It’s the year 2001, September 24th, and Silent Hill 2 is released on the PlayStation 2 to unanimous praise. It’s legacy, an unbearable weight that casts a shadow as vast as infinity and indelible imagery immortal as time itself. For over 20 years it was often imitated, but never replicated.
Enter Bloober Team, a Polish game studio gaining notoriety with their horror releases throughout the 2010s. They struck gold with The Medium, a title that best captured the look and feel of what a modern Silent Hill could be with their twist depicting a protagonist who would exist between two planes.
Many western developers have tried to make Silent Hill entries and all that tried were met with a terrible fate. Like a Grim Reaper, Konami has selected Bloober Team to task at remaking one of the greatest survival horror games ever. Can Bloober defy this terrible curse? Were they doomed from the start? Or were they destined for greatness? Find out in this Silent Hill 2 review.
Silent Hill 2
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: October 8, 2024
Price: $69.99
Journey to a place where the mind’s darkest corners are given terrifying form. A place where the dead walk among the living, and the line between reality and nightmare blurs. A man, James Sunderland, stands alone, a haunting letter clutched in his hand. Driven by his lost love, James ventures into a quiet resort town in Maine.
This is no ordinary town. It is a reflection of the soul, a twisted mirror that reveals the deepest, most disturbing secrets of those who enter. Here, the subconscious takes on a terrifying life of its own. Exploring the derelict town, he encounters grotesque creatures, manifestations of his inner demons. These are not your typical monsters of horror. They are surreal, abstract abominations that provoke a sense of unease rather than outright fear.
These creatures are not figments of imagination. They are the physical embodiment of the repressed traumas, guilt, and pain. This town is a purgatory of the mind, a place where the sins of the past come back to haunt the present. As James delves deeper into the heart of darkness, he must confront not only the monsters that lurk in the shadows but also the demons within himself, in the town of Silent Hill.
Bloober Team’s use of Unreal Engine 5 depicts Silent Hill as fans would remember it in 2001 but with an unprecedented level of realism and verisimilitude. The dense fog that envelopes the streets and buildings shrouds James like he is lost in another dimension. This wide-awake nightmare follows the original closely but expands upon the environments, adding more locations and points of interest.
If you know the original, expect to recognize most locations and landmarks. This remake also remixes details and layouts. Areas that were once out of bounds are fleshed out as new locations. Once pivotal locations become thoroughfares that pay lip service to fans who know the original game intimately. Levels become labyrinthine and will often wrap around and shortcut to prior areas.
Every nook and cranny is rendered with precise detail. Silent Hill’s streets are moist and leaves flutter in the air. Hanging traffic lights dangle and bob on cables realistically. Asset reuse is kept to an absolute minimum, making the environment feel real. Various newspaper clippings and signs are almost all readable. There are many enterable locations, each one is festooned with objects and details that tell a larger story, sucking the player deeper into the world.
Silent Hill 2 always looks like a fearsome derelict ghetto, but the atmosphere becomes overwhelmingly hostile when James finds himself in the hellish other world. The peeled wallpaper and rusted flaky protrusions make up this dimension of the subconscious. Everything is stained and rotten as the souls of the cast of characters in this terrible story.
There was no chance that the characters would look the same since this is a remake. Like in the original, the cast was chosen to embody their characters for voice, mocap, and likeness. Luckily, Luke Roberts has Guy Cihi-like features and is flawlessly cast as James Sunderland. The mocap with Unreal Engine 5 meticulously captures microexpressions and minor twitches in facial muscles. James’ combination of vacant sadness and disbelief is gutwrenchingly palpable.
Eddie is remade to be more psychotic and deranged. While he may not have a scene where he eats pizza in a bowling alley, what Bloober Team came up with to replace it is more insane. The sight of this bloated maniac eating strawberry ice cream (the worst flavor) barehanded in a derelict movie theater manages to be more unsettling and bizarre. Maria gets more scenes now and is made more likable thanks to her expanded dialogue.
As a devoted fan of the original three Silent Hill games, I will always cherish the traditional resi-like gameplay and picturesque fixed camera angles. Sadly, there was no way Konami would ever release a AAA survival-horror game in 2024 with traditional horror gameplay. It would be too risky and normies would reject it.
Ironic that Bloober Team got the job to remake Silent Hill 2 because of The Medium, a game that relies heavily on thoughtfully placed fixed camera shots. Surprisingly, the third-person over-the-shoulder POV works out fine in this remake and it is because of the new combat system, enemy behaviors, and boss fights… making the Silent Hill 2 remake more “video gamey”, than its predecessor.
Battling the physical manifestations of the subconscious is a lot like engaging foes in The Last of Us Part II, but with weighty melee blows that feel like they connect convincingly. James can bob and weave like a boxer, sidestepping enemy lunges and attacks, while following up with light or heavy swings with his close-range weapon. Holding L2 makes James draw his ranged attack, allowing players to fluidly and seamlessly switch between weapons while in a scrap.
Combat is more involving than it ever was in the original Silent Hill 2 on PlayStation 2. In the original, it was easy to bypass most enemies and while that’s still feasible in the remake, most enemies are more aggressive and put up more of a fight. Mannequins are fast and are prone to sucker-punching James and retreating. Lying figures come in more varieties. Nurses are capable of multi-hit combos and feint attacks.
Fighting is a lot more necessary in the Silent Hill 2 remake because the environments tend to hide many items, notes, and keys. Sometimes the best way to fully explore an area is to wipe out the threats. At its core, this remake is still structured like a PlayStation 2 horror game, but vast in scope and twice as long. Even the puzzles are more elaborate and demand more steps, while ingeniously connecting to the narrative.
Bosses are overhauled with more thought and deeper gameplay than what was possible on PlayStation 2. The battle with the abstract daddy is an absolute high point that ties to Angela’s backstory in a creative way. The showdown with Eddie is dramatically reimagined and isn’t two guys shooting at each other at point-blank range.
Encounters are intense and tactical, relying heavily on the players’ reflexes without descending into mindless action. James can be ripped to shreds quickly, no matter how proficient players become at combat, emphasizing the risk of fighting. Health items and ammo are always in short supply, typical of a survival horror game, keeping players constantly stressed if they make too many mistakes.
Combined with the relentlessly oppressive atmosphere and the terrifying monsters that can easily make James a statistic, Silent Hill 2 is a palm-sweating thrill ride into the dark recesses of his psyche. The only respite players find is when pondering the answers to the many riddles.
Just like in the original game, Silent Hill 2 has difficulty modes not just for the combat, but also for the puzzles. Playing on the hardest riddle setting demands players commit to the challenge since, unlike the combat difficulty, it cannot be changed after the fact. The hard riddle mode is still nowhere near as hard as the hardest riddle mode in Silent Hill 3, but it will still put average modern gamers to task.
Silent Hill 2 from 2001 was roughly about eight to ten hours long and pushed players to replay it to unlock the other endings. This remake is about twice as long and has two new endings and an expanded new game plus features that opens up some new areas.
Beating the game once is necessary to see all that the game has to offer. Getting to see some of the other endings requires the player to go out of their way to perform optional tasks with some new game plus exclusive items.
Replaying will also reveal new notes and even a fun new weapon to play with. Old details become recontextualized and take on new meaning. Eagle-eyed gamers will take note of diabolical foreshadowing and realize hidden truths in plain sight. Sadly, there is no fishing mini-game at Toluca Lake.
There is no replacing the original Silent Hill 2, but the circumstances are bleak for it to be preserved. The remake has a very different feel to it due to the third-person over-the-shoulder perspective that isn’t as exciting or visually striking as the classic cinematic camera angles. Yet, the Bloober Team makes the most out of the changes by expanding combat and making it genuinely enjoyable and tense.
Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 manages to be a worthy alternative that honors the original while also adding enough content to make it justify its price. It’s an epic survival-horror game that’s jam-packed with content and scenarios that will keep players on the edge of their seats and impress with its masterful art direction.
Silent Hill 2 was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 using a copy provided by Konami. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Silent Hill 2 is now available for Windows PC (via Steam), and PlayStation 5.
