The original Silent Hill 2 is held with such reverence amongst players that it is a seemingly impossible task to remake it. It’s one of the most harrowing stories told in games, and when it was released over two decades ago, it broke a lot of ground for the genre and the medium. Its psychological elements informed many of its failed sequels as many external developers scrambled to capture that lightning in a bottle once more. They didn’t. So it only seems fair that fans would be apprehensive about a remake of Silent Hill 2, let alone one developed by a team with a pedigree like Bloober Team’s.
Admittedly, I was one of those fans. Silent Hill 2 is a project well beyond the scope and scale of anything Bloober has ever made. But Bloober has done the improbable and come out swinging. Silent Hill 2’s success is two-pronged. It’s easily Bloober’s best game so far. But more importantly, it’s an incredibly well-put-together remake. It’s equal parts respectful and daring, not afraid to change things up without shitting all over the legacy of the original game.
While Silent Hill 2 is a sequel, you don’t need to have played the other games to appreciate it. There are some loose links to other games in the series, but the story that Silent Hill 2 so effectively tells is self-contained. You play James Sunderland, a man drawn to Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife asking him to return. But James’ wife died three years ago of a terminal illness. Hoping to return and find her, James begins a journey into Silent Hill.
Of course, it’s not that simple. This is a psychological thriller at its purest. James’ journey through Silent Hill is similarly structured to the original game, albeit with many liberties taken to expand the adventure. Bloober was not joking when they surmised that the game would take twice as long to complete. I was sceptical as to whether this approach would work, but it does. How Silent Hill 2 has been expanded is carefully considered. The new inclusions don’t mess with the lore; instead, they add an extra sense of texture and flavour to the world, making Silent Hill feel like the living and breathing entity it should’ve always been.
Besides the very short Born From A Wish campaign, nothing has been cut in the translation to remake. The additional scenes, many of which revolve around James and his relationships with the supporting case, humanise the characters and keep them relevant throughout the story so that their big moments hit harder as things come to a close. It’s a genuinely restrained yet clever expansion of the original game’s seemingly untouchable mythos.
The most obvious comparison is Capcom’s stellar reimagining of Resident Evil 2. A remake where the ideas the original game presented are still here but recontextualised to offer a new and novel experience. I appreciate this approach more than a shot-for-shot remake, as it allows for a different Silent Hill 2 to emerge from the minds of its creators. Silent Hill 2, as such, ditches the fixed camera angles for a now-genre-typical over-the-shoulder viewpoint. I’ll always have a soft spot for fixed camera angles for obvious reasons, but such a change dramatically affects Silent Hill 2 in two ways – how it plays and how it scares you.
While there are comparisons to continue to draw to Resident Evil, Silent Hill 2’s combat is much simpler than any of Capcom’s recent reimaginings. You’ll only ever have three weapons and a melee weapon, though the melee weapon is arguably more of a focus in the Silent Hill games. That much is still true for Silent Hill 2, as if you run out of ammo, the dodge and melee system is more than serviceable enough to get you out of a bind. It’s a surprise that the combat is so good, given this is Bloober’s first shot at it, but it’s also encouraging that something so crucial has been nailed down from the get-go.
Continuing with the idea of being respectful but expanding upon the original, the enemy variety in Silent Hill 2 hasn’t seen that much of a change. Every enemy you remember returns in the remake, though some that had smaller roles in the original game are expanded considerably. Given that the game runs for twice as long now, many variants of these enemies are introduced, too. They behave differently, some dramatically so, and do an excellent job of keeping you guessing as you make your journey through Silent Hill. The combat is a tad too simplistic for a game so long, though, so I wish Bloober were more adventurous with their additions.
However, no restraint is shown in how the bosses of the game have been reimagined. And I mean that in a wholly positive way. Where the original game had many boss encounters in a single room, the remake expands every boss encounter into multi-room, multi-phase events that are much more compelling, if not slightly goofy at times. The Abstract Daddy fight, for example, cleverly tells you a story while you chase it down and fight it, providing more emotional weight to the battle itself. The boss battles are all great reworks of the original game that I appreciated the most about this remake.
Silent Hill is not Silent Hill without puzzles, but there’s plenty here. Both newcomers and veterans will appreciate that these puzzles are all brand new and are adjustable with a separate difficulty level, as was the case with the original games. Many of them have an abstract parallel to the main story, too. A few of them stumped me for a bit, especially playing on Hard, but they feel similar in tone to the puzzles you’d come across in the original games. They also come at the right times in the game – offering a nice little moment of downtime, always set to a nice piece of music or ambient sound, making them feel like little set pieces in and of themselves.
These elements combine to create a scarier version of Silent Hill 2. The original game is still at its peak, but I found myself much more tense and frightened when playing through Bloober’s rendition of Silent Hill 2. The game goes to great lengths to use lighting and sound to instil a sense of tangible dread in you as a player, and there were so many times when I would be genuinely upset that a door would be open, forcing me to progress into yet another room of unknowns. It’s a truly tense horror experience and a sense of fear I haven’t felt since Resident Evil 7.
The remake brings everything you remember about the original – including the notorious Dog and UFO endings – but two new endings have been added too. It would be remiss of me to spoil them here, but they are nice “what if” scenarios that I can take or leave. There are collectibles to find, too, though hardly necessary, many of which are “echoes” of the past that hint at items or actions you’d come across in the original game. A nice way to pay tribute to the past without cheapening things. Most players can expect to finish the game in around eighteen to twenty hours, which is a nice length for a game of this ilk. And more importantly, you’ll never feel bored.
And while Silent Hill 2 does so much right as a remake, it could be better. I do feel like the simplicity of the combat can get a bit repetitive as the game plays out, and some of the eeriness and, dare I say it, “texture” is lost with the transition to higher-resolution visuals. While I thought I would be bored of the game essentially doubling itself in length, there was only one area, which relied more on combat, that I honestly didn’t enjoy – the labyrinth. All other additions feel carefully considered and only seek to add to the experience.
And obviously, from a presentation perspective, Silent Hill 2 does looks a whole lot better than the original. The fog is thick, the lighting is perfect, and so many of the original game’s key moments are brought to life in a way that you couldn’t even comprehend when you played the original. The game supports a 30fps and 60fps option, too, though some weird ghosting effect in the 60fps mode left me playing in 30fps for most of the adventure. It’s still a great-looking game, at least on console, and is an excellent example of a game using its visuals, like lighting and fog, to really instil a sense of dread in the player.
But it also helps that these improvements help to sell the world of Silent Hill as a constant. You can see from one apartment to another if you peer out a window while exploring them. You’ll eventually hit the hospital as the sun sets, creating a beautifully calming sunset that washes through its halls from outside as you explore it before the sun disappears and rain hits as you progress deeper and deeper into it against the backdrop of a stormy night. In the original game, you felt like you were moving from level to level, whereas in the remake, the presence of the town is felt even when you’re indoors. It feels like a living and breathing world, in a way.
But even higher praise has to be given to the game’s audio design. Make no mistakes – no game does audio design better than the Silent Hill games, and the remake continues that trend. I’d almost argue it does sound design markedly better than anything that’s come before it. The way that the team have managed to build tension and atmosphere using random noises and effects is to be commended in this remake. Add to that an extensive soundtrack restored and reimagined by the series stalwart Akira Yamaoka, and it’s clear Silent Hill 2 remake is one of the best-sounding games you’ll ever play.
The performances are bound to be divisive, however. And that’s not because they’re bad – the remake’s cast does a phenomenal job of bringing these familiar characters to life. But they are arguably turning in performances that are very different in tone from the original game. The way Maria is played in a mystifying but manipulative way by Salóme Gunnarsdóttir is very well done. It’s a different take on the character, and any attempts to imitate Monica Horgan’s original performance would just fall short or invite unfavourable comparisons. The supporting cast is similarly brought to life – Angela and Eddie are both very different takes on the character that has (arguably) better-realised arcs than in the original. Luke Roberts rounds out a strong cast with a more sombre take on James.
And that’s my most telling and resounding compliment of the Silent Hill 2 remake. While I was very aware of where the story would go and where the game would take me, I never once thought that I wished they’d not changed something when the remake deviated from the original. It’s a spirited remake that captures the essence of what made the original game so great while expanding meaningfully without destroying the DNA of its progenitor. It feels nice to finally put these words to paper, but Silent Hill is finally back.