“In my restless dreams, I see that town… Silent Hill. You promised you’d take me there again someday,” and Bloober Team has finally done just that, with exceptional quality and faithfulness to the source material. Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 will never replace the original game and the survival horror zeitgeist it was a part of back in 2001, but the developer has ensured that nobody — be it veterans or newcomers — will forget about the eponymous series with its beautiful and ambitious remake of Silent Hill 2 and it’s story anytime soon.
Previously molded by technical limitations and experimentation, Bloober Team and original staff — Motoi Okamato, Akira Yamaoka, and Masahiro Ito — have had an exceptional task recreating the cult classic. This time around, the sky’s the limit, something that Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill 2’s composer) has mentioned required a lot of trial and error. This hasn’t been in vain, however, with the end result being so thrilling that even my restless dreams couldn’t have cooked it up.
This Silent Hill 2 feels somewhat akin to the Resident Evil remakes from Capcom, something I didn’t initially want out of fear that James’ journey would become too combat-focused. However, Bloober Team has managed to strike a perfect balance; Silent Hill 2 has been modernized with its third-person camera angle and HD environments, and while combat has been refreshed, it by no means takes the center stage in this remake.
Don’t get me wrong, though; combat is incredibly satisfying when you do engage in it. Melee combat, especially. I spent a good portion of my game smashing up every window and vehicle possible when there weren’t any Lying Figures or Bubble Head Nurses left to beat to a pulp. The only drawback of combat, and perhaps not a drawback whatsoever, is how much Silent Hill 2 makes you want to smash everything up; it just feels so damn good that sometimes you forget what you’re actually meant to be doing.
Gunplay also feels good enough; it’s not too clean or over-powered, and James’ dodging mechanic is clumsy enough to have him still feel like the everyman protagonist that he is meant to be. Regardless of how ranged weapons felt, however, I always found myself relying on the Wooden Plank or Steel Pipe for the utmost satisfaction in fights. That said, engaging in combat is still frustrating to an extent (as it was in the original game, if you want to talk about being faithful).
Enemies are much more responsive now, making swinging that Steel Pipe around more fun, but more dangerous. New variants, behaviors, and revamped boss fights will keep even the biggest Silent hill fans on their toes. Take Spider Mannequins, for example, who can climb up walls and lunge at you, taking you completely by surprise. You may (or may not) also be pleasantly surprised to see one formidable foe get more time to shine in this remake.
These enemies not only look brilliant — as you’d expect with Masahiro Ito at the helm of designing them — but they can also dodge and weave James’ attacks between going in for brutal attacks of their own, making them maddening to fight at times. This is exactly what you want from James’ journey. He’s no Leon Kennedy, after all.
Accompanying this journey, you have a soundtrack that is more overwhelming than ever, and is arguably one of my favourite things to come out of this remake. Akira Yamaoka’s otherworldly, suspenseful tracks go a long way in adding to the experience. At the best of times, the industrial tones and organic thuds that echo through each corridor you wander down — and, as you’d expect from Silent Hill, there’s a lot of them — have you constantly anticipating what’s around the next corner (especially if you opt to play without the radio turned on). Other times, the music is intimidating; the mixture of tracks that accompanies James’ journey becomes so immense that it overwhelms and terrifies you, even if the threat you’re facing isn’t, really, all that bad.
This is especially true in the latter half of the game, when James finds himself in Toluca Prison and the Labyrinth. These areas have been vastly expanded, with the environment feeling grittier, and scarier, than ever before. The familiar-yet-fresh areas, Yamaoka’s soundtrack, the scuttling of various enemies you can hear but can’t quite see, and fresh, well-realised puzzles combine to create a devilishly great experience.
It’s been a while since I last had to turn a game’s audio down just to get through an area without feeling scared out of my skin (Resident Evil 7 Biohazard was the last culprit), but Silent Hill 2’s sound design is simply so powerful that it will undoubtedly have that effect on many players.
Speaking previously with Bloober, the devs passionately spoke of the game’s new voice actors and what they’ve brought to the game. After finally experiencing some of the game’s most important cutscenes, such as the dialogue with Eddie in Toluca Prison (which Creature Designer, Masahiro Ito, spoke about during Tokyo Game Show), or our run-in with Angela in the Labyrinth, it’s easy to see why Bloober Team was so proud when talking about its cast.
These character’s feel more real than ever before, and thanks to their facial expressions and distinct tones of voice, cutscenes are much more emotive. Distressingly so. I found myself welling up at Angela’s turmoil and never-ending guilt, and utterly blown away by Eddie’s transformation. He’s still Eddie, and he still has his amusing moments, but when push comes to shove, he’s gone from a goofy caricature of what he was representing to an incredibly realistic and intimidating representation of James’ darker side.
Run-ins with either character, and Laura or Maria, are an absolute pleasure to experience, even if a bit unnerving or upsetting. It wouldn’t be Silent Hill 2 if it didn’t make you uncomfortable, that’s for sure, and Bloober Team has nailed the ability to evoke such strong feelings.
Just like the original, whose endings took a while to crack (and were only confirmed after someone eventually accessed the game’s code on PC), there’s more of the same in the Silent Hill 2 remake for internet sleuths to go wild for. Bloober has hinted that all six original endings (excluding the Born From A Wish sub-scenario ending) are present, and I was able to experience the original three: Leave, In Water, and Maria before writing this review.
It’s worth noting that Born From A Wish is not yet available, nor has it been confirmed. Given how well Bloober Team has preserved the game however, and the hints the game itself makes towards it, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw it added later down the line. I’m sure Konami is well aware that it’d be a damned shame not to include it!
The additional, alternate endings (including the silly dog ending everyone loves) are all there in New Game Plus, but the items associated with them have moved, and could quite literally be anywhere across the 15 to 20 hour experience. Bloober has also advised that there are new endings for players to discover, none of which I’ve yet been able to find in my New Game Plus run…
So, while Silent Hill 2 shows off its new puzzles, the real, big puzzle that’ll test fans — and bring the community together — is figuring out the criteria for the endings all over again and unearthing what new secrets lie in this version of Silent Hill.
Ultimately, those who are familiar with the original Silent Hill 2 will constantly be surprised by this remake, and those who aren’t as familiar are geared up for a great (albeit heart-wrenching) time. All of the pivotal moments remain, but veterans will find that they’re in different orders or brand-new rooms now. There’s new dialogue to look out for, and plenty of new notes, memos, and Easter eggs to discover, especially in New Game Plus. These changes may seem odd at first to existing fans, but all-in-all, they allow the story to flow much more smoothly, or add to it altogether. Think of the remake as a continuation — or a new rendition — of the never-ending, looping purgatory that many theorize James is trapped in.
Bloober Team… You made me happy, and after playing Silent Hill 2, I am eager to see what the studio does alongside Konami in future. Perhaps a Silent Hill 1 and Silent Hill 3 remake isn’t such a bad idea, after all…
Silent Hill 2 was reviewed on PC with a code provided by the publisher.