Having the chance to play through Silent Hill 2 Remake felt like experiencing a real-life dream. I mean, the monsters and puzzles don’t sound like something I’d be able to explain to someone as a real thing with a straight face. However, I mean a dream in terms of feeling like I got a chance to do something in this lifetime that I’ll never get a chance to again: play a near-perfect remake. I haven’t played through the original Silent Hill 2 in a long time, but Bloober Team’s remake brought it back to life as though I had played it just yesterday.
The team popular for Layers of Fear and The Medium did an excellent job encapsulating exactly what makes a Silent Hill game. I truly believe that no other developer would have been able to accomplish the same for Silent Hill 2 Remake.
Story – In My Restless Dreams, I See That Town
Bloober Team keeps all of the main story beats as the original Silent Hill 2 while adding additional context to those stories through memos and scraps of paper found throughout different levels. The map is even largely the same, allowing players to follow in the same footsteps as the original, only straying in terms of small scene changes and collectibles. Personally, I think they are all for the better.
The game is standalone from the first and third games, focusing on protagonist James Sunderland, who drives to the eponymous town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his dead wife, Mary, to meet her there at their ‘special place.’ After failing to find traces of Mary, running into other people who were also called to this strange town, and fighting against horrible monsters, the truth of what James did to his wife begins to unfold.
Instead of being a title that tries to scare players through different gameplay elements or sounds, like Alien Isolation, for example, Silent Hill 2 Remake largely focuses on the scariest thing of all: normalcy and the human condition. The world around you is deceptively normal. Despite obviously being eerie and dangerous, the stores and streets genuinely feel like they are lived in. Even the blood-spattered curtains that drape the areas you cannot go to feel organic and not forced. When partnered with the characters that James meets along the way, the world feels more alive and even more terrifying.
Concerning the changes, they were largely in the form of dialogue and scene changes for additional emphasis or emotion. For example, the scene where you confront Angela on the burning staircase when she asks for the knife back feels far more emotional than in the original, despite being the same. Another change concerns the Polaroid photos you can find in the many places throughout the town. Now that I’ve finished the game, I realize they represent small scenes from the original that didn’t make it into the remake.
Gameplay – Hands Grasped Around a Metal Pipe
Bloober Team took incredible care to ensure that the gameplay for Silent Hill 2 Remake was engaging and varied throughout the game. Of course, James has his trusty metal pipe at the ready at all times, but instead of just using it to smack down Nurses, he can also use it to break shop and car windows to search inside. This further opens the world for James to find more healing items, rummage through drawers, find notes, and learn more about the town. Trust me when I say I was EXCITED to step foot inside a real Happy Burger.
Two major gameplay changes include an over-the-shoulder camera perspective and that change’s approach to shooting. The camera perspective does change the scares a bit from the original, but in many ways, it defines them even better. You don’t ever see what is behind James until you turn around, and when you do take down an enemy, it feels incredibly satisfying to smash them below your heels or shoot at them with a rifle. It resembles action-adventure titles like The Last of Us or the latest Tomb Raider trilogy, though with far less skin-gouging violence.
What made me realize how well Bloober Team had implemented these changes was when I found myself spending way too much time in the Woodside Apartments searching every nook and cranny for trophy opportunities, photos, or ammo. I think I’ll see that garbage chute courtyard in my dreams for the rest of my life.
Graphics and Audio – An Eerie Feeling
Everything, from the buildings’ layout to the apartments James walks through to the way that other characters speak and react, feels real and tangible. It has been over twenty years since the original was released, so I would think creating something from the ground up of this magnitude while attempting to retain the original art direction and emotion would be incredibly difficult. However, Bloober Team did an incredible job doing that and more with Unreal Engine 5. The emotions worn on the characters’ faces feel more sinister than their PS2 counterparts, and the rot and grime of the Otherworld genuinely make your skin crawl.
I was also incredibly impressed with the voice actors chosen to play the other visitors of Silent Hill. Despite most of the dialogue being the same, they added additional depth that only made the entire experience more unsettling; more like a Silent Hill title. The missable scene where Maria hums ‘Promise’ from the original game helped hit this point home.
Speaking of music, the entirety of Silent Hill 2 Remake would not have worked if it wasn’t for Akira Yamaoka. He was the original composer for the game and was brought on to bring that same ambiance to the remake, which I believe he succeeded in doing. Some of the songs were changed to better fit the new game, but their beauty is still as present as ever.
Conclusion – There Was A Hole Here. Now, It’s Gone.
The entirety of Silent Hill 2 Remake was significantly longer than the original but is packed with so much more content that hardly makes it feel that way. I was entranced throughout every play session and spent much of my time taking screenshots and falling in love with the world that Bloober Team created. For the first time in what feels like an incredibly long time, the Silent Hill franchise is officially back on track to becoming one of the biggest series in modern gaming. I hope to be able to feel the same when Bloober Team decides to remake Silent Hill 4: The Room, if they every do.
SIlent Hill 2 Remake was reviewed on the PlayStation 5. We were not provided a review code.
