Silent Hill 2 (2024)
Released: October 8th, 2024
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami
Systems: PC, PS5 (reviewed)
Silent Hill 2 was a masterpiece of a game about guilt, PTSD, sexual frustration, loneliness and more dark business besides. It explored subject matter that was delicate and risky in any medium, let alone videogames, yet it was handled with a maturity that impresses to this day.
Silent Hill 2's 2024 remake is a game predominantly about shop dummies popping out from behind shit, and I do mean predominantly.
I’m not sure what else I’m to interpret from the ludicrous number of Mannequin ambushes other than this version of James Sunderland was deeply traumatized in a department store. Having finished the game, I’m still in disbelief at how many times a poorly hidden quartet of plastic legs did its pitiful best to make me jump.
While I’ve much more to say about how the new Silent Hill 2 handles its monsters, I must state first with no small amount of surprise… Bloober Team actually did a solid job! That’s not to say there aren’t severe flaws, as my opening paragraphs indicate, but I can happily admit this game is far better than I anticipated.
Silent Hill 2 means a lot to me. A hell of a lot. Elements of it are personally relatable, which I’ve gotten to appreciate more and more over time. I’ve not played any story-driven game as much as Team Silent’s narrative triumph, and no story-driven game lives in my head to the same degree. You’d be hard pressed to find many people more protective of it than I.
Conversely, I’ve had an incredibly low opinion of Bloober Team - not only were its previous horror games fueled by hackneyed tropes, the studio’s own attempts to handle themes of trauma and mental illness have been dangerously ignorant. I dreaded them touching the very game that inspired their own clumsy productions.
Thank God for consultants.
People who know what they’re talking about were brought in on this one, and it shows. Bloober obviously deserves some credit, but their work here proves just how important it is to consult those with experience of sensitive subject matter. For all my worries, I can say this much - Bloober Team managed to do it right this time.
It’s a shame that the studio’s aforementioned reliance on overused horror tropes has impacted the gameplay to a severe degree, especially because it’s starkly contrasted against moments of genuine brilliance.
Silent Hill 2 Remake has a lot going for it. Its modernized presentation of the titular town is honestly quite wonderful, capturing a crucial sense of innate eeriness. Silent Hill’s fog-drenched streets look damn near perfect, and the indoor environments are as dank, dirty, and dreadful as they need to be. Exploring such an iconic place in a refreshed and contemporary manner has been an absorbing experience.
Reconfigured and brand new puzzles appear, and a lot of them are very well thought out. The updated controls are solid except for James’ unwieldy turns, and while the loss of fixed cameras has undone some wonderful shots, the new perspective is better overall, even if it can get a bit jittery when going through tight spaces.
I’ve got to reserve particular praise for the level design, which at times improves upon the Silent Hill 2 of 2001. Environments are often laid out in such ways as to reduce backtracking - objectives subtly guide you along optimal routes that can take you from A to B and back to A without treading much old ground. Intuitive floor plans and really clever shortcuts help a lot.
While there is still plenty of back and forth, I've really enjoyed exploring these judiciously crafted spaces.
Another aspect I appreciate is the love put into the original game’s less enjoyable parts, which is especially evident when it comes to major encounters. Bloober’s version of Brookhaven Hospital's Flesh Lips is conceptually incredible, and the Closers went from trivial to threatening in a number of startling ways. The Abstract Daddy has been given extensive expansion, though the added voiceover snippets spelling out what the fight means is unnecessary - fortunately not offensive, but certainly a bit cringeworthy.
One of the most shocking improvements relates to the Creepers, those irritating roaches. They're easier to spot and far less tricky to kill thanks to the more responsive and accurate combat system. Sadly, this is the last bit of praise I have as far as regular enemies go.
Bosses are dampened only by the fact that James is one casual motherfucker even when running or evading. It’s not uncommon to get hit by a boss and then struck again before you can get away. One nasty bastard managed to hit me three times in a row this way, taking me to death from full health. You have a better - if not guaranteed - chance to avoid followup attacks by dodging, but it's not a very reliable move.
Locations like the Labyrinth have been reworked and are more interesting. The nighttime street area you explore after finishing Brookhaven has become this rainy, moody, visually gorgeous sequence that stands out as a personal highlight.
That said, I’m not fond of the Nightmare sections and how they resemble the brown metal version seen in movies and the awful Silent Hill: Homecoming. As imaginatively overhauled as some environments are, it’s a shame to see such a derivative Otherworld.
Fortunately they kept the final look of the Lakeview Hotel. This is personally pleasing because of my pet theory about the hotel’s “Otherworld” being closer to the real world than anything else. In fact, a number of things in the remake back me up on that.
As expected, quite a few expansions and extrapolations have been bolted onto James’ journey. Some of them are worthwhile additions, such as new explorable buildings dotted around town and some cute extra puzzles. An added scene in the Heaven’s Night bar contains a stunningly subtle depiction of recovering alcoholism, a quietly evocative moment that impressed me a ton.
Other additions feel like they’re adding content for the sheer sake of doing so. Some of the extended puzzles, additional areas, and subversions of the original game’s moments add nothing of value, and only harm the pacing by adding unnecessary details or extra steps.
The game loves drawing attention to its own subversions with special camera switches and visual effects in certain places to make sure you know what it did there. I hoped those moments were going somewhere unique and clever, but nope - apparently it was pure self indulgence.
Speaking of which, let’s go into more detail about this game’s biggest problem - the increased focus on combat and those fucking Mannequins making everything worse.
Silent Hill 2 Remake has a fully reworked combat system, and it wants you to use it. The original game’s incentive to avoid fighting has been sacrificed to showcase how modernized the fights are. Running away isn’t just disincentivized, it’s utterly impractical much of the time.
Monsters are fast, aggressive, and can follow you from room to room since they’re not separate spaces anymore. You feel almost forced to kill whatever you come across when you’re indoors since the incessant harassment in tight spaces makes other interactions damn near impossible.
Harassment is exactly what it feels like, too.
Monsters become a hassle to fight, each one a frantic encounter of awkwardly dodging and smashing or pumping bullets into flesh before said flesh swiftly reaches you. The first time you meet a new creature, combat against it feels genuinely wild and scary. By the end of the game, I wasn’t scared of anything - it had all become too tiresome.
Nowhere is the sense of sheer pestering felt more keenly than with those fucking Mannequins.
The first time I saw a Mannequin run and hide, I was impressed. In Team Silent’s game, the leggy fiend stayed motionless to throw off your monster-detecting radio, and seeing the new one perform active stealth was very cool. The first time.
I don’t think words could do justice to how many times a Mannequin has tried to get a shit jumpscare out of me. It became so excessive I started being able to predict if a room had a Mannequin in it based simply on the furnishings and layout. Even if I were to just guess though, I’d be right half the time - there’s just so many of them.
They have one gimmick, and it’s one seen over and over and over again. They’re really bad at hiding too, clearly visible under desks or poorly obscured in the corner of a room. It reaches a point of genuine comedy, they’re so inept at hiding that by the time you realize how many there are, you start ambushing them.
I’m not sure that’s the point of them. Silent Hill 2 ought not be a game about ambushing monsters that are literal and figurative dummies.
If you think I’m focusing too much on them, you don’t appreciate how deeply entrenched into every environment they are. It drags the pacing down as you waste so much time scanning every nook and cranny, not out of cleverly cultivated paranoia, but out of tired routine. The only time they truly get you is when they pop out while you’re fighting something else to score a cheap shot.
From the moment they’re introduced to the closing act of the game, Mannequins and their dreary bullshit maintain an overwhelmingly detrimental presence in every single area. It honestly comes off as pathetic. The clownish number of times Silent Hill 2 Remake desperately relies on a single weak jumpscare attempt is pathetic.
What makes this so tragic is how well animated the enemies are. They're brought to life in beautifully grotesque ways, and I wish they weren't constantly in your face so they could have remained more frightening.
While the artistic direction of the monsters is a mixed bag (Lying Figures look particularly subpar), the way they move and sound is masterfully unnerving. Bubble Head Nurses lurch awkwardly like sick puppets, doing some stellar Jacob's Ladder twitching. Despite their pernicious presence, the Mannequins' insectoid movements are fantastic, especially the way their legs kick and scrape like those of a dying animal when they're knocked down.
Again though, any initial impression given by a creature soon dies from overexposure.
To say one unequivocally positive thing about the monsters though - Pyramid Head is scary again. Bloober’s clear reverence for Silent Hill is most evident with the way they’ve treated the iconic antagonist, resisting the urge to overuse him. He’s a truly intimidating presence whenever he appears. He’s also a little faster, a tiny bit more present, and both these alterations are used to great effect.
After years of the series exploiting Pyramid Head to the point of becoming a toothless mascot, it’s refreshing to see a modern appearance in which he’s a real horror.
As far as the main cast goes, they’re all pretty solid. I like the way this version of James comes across, he’s well written and performed. Maria is a weaker character with a flat delivery of lines but this doesn't carry through to the more emotive Mary. Since Monica Horgan was the best actor in the original by far, doing a fantastic job as Maria, she was always going to be hard to follow.
I’m quite fond of this new version of Angela though, she’s been written with crucial sensitivity and her more reserved vocal performance suits her well. I’m on the fence with Eddie - his scenes are great, but I dislike that he has the stereotypically dopey “fat guy” voice.
Meanwhile, Laura is far, far less unsympathetically annoying now. This is good.
The default settings have a damage filter that borders the screen in red after you take only two hits. It’s fucking awful and I recommend you turn it off immediately. For a game that otherwise has a classily streamlined HUD, I don’t know why they make you opt out of an ugly blood border that vandalizes otherwise lovely graphics.
You won’t need a silly damage border since the classic color-based health status is conveniently shown by the DualSense controller’s light bar. Sadly, the controller’s full features aren’t used as extensively as I hoped - haptic feedback isn’t very noticeable unless it’s raining, and the speaker is used purely for the radio, which uses the same obnoxious sound for every monster this time.
This at least means adaptive triggers - the worst part of the DualSense - are weak enough to not feel like they’re fighting you.
The soundtrack for Silent Hill 2 is as iconic as any other aspect, and here is another area where the remake pays due homage. The reworked versions of Akira Yamaoka's amazing music really nails it, never straying too far from the source but adding some quality flourishes. My favorite track, Promise, was done real justice. To be fair, the audio work all round is accomplished stuff.
So… I’ve provided an abundance of both praise and complaints. What does it all amount to?
Bloober Team’s track record conditioned me to expect the worst, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a more thoughtful tribute. The original game’s darker subject matter has been handled with a sensitivity previously unseen from this team, and there are flashes of fresh brilliance that validate this new version’s existence.
Such brilliance is hugely offset by repetitious forced combat against enemies best described as pests. It is by far the worst aspect and it’s baked in so deeply it can’t be dismissed. Even after the monster roster introduced genuinely neat variations, I didn’t much care because I was so sick of enemies in general.
It could definitely have been worse. That Bloober got through every single appearance of Angela Orosco without completely fucking things up is nothing short of a miracle.
All things considered? Silent Hill 2 Remake is an almost excellent game that just couldn’t help itself. It does so much to impress, but the obnoxious elements are so consistent they ensure Team Silent’s masterpiece is far from bested.
I never want to see another Mannequin again in my life.
7.5/10
