Konami’s Silent Hill 2 is often pointed to as one of the survival-horror genre’s greatest achievements, with many naming it one of the best video games of all time. Considering its reputation, developer Bloober Team, known for games like Layers of Fear and The Medium, was flat-out brave to attempt a Silent Hill 2 remake. Anyone worried that Bloober Team wouldn’t be able to do Silent Hill 2 justice can rest easy, as the remake is a phenomenal survival horror experience.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is much larger in scope than franchise fans may even realize. While it hits all the same beats as the original, each location is bigger than before, with more puzzles to solve and enemies to fight. There were concerns that the Silent Hill 2 remake would be too combat-heavy, and while there is certainly a greater focus on fighting, it never feels like an action game. The Silent Hill 2 remake is pure survival horror through and through, with the combat enhancing the game more than expected.
There’s an up-close-and-personal grittiness to Silent Hill 2‘s combat that makes each encounter intense. Silent Hill 2 hero James Sunderland has fancy new tricks up his sleeve when facing off against the titular town’s various monstrosities, mainly exhibited through a handy dodge that is integral to surviving melee fights. Each monster in the Silent Hill 2 remake has an attack pattern, and it’s crucial that players learn exactly when they should dodge and when they should go in for a quick melee smack if they hope to survive.
James also collects a few guns throughout the game, making dispatching Silent Hill 2‘s monsters much easier. The catch is, like in most other survival horror games, supplies are extremely limited. Players have to be careful when expending ammo or using healing items, and this fact lends a great deal of tension to the game’s combat encounters. Some hardcore fans may not approve of the frequency of the fights, but personally, I found that they made the game scarier. While it’s still possible to run past enemies in some cases, the remake often forces players to use up their resources, and so every time the DualSense speaker would start spitting static my stomach would drop.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is a genuinely scary game without relying too much on jump scares. Instead, it uses its incredible score and heart-stopping sound effects to create a suffocating atmosphere of pure dread. This is compounded by the game’s interior areas, which are especially unnerving.
While there is exploration on the streets of Silent Hill, the meatiest and scariest parts of the game take place in dark, isolated buildings that are like giant puzzle boxes. Solving puzzles gives players the tools necessary to explore deeper, unraveling more of the story and subjecting themselves to all kinds of unspeakable terrors in the process.
Silent Hill 2 Remake Lets You Play How You Want
I played through the Silent Hill 2 remake on Standard difficulty for both its puzzles and combat. Standard provided a challenging experience that never became frustrating, largely thanks to conveniences like well-placed save points and the fact that James jots down a ton of useful information on maps. There were a couple of times that I got stuck on puzzles, but examining the map made me realize that there was something I missed in a different room that would then lead me to the solution. Those that want even more challenging puzzles and combat can crank up the difficulty, but easier options are also available. It’s also possible to mix-and-match, which is a great quality-of-life feature that helps players tailor the Silent Hill 2 remake experience to their liking. Someone that wants hard puzzles but easy combat can do so and vice versa.
Silent Hill 2 remake’s puzzle-filled world is brought to life with some truly amazing graphics that make fantastic use of the PS5 hardware. Character models are highly detailed and well-animated, particularly James Sunderland, and Silent Hill‘s monsters have never looked more horrific. The environment is photo-realistic in many places, and it delivers all of this without missing a beat performance-wise. I didn’t encounter a single graphical mishap, frame rate drop, or glitch during my time with the Silent Hill 2 remake. This game’s bones are impressive, to say the least, with Bloober Team putting out what is quite easily its best work to date.
One of the few gripes I have about the Silent Hill 2 remake is that too often it makes it hard for players to see and really appreciate its gorgeously-detailed areas because it’s so oppressively dark. The flashlight improves things for sure, but even then, there are times when the game goes overboard with its complete lack of light. This was clearly a design choice to make the game scarier, and while I think that the Silent Hill 2 remake achieves that goal, it still would have been nice for things to be a touch easier to see.
Silent Hill 2 Remake Is Much Longer Than the Original, But That’s Not Necessarily a Good Thing
I think that the Silent Hill 2 remake’s elongated runtime also works against it in some cases. Late in the game, I started to feel like things were getting repetitive. There isn’t a ton of enemy variety, and so, inevitably, the combat stopped hitting like it did before. And while lots of backtracking is totally normal for a survival-horror game, the Silent Hill 2 remake’s length makes it so the backtracking starts to weigh down the pace in a way that it doesn’t in similar titles. There’s a reason why the vast majority of survival-horror games are on the shorter side, and I think that even the most diehard genre fans will start to feel Silent Hill 2‘s runtime by the time they reach the end credits.
It doesn’t help that players have to essentially complete each area twice thanks to Silent Hill 2‘s “Otherworld.” The Silent Hill 2 remake’s Otherworld transports players to alternate, rust-colored versions of areas they’ve already explored, but with new puzzles and challenges to overcome. The thematic reasons for the Otherworld keep these sections from feeling like filler, but combined with how long the game is, it can become slightly tedious at times. It also makes the idea of going for the game’s other endings (I won’t spoil the exact number, but know that the Silent Hill 2 remake has more endings than the original) a daunting, and not necessarily appealing, idea.
It took me 14 hours to finish my first playthrough of
Silent Hill 2
. According to the end-game stats, I also opened my map 1,211 times.
Otherwise, Bloober Team has done a fantastic job of remaking Silent Hill 2. The new game retains the core feeling of the original while expanding on it in brilliant and surprising ways. Bloober Team has elevated its game with the Silent Hill 2 remake and delivered what is quite simply one of the best Silent Hill games to date. I sincerely hope Bloober Team gets to keep working with Konami, and we get remakes of the other Silent Hill games with the same level of care that Silent Hill 2 has received.
Final Score: 9/10
Silent Hill 2 launches October 8 for PC and PlayStation 5. Game Rant was provided with a PS5 code for this review.