Survival Horror perfected
By Ameer Ammar
Silent Hill 2 is my first ever Silent Hill game, I've become a huge fan of this genre and have always been meaning to check this series out
This remake has finally been my chance to dive into Silent Hill & I loved it.
Story:
The story of Silent Hill 2 is what impressed me the most. I am insanely lucky to say I somehow have never had the Silent Hill story spoiled to me over the years, so I really had no idea what's going on, The mystery around the town, James, Mary, Maria and the entire cast of characters is incredibly well done. stuff unravels at such a slow pace and you really do have to piece things together as you go on which I actually managed to do and constantly felt rewarded by.
James in specific is a character that I really loved. nowadays all we get is quippy chatty protagonists, so I really appreciated James for just how stoic he can be, he's very much an observant character who doesn't speak much, which makes you really feel the weight of all his lines. The performances here across the board for all characters are top-tier; Angela and Eddie both deserve special mention. I can see why these characters have been iconic for decades, and I am so glad to have finally gotten to experience them in this remake.
Gameplay:
Silent Hill 2 is genuinely a blast to play, the last time I had this much fun with a survival horror title similar to this was in the Resident Evil 2 Remake, just piecing together puzzles, exploring every single room, checking the map every 5 seconds because why not?
There's a general sense of creepiness throughout Silent Hill 2 that is really hard to describe, it is much creepier than most recent horror games I've played including even Alan Wake 2, it doesn't rely at all on jumpscares and instead creeps you out by placing you in uneasy situations and environments, there's areas here that reminded me of the effect the whole "backrooms" thing has especially with how detailed every single room, hallway and storefront throughout the town of Silent Hill is.
Bloober has made the general gameplay loop somehow insanely engaging despite the fact that it never really varies THAT much, you can tell they kept the soul of the original title throughout.
Combat is really fun, the animations are amazing, and all attacks really hit hard. It might be too easy on standard however, I actually managed to finish the game with 0 deaths, so that should tell you something about the difficulty, but I never was bored. I did have many close calls, but you do find healing items quite a lot so you are never really struggling for items or anything if you properly explore, of course.
Visuals, Music and Performance
Silent Hill 2 looks INCREDIBLE. I feel like a broken record saying this, but these next gen games really look insanely good and keep upping the bar with graphics, Unreal Engine 5 delivers fantastic visuals here, the fog just looks incredible, especially with how it reacts to the lighting. Also, the other world version of each location is so insanely creepy, they really cooked re-creating these environments in a way where it keeps that old almost CRT feel of the PS2 era yet looks insanely good at 4K across the board.
Character models look stellar, James himself looks almost like a real person, his expressions can be so subtle at times and just... human. everyone else in the cast gets that treatement. tbh I don't get what the "woke" outrage was about neither as Maria is instantly attractive and Angela actually looks her age. they did a great job! Also can't finish talking about models without the enemies because woah this Pyramid Head model is TERRIFYING.
I believe they re-used or remixed many of the OG tracks and as a first time player it was interesting just how much presence the music has during cut scenes, almost as loud as character voices at times and that is clearly a strong artistic decision made for the OG Silent Hill 2, and I really appreciate how Bloober kept that consistent.
Performance: I played this on a RTX 4060 Laptop with frame gen and DLSS turned on at 1080p, unfortunately due to Unreal Engine 5's BS the game has a constant stutter issue while traversing in the ENTIRE game, I installed a mod called "Ultra Plus" that pretty much fixed this issue enough to make it not very noticeable. outside of that I had a consistent 60+ FPS experience throughout EXCEPT two specific areas in the middle and end of the game that I had really bad frame rate drops in, thankfully outside of these two areas, the game ran great.
FINAL VERDICT
Silent Hill 2 is a fantastic horror game through and through, as my first ever Silent Hill, it has been a perfect entry point for me into this franchise, and I really can't wait to see more with remakes and sequels going forward.
Bloober Team knocked it out of the park with this remake and I can't wait to see more.
SILENT HILL 2 - 9/10 - MUST-PLAY
