There is no genre quite like horror. At its best, it’s more than just guts and gore, or tired tropes and torture scenes. This is self-reflection. It’s cathartic.
It’s making an implicit agreement with the creator of the work: if you spill your guts (metaphorically) on me or Maybe literally), then I’d wade through mine, hold them up, and note what made ours similar to each other. While there are certainly qualities that make for a “good” horror work, extraordinary variety is subjective. It relies on your own fears, traumas, and beliefs to resonate with what’s in front of you. The more fragile a work is, the greater its chance of connecting with—or perhaps alienating—the viewer. This is exactly what makes Silent Hill 2 so memorable and pivotal in the horror genre – its sheer vulnerability creates a game that’s even alienating. Feel It’s like connection.
I say all this to emphasize that the prospect of a remake of this 23-year-old game is an incredibly exciting prospect for me. While the original holds up well, there’s no denying that it feels rather dated – and not always in a cute, “time capsule” way. There’s no denying the game’s incredible impact. Its DNA is woven into countless horror and horror-related titles, and last year’s Alan Wake proved that’s still true even decades later. This ultimately elevates Silent Hill 2’s status from “great game” to “must-have genre game,” even though the game is currently frustrating to play (or even just access). A remake, then, seems entirely necessary.
However, with Konami’s recent handling of the Silent Hill series – and production partner Bloober’s own perceived missteps – many are wondering whether the company has truly grasped what makes Silent Hill 2 special, and Whether it can be effectively recreated. It’s a fair question, especially after watching some of the less than impressive trailers. I kept this in mind as I spoke with some of the lead developers at Konami and Bloober and played the Silent Hill 2 remake for about three hours at Konami’s Tokyo headquarters. While a brief conversation and my excursions during the game’s opening hours (including the infamous Woodside Apartments) can’t yield a complete answer, I was impressed by what I saw; assuming the game’s tone Staying the same, and what I played correctly foreshadowing what’s to come, the upcoming remaster could be a remarkable and awe-inspiring experience.
Throughout my playthrough, the sense of awe remained because Silent Hill 2 is a incredible The faithful adaptation is helmed by both the original game’s key developers (who have repeatedly expressed their awe at what a group of young, scrappy developers managed to pull off) and new faces who count Silent Hill 2 as their greatest inspiration. I’m pleased to note that the game hasn’t been completely rebuilt or reinterpreted as a means to meet modern needs, nor has it been swayed by the urge to add more jump scares, viscera, or just plain old content. content. The game begins the same way it always does, with James checking himself out in an abandoned bathroom mirror and explaining in a somewhat creepy way what brought him to Silent Hill. James’ new voice actor, Luke Roberts, does this and every one of his monologues perfectly, sounding both completely normal and a little… not normal. Breathe. free.
As he followed the winding, mist-filled path to Silent Hill, he passed a familiar red symbol—yes, one of those long-forgotten save points essential And is the only form of saving progress in the remake. James then offers the same weird meta-commentary he made in the original game: “Watching this makes me feel like someone is groping inside my skull.” While this may seem like an exciting little thing, the game retains These tiny, surreal scenes. (“There was a hole here. It’s gone now.” That’s another thought that popped into my head, and it’s still there.) It felt like evidence that the team understood how these quiet moments could ultimately build to more extreme fear than the high-fidelity Pyramid Head Jump scares possible.
In fact, just retaining the slow burn of the game’s opening feels like a victory. According to Bloober Team’s lead producer on Silent Hill 2 Remastered, Maciej Glomg, the team did Trying to develop a faster-paced game to start with, then realizing it doesn’t feel right. Silent Hill 2’s success rests on the crawling nature of its opening minutes and the monstrous creatures it contains.
Likewise, the team has repeatedly pointed out that Silent Hill 2 “is not a combat game.” It’s not fast paced. It’s not powerful. The same goes for the remaster, which improves combat by making it smoother and adding a very useful dodge button and aiming reticle, but doesn’t necessarily revolutionize the overall experience. This may be frustrating for some, as it still has some traces of PS2 stuttering, something like the Resident Evil Remake that has more or less been scrapped for lack of a better term . However, I found that the combat in the remaster actually felt like a good fit with the rest of the game. Part of what made Silent Hill 2 so terrifying was the small-scale scares and tension its tedious combat inspired; the remake seems to accept that and build on it, eliminating the more unruly and eerie elements of combat. The frustrating aspect, while allowing the game to retain a sense of friction. Combat in Silent Hill 2 feels solid, but not the most cutting-edge.
Luckily, the team is so open about it, which means combat is really treated as a secondary part and doesn’t feel awkward being pushed to the front, just because it feels less polished than your average survival horror game in 2024. The way this is emphasized in is by retaining the remake’s choice of keeping combat and puzzle difficulty settings separate, allowing you to fine-tune your experience and choose the level at which you want to use your brains or brawn. It’s also worth noting that the main menu contains a ton of secondary options; we’re talking about a few pages of them. Whether a player has visual, hearing or motor impairments, or simply prefers to adjust a wide range of play style preferences, the option to do so may exist in Silent Hill 2 Remastered. You can change the color and thickness of the reticles, change the game’s color palette to accommodate many types of color blindness, set text to account for dyslexia, and more. This is just another way that Silent Hill 2 emphasizes constant, meaningful upgrades rather than embracing full AAA modernization at all costs.
Of course, I can’t gloss over the most drastic of all these changes: the game’s visuals. With the recent wave of remakes, remasters, etc., the first thing I ask myself when playing one of these games is, “Does this feel like an attempt to make things hip and modern, or… Did they succeed in creating a bridge between what once existed and how my imagination expanded upon it when I played it a few years ago? Silent Hill 2 Remastered does the latter, and does it extremely well considering Konami and It’s a welcome surprise how rough some of the trailers Bloober has released look.
Silent Hill 2 Remastered is a gorgeous game, but it doesn’t abandon the grime, weirdness, and fog that made the original game so charming. In fact, it enhances it on a regular basis. The locations are constantly expanding, with some new buildings and weird shops to wander around, as well as a wealth of smaller details and objects that make the world seem more grounded in reality – even if that reality is horribly isolating. Neely’s Bar, for example, no longer feels like just a little abandoned cube, but looks like an actual abandoned bar. And, when you stumble upon the notes of its dysfunctional former residents, these places become something more meaningful.
Yet everything remains Feel same. it still Feel Just like Silent Hill. Suffocating. A place where the air is filled with the pungent smell of metal, and the people here have hellish brain power. While there are some uncertainties surrounding the game’s character models, the character models I encountered – while not on the same level as the game’s environments – looked surprisingly good. While Angela’s performance in the trailer looked a little off, I didn’t find her movements and voiceover to be particularly jarring in the game, to put it mildly. However, what impressed me most was the game’s music and audio.
According to Silent Hill 2 composer Akira Yamaoka, it was important to him to create a new yet nostalgic soundtrack for Silent Hill 2 Remastered; however, it turns out that doing so was not only A difficult process, and an impossible one. Yamaoka said he repeatedly tried to get into the same state of mind he was in when he wrote the original music; he was in his twenties and “financially unstable,” he added with a laugh. He recounted how he didn’t have a bass guitar when recording, which meant he had to tune the guitar very low to produce the same effect.
Yamaoka admitted that he could no longer return to that space. That younger version of himself was now alien to him. However, none of this was apparent when I listened to his new take on the iconic score. Although the game’s music has been redesigned, it feels familiar, with its iconic themes wrapped in new layers of dissonance, static, synthesis, and intensity. In addition to the new music, there’s a heavy focus on 3D “depth-guided sound direction,” which means footsteps, scrapes, squeaks, groans, and screams feel more disturbing (though also significantly more helpful) .
While the tracks I heard were similar to what was already there, everything felt deeper and darker now. And the effect is very good. Sharp, sudden, dissonant chords will have your heart racing as danger looms on the streets of Southeast Valley. In particularly stressful situations, the sound takes on a life of its own. It feels like it’s breathing next to you. When you first approach Pyramid Head, his massive body staring blankly behind a set of bars, the synths and accompanying static are terrifying. even though he does there is nothingthe scariest part of an already terrifying preview.
Simply put, I was extremely impressed with my time with Silent Hill 2 Remastered. It’s surreal, cerebral, terrifying, grotesque – all of which made the original such a remarkable entry not only for Konami but for the horror genre as well. Considering I’ve come to terms with the game’s start time (and based on what I completed in about three hours, I estimate we’ll need about eight hours of experience in total, which is worthless here), it’s hard to tell whether the game will be definitive Its tone and message; if some of the plot twists remain vile and disturbing, the studio is fully committed to creating a suffocating psychological hell. But after I got involved with the Silent Hill 2 Remake, and watched the internet (and myself) buzz for months about whether the remake had the ability to be great, I was no longer on the fence. I’m glad the wait for the full experience is almost over and will be revisiting my guts ahead of the game’s release on October 8th.
