deeply disagreeable. Silent Hill 2 isn’t about having enjoyable, it’s about exploring grief and guilt – components of the human expertise that we historically keep away from. Surprisingly, there’s an uncomfortable thrill in actively exploring these concepts through a online game.
The 2001 authentic’s technical limitations helped contribute a number of thorns to that painful expertise; the semi-fixed digicam made environments really feel restrictive and claustrophobic, and the awkward aiming put in every encounter with a way of desperation. Bloober Staff’s remake prunes these thorns, changing them with fashionable third-person controls that make the expertise somewhat friendlier to play. However these are the one vital concessions offered, so whereas fight sequences are maybe rather less panicked than they as soon as had been, Staff Silent’s nightmarish imaginative and prescient is preserved. It means the remake is a contemporary reminder not simply of an period the place Konami was a grasp of survival horror, but in addition the numerous energy of Silent Hill 2’s unrelenting distress.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Options Editor.