After a string of Resident Evil remakes, the resurrection of Lifeless Area, and even style granddaddy Alone within the Darkish stepping again into the highlight earlier this 12 months, it feels lengthy overdue that seminal survival horror basic Silent Hill 2 ought to emerge from the fog and be given a contemporary makeover. Enter Bloober Crew, the psychological horror specialists finest recognized for Layers of Worry and Observer, who’ve been given the duty of taking the morbid masterpiece from the PlayStation 2 period and making the fetid flesh of its many demonic ghouls appear recent. As a giant fan of the unique, I’m joyful to report that this ensuing Silent Hill 2 remake is an exceptionally grim and dirty horrorscape that’s constantly compelling to discover, filled with new puzzles and beefed-up boss encounters, and enhanced with modernised fight that made my return to the small city of Silent Hill a recurrently violent thrill.
Given it was launched greater than twenty years in the past, there’s each likelihood you don’t have the foggiest thought what made the unique Silent Hill 2 so impactful. Other than its sinister small city setting that felt like moving into the pages of a Stephen King novel, Silent Hill 2 stood aside from different survival horror tales of its period by placing simply as a lot deal with the battle with private demons because it did common scraps with the snarling bodily form. Protagonist James Sunderland, who’s lured to a distant mining city by the promise of creating contact together with his deceased spouse Mary, shouldn’t be a battle hardened member of a zombie-killing particular unit – he’s an abnormal man pressured to confront some really extraordinary issues. The struggles together with his personal guilt and trauma each humanise him and add plausible heft to the horrors that unfold round him.
Whereas the roles of James and the handful of different misplaced souls he meets alongside the way in which have been recast with voice actors of a noticeably larger commonplace on this remake, the campy dialogue they ship stays largely unchanged. This does protect the off-kilter, David Lynchian really feel of the unique character interactions, however comes throughout as a little bit bit jarring at occasions given the vastly improved requirements of storytelling we’ve seen in newer horror landmarks. I used to be no much less entertained by Silent Hill 2’s quirky characters this time round, even when I by no means grew to become emotionally invested of their plights to the identical extent I did with the supporting casts in The Final of Us or Alan Wake II. Regardless, I discovered the thriller surrounding the destiny of Mary was nonetheless greater than intriguing sufficient to tug me via the darkest depths of Silent Hill 2’s story.
Hell Involves Fogtown
The distinction in feel and appear between this Silent Hill 2 remake and the 2001 authentic is night time and day – or maybe that ought to be night timemare and daydream given the surreal nature of its small city’s frequently altering state. The streets are blanketed by believably heavy fog and wealthy with element, proper right down to the lacking individuals posters taped to phone poles that flutter within the breeze. Dimly lit dwellings are overrun with discernable indicators of decay, and drywall and cinder block splinter off in shards from startling shockwaves felt in hurried hallway chase scenes. Hordes of cockroaches startle and scatter within the beam of your flashlight as you make your approach down every putrid path that winds you thru an more and more hellish otherworld. Silent Hill 2’s festering setting is directly each off-putting and alluring, like a scab you’ll be able to’t cease selecting.
The enemies too have been dressed up in much more disturbing and disgusting designs. The commonest kind, the Mendacity Determine, which seems to have its arms wrapped up in a straightjacket manufactured from its personal pores and skin, appears slick with a decidedly icky sheen and extra easily shifts from two-legged stagger to writhing susceptible alongside the bottom in preparation for a shock assault. There’s additionally the twitchy, Bubble Head Nurses launched through the Brookhaven Hospital part (who now are available in each pipe and knife-toting types), and naturally Pyramid Head, who’s sharply pointed cranium as soon as once more brings a extra literal which means to the time period apex predator. This lumbering death-dealer stays one of the crucial terrifying presences within the horror style, solely now he appears in some way much more sinister due to additional particulars just like the real looking rust on his jagged head and the ghastly inky goop that coats his highly effective body.
In fact, that’s when you’ll be able to truly see the improved enemies and environments round you, since Silent Hill 2 can be oppressively darkish for considerably lengthy durations at a time. James’ chest-mounted flashlight has a shorter throw than Mr. Burns, which means it’s recurrently the case you could solely see just a few ft in entrance of his nostril – testing your tv’s black ranges, tightening the unrelenting sense of claustrophobia, and leaving you weak to ambushes from the creepy Model enemies that stand eerily nonetheless within the corners of rooms like they’re ground lamps bought from Hell’s Residence Depot.
It’s throughout these moments, when your peripheral imaginative and prescient shrinks right down to a pinhole, that Silent Hill 2’s extremely unsettling audio design actually involves the fore. The signature radio static hisses that intensify round imminent risks, the shrieks within the distance and whispers which might be uncomfortably shut, and the accompanying discordant drones preserve an ongoing and ominous sense of dread. Stalking via Silent Hill 2 left my nerves extra shredded than a guitar solo performed by a shirtless Hugh Jackman.
Cloudy with a Likelihood of Road Brawls
Fortunately when issues get loud in Silent Hill 2, we’re significantly better outfitted to battle again this time. Gone is the stiff, auto-targeted capturing and cumbersome pause menu-based weapon-swapping of the unique, Silent Hill 2’s fight feels rather more like what you’d count on from a survival horror journey post-Resident Evil 4. Enemies may be manually focused from an over-the-shoulder viewpoint, weapons may be rapidly shuffled between on the faucet of a d-pad button, and James can be capable of carry out fast dodges to nimbly sidestep round lurching enemies or the streams of acidic bile they spew. Moreover, melee assaults can be utilized to smash via glass to be able to collect well being drinks and ammunition from cupboards or locked vehicles, and even to crash via weakened sections of partitions to achieve entry to secret areas hidden amongst its expanded environments.
That mentioned, though Silent Hill 2 offers you much more management over every shot fired, it stays staunchly true to the unique by way of its noticeably restricted arsenal of weapons – James is an underpowered everyman by design, in spite of everything. There are two forms of melee weapons plus a handgun, shotgun, and rifle, and that’s your lot. There are not any weapon upgrades or mods to increase the capabilities of your arsenal additional, and in the end I didn’t significantly favour one weapon over the opposite – I just about simply switched to whichever gun I had probably the most ammo for at anybody time. Really that’s not totally true – in keeping with the story completion stats web page, I did choose one weapon greater than most: the lead pipe. Partly since ammo was so scarce, however primarily as a result of it simply feels amazingly satisfying to alleviate Silent Hill 2’s near-constant rigidity by clubbing a hellborn beast to the bottom and persevering with to pound their slimy skulls in till they’ve lengthy since expired.
But whereas Silent Hill 2 lags behind the likes of Resident Evil 4 or Lifeless Area so far as the flexibleness of its firepower goes, the builders – in collaboration with authentic Silent Hill 2 creature designer Masahiro Ito – have thrown just a few new enemy sorts into the combo to maintain the fight constantly participating regardless of its relative mechanical simplicity. Once I first entered the Toluca Jail part within the story’s second half solely to discover a freaky new breed of Model that would scramble up and down partitions and alongside the ceiling like a spider manufactured from discarded doll elements, I couldn’t hit the brand new 180-degree flip button quick sufficient. Nevertheless, as soon as I’d composed myself, I set about attempting to choose them off from afar with my rifle as they shuffled out and in of the shadows above, which gave Silent Hill 2’s fight a difficult new edge.
The place the overhauled fight actually shines, nevertheless, is within the boss battles. Some fights, like the primary encounter with the long-lasting Pyramid Head, play out largely the identical approach they did earlier than – they simply really feel extra muscular and menacing due to the immediacy of the over-the-shoulder viewpoint and the vastly extra detailed visuals. Nevertheless, different motion sequences have been enhanced to much more complete levels. With out spoiling an excessive amount of, there’s one specific late sport battle within the authentic Silent Hill 2 that amounted to little greater than an attritional head-to-head stand-off, however right here it’s been reworked into an intense sport of cat and mouse amidst the frigid air and dangling carcasses inside a meat locker – successfully remodeling one of many story’s weakest boss fights into certainly one of its best.
Equally, lots of the authentic sport’s puzzles have been preserved right here, whether or not it’s the eccentric, point-and-click journey form like utilizing a selected instrument to be able to retrieve an merchandise from an condominium suite rubbish chute, or the extra ingenious kind like swiveling an ornate field on its axis to be able to manipulate the towering, MC Escher-inspired room of unattainable staircases inside a late-game labyrinth. In the meantime, different brainteasers just like the coin puzzle early on have been given further steps to finish, which prevented their options from ever turning into too predictable as somebody who performed the unique all these years in the past. Excluding some compulsory valve-turning right here and there, puzzle sorts are largely distinctive and constantly stimulating, and there are many them to resolve. (Like fight, you can even fluctuate the issue of puzzles by way of the in-game menu to be able to finest fit your tastes).
Nevertheless, among the easier puzzles have been expanded upon a contact an excessive amount of. Take one early impediment within the authentic that successfully required you to resolve a reasonably simple riddle to be able to wind a grandfather clock to a selected time. On this remake, I needed to endure a sequence of multi-part treasure hunts to assemble up every of the three palms for the clock face – heading off enemy hordes and finishing further puzzles alongside the way in which – which in the end meant that near an hour of my playthrough was spent merely trying to make the clock chime and unlock the way in which ahead. This is only one instance of numerous situations the place the brand new Silent Hill 2 bogs down barely by way of story development, and I’ve to confess that as I jumped via one more elaborate collection of hoops simply attempting to get my palms on the important thing to a locked door within the Wooden Aspect Residences, I did catch myself wishing the proprietor had merely left a spare below their welcome mat.
To Lower a Brief Story Lengthy
It’s due to the expanded puzzles and fight sections, that the brand new Silent Hill 2 is significantly longer than the unique regardless of the actual fact it appears to stay to all the identical story beats. The primary marketing campaign of the 2001 Silent Hill 2 may be accomplished in round eight hours, however my playthrough of this 2024 remake hit the credit at simply over 15. Whereas it’s nearly twice as lengthy, I don’t actually really feel it’s doubly nearly as good. This remake is genuinely glorious for big stretches at a time, significantly through the escalating stakes of its climactic last third, however there are positively moments all through the early elements of the journey which might be lined with extra padding than the partitions of the Brookhaven Hospital psychiatric ward.
It additionally implies that though Silent Hill 2 options eight completely different endings to unlock – two greater than the unique’s six – I can’t see myself investing the time for any repeat playthroughs as a result of I’m barely put-off by the protracted size. Though admittedly alternate endings aren’t the one incentive to return in Silent Hill 2’s New Recreation+ – there are additionally additional weapons to seek out, further graphics modes with CRT scanlines and the prefer to strive, plus quite a few secrets and techniques and easter eggs to comb for within the city’s elevated variety of interiors – I don’t really feel an enormous pull to step face-first again into the fog anytime quickly.
Even so, though it may not utterly trump the unique in the identical approach that the Lifeless Area and Resident Evil 4 remakes did, Silent Hill 2 continues to be an extremely prime quality reimagining that improves on its supply materials in additional methods than not. I actually like the way in which it makes use of distinct hues of sunshine and distant audio cues to subtly steer you alongside the suitable path, permitting the HUD to remain freed from any immersion-breaking goal markers. It’s nice how James robotically marks his map with any puzzles or locked doorways you discover, vastly lowering the quantity of aimless backtracking that sometimes plagued the unique sport. Developer Bloober Crew has additionally actually emptied its full bag of tips so far as taking tense conditions and bringing them to near-nervous breakdowns. The timer-based gentle switches within the Toluca Jail, for instance, are a particularly efficient machine for creating panic – the intensifying countdown beeps echoed my very own escalating heartrate as I hurried to finish my search of every cell earlier than the entire block was plunged again into darkness. It’s fantastically fear-inducing stuff.