Silent Hill 2 Review: A Spectacular Survival Horror Revival

Silent Hill 2

Required

Platform reviewed on: PlayStation 5

Pros

• Superb and unnerving soundtrack
• Harrowing horror set pieces
• Numerous reinventions for fans of the original

Cons

• Some segments feel a little stretched
• Occasional minor combat and performance issues
• Boss fight gameplay is sometimes a bit simple

ESRB Age Rating: Mature 17+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Violence

My favorite thing about Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake – and there’s plenty to love – is the way James Sunderland walks. Head slightly down, arms drifting lifelessly by his sides. Like his entire body, even if he’s not quite aware of it yet, has given up hope. It’s a slightly unnatural movement, and something it’d be easy to brush off as wonky animation work. But that oddness is present in all of Silent Hill 2’s cast. It’s in their movements, their words, their demeanor. And it’s the best proof that this development team understood the original game.

To my shame as a survival horror fan, I have to admit that Silent Hill has always been a bit of a blind spot. So as this retelling of a seminal classic stalked ever closer, I decided it was high time to tackle the original. Tank controls aside, it remains unexpectedly enjoyable to this day. Most impressive is its peerless atmosphere. Uniquely uncanny, near relentlessly oppressive, and immeasurably unsettling. All elements that 2024’s Silent Hill 2 has captured in exquisite style. It’s a remarkable achievement given there are so many things that threatened to ruin it all: the shift to an over-the-shoulder camera; more realistic dialogue and delivery to pair with improved visuals and mocapped cutscenes; the need to render the original’s indistinct, blurry monstrosities in high-definition. Somehow, though, they’ve done it.

So let’s start with that fog. It’s an ethereal thing. Ever-present, smothering the city streets, yet always out of reach. Its patches and tendrils mass and curl, masking anything that lies more than 20 feet away. Even just crossing a wide street becomes an uncomfortable experience. Both edges briefly fade from view, leaving you isolated in a liminal stretch of tarmac. The fog makes Silent Hill 2’s lakeside town the tempting and terrifying place it is. And rightly so.

Heading indoors yields little relief. Open uncertainty is supplanted by confined claustrophobia which echoes with the creaks and groans of dilapidation, or something far more insidious. During the day, light barely manages to permeate hallways and apartments. And when night falls, even your flashlight struggles to disperse the gloom. Sections like the game’s infamous hospital offer some sources of illumination, but their dim flickering only serves to highlight how obscure the surroundings are. During one truly harrowing later sequence, the shadows, and creatures scuttling within, are barely held at bay by timed switches. A countdown to pitch black which is accompanied by a nerve-shredding auditory rise as your seconds of vision run out.

Even more effective than the visuals is Silent Hill 2’s soundscape. Much like in the original, the soundtrack insatiably gnaws at your nerves. There’s the simple stuff – slithers and scuttles in your periphery that leave you second guessing when enemies are real. A whimpered whisper in your ear, uncomfortably close. And then there’s the manner in which music and effects tie to environments.

Ominous themes fade in and out as you shift through buildings, imbuing seemingly innocuous rooms and hallways with such a hefty presence that you’re convinced something terrible is about to happen. Sometimes it is, but you’ll rarely know for certain. Even knowing its connotations from the original, I couldn’t help goosebumps from offering the audio team a standing ovation any time a certain heavy breathing effect came to the fore. And amid all that horror, the brief moments of beautiful melancholy in character themes stand out all the stronger.

Perhaps the most impressive feat Silent Hill 2 pulls is how it keeps those familiar with the original guessing, all without abandoning the tale’s corrupted essence. The core beats are all there, but the remake regularly reinvents scenes, puzzles, and scares. Elements are twisted and stretched – toyed with so that you’re never comfortable with what lies ahead. This doesn’t always work to the game’s benefit. A few segments like the latter end of the hospital felt unnecessarily elongated and combat-heavy, leaving me eager to progress to areas and events I knew were still to come.

The vast majority of the time, however, these adjustments were a thrill to discover. In cutscenes, the stilted, of-its-era dialogue delivery of the original game is understandably gone. In its place is a dreamlike haziness to every interaction. As if characters are always on the verge of forgetting what they’re about to say. It works superbly in sustaining the peculiarity of the original within a higher fidelity package. An effort of reinvention that has been applied to the creatures hounding James’ steps, too.

Silent Hill 2’s nurses are the original’s most iconic standard enemy. If you can consider any of these aberrations standard, that is. They remain as juddering and lethal as ever, but the real stars of the remake are the mannequin leg monsters. Once a rather simple enemy to face, they’ve become masters of surprise scares. They hide in the surroundings, standing or crouching motionless. Waiting for James to wander too close. In cluttered environments, they’re all too easy to pan past as you hunt for threats or supplies. And when you do spot them in a panicked double take, your gaze need only linger for a second to make them spring to life, forcing a flicker of your flashlight as they move to strike.

Combat in Silent Hill 2 is frantic. Each battle, a scramble to see your attacker on the floor as quickly as possible. Remake James comes equipped with a new dodge ability, and he certainly needs it. Wailing on an enemy for more than a couple of melee swings will see them strike back or interrupt, forcing you to disengage before you’re punished. It’s a simple system, and prone to the occasional missed auto-aim frustration, but one that holds up solidly throughout the full run time. You might get comfortable with a single enemy’s attack timings, but facing even just two in unison is a serious challenge.

A handful of firearms are accrued over the course of the game, but ammunition is scarce. Explore widely and engage enemies reservedly, and you’ll save up plenty for tougher fights and bosses. But fritter away shots on every enemy you see, and you’ll soon find yourself reliant on melee strikes alone. It’s the classic survival horror dilemma.

I found myself reserving the more powerful shotgun only for the most desperate of encounters. Attempting to isolate enemies and land melee strikes or pistol headshots where possible, I’d switch to the boomstick only when overrun or caught unawares. As such, the game’s few bosses posed little challenge against my stockpile. But that’s perhaps for the best. Each boss scenario is a terrifying premise reworked from the original. But if you can keep your cool, most mechanically boil down to little more than dodging an attack before shooting into a fleshy part. Great spectacle, but not something you’d want to replay often.

And at last, there’s Pyramid Head. The most enduring emblem of the series as a whole has lost his terror-laden luster somewhat after incongruous appearances elsewhere. Silent Hill 2 does a decent job of restoring some of his former fear factor. There are changes to recreated early sequences, most notably with regard to his more unsettling sexual actions of the original, but also new elements, as well.

I’ll leave the details to be discovered, but his first appearance is particularly unnerving, and his initial proper encounter made significantly less tedious. Thankfully, and not just for the sake of my nerves, Pyramid Head’s moments remain remarkably sparse. I’m sure there was a temptation to grant one of gaming’s most iconic enemies a greater spotlight. But his real threat comes in how rarely – and how suddenly – he becomes the sole focus of brutally lethal punishment.

In recent years, survival horror fans have been spoiled with multiple stellar remakes of older Resident Evil games. And their success will have no doubt piled even more pressure on Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake. Yet against all the odds, a modern classic appears to have emerged from the developmental fog. One that manages to not just grasp what makes the original such a compelling masterpiece, but also introduce its own enigmatic elements to the story.

Silent Hill 2

Release Date: October 8, 2024

• Windows
• PlayStation 5Buy