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Konami has a weird track record of remaking titles that are in the middle of a franchise. Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater for example. Silent Hill 2 is another. Why didn’t they redo the first game first? Is it because of the pseudo-remake that was Silent Hill: Shattered Memories? The one that sucked so bad that no sane Silent Hill fan wants to acknowledge its existence?
Wouldn’t that have meant a remake that was faithful to the original more necessary then? Or was Silent Hill 2 chosen because it’s pretty much the first standalone entry in the series? Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 are connected, and even Silent Hill Origins had ties to the first game. Silent Hill 2 only has faint ties to the other games (particularly Silent Hill 4: The Room) so maybe that’s it?
Whatever the case, the Silent Hill 2 remake is now here! *happy panda noises*
What is Silent Hill 2?
Silent Hill 2 is a 3D single player survival horror game developed by Bloober Team and published by Konami. It’s available right now on the Playstation 5 and the PC.
Our review code was kindly provided by the super folks over at Konami! Thanks so much guys!
As I mentioned earlier, Silent Hill 2 is a remake of the Playstation/ Xbox/ PC game of the same name, released in the early 2000s. In the original (as in the remake), it stars James Sunderland. James is drawn to the town of Silent Hill by a mysterious letter he received from his wife, Mary.
The problem is, Mary’s been dead for awhile.
Spooooooooky.
While I’d personally just burn the letter, James is made of sturdier stuff than me. He goes to Silent Hill to find out who sent the letter. He is (of course) caught up in its demonic machinations. Silent Hill is not for the faint hearted, as James soon finds out.
First off, I’d like to say that I think Bloober Team’s managed to do the impossible here.
They’ve taken a revered classic (not to me, but a lot of fans seem to think so) and in my eyes, made it better. While core elements of the story remains the same, the parts in-between (particularly the gameplay elements) have been tweaked substantially and heavily expanded upon. Yes, this is Silent Hill 2 at its core, but it’s more akin to Silent Hill 2 Ultra Deluxe Championship Edition EX Plus Alpha.
Combat, which was plodding and odious in the original game, is now faster and much more brutal.
James can now dodge, which opens up a ton of evasive opportunities for a more satisfying combat experience. If you’re good enough, you can dodge pretty much everything the game chucks at you and then get a counter or two in.
It’s great the the combat has been given an overhaul, because the game’s now much tougher.
They take much more hits with a melee weapon before going down! On top of that, enemies have a chance to regenerate after death! Foes that you’ve defeated previously have a chance will rise up again to torment you if you backtrack. The higher the difficulty you’re playing in, the bigger the chance for dead foes to reanimate.
I went into the game not knowing this mechanic and got the shock of my life.
Lying Figures (those BDSM gimp suit wearing twitchy fleshbags you encounter first on the streets of Silent Hill) that I thought were dead suddenly popped up with a squeal right when I neared their bodies!
Holy shit! I actually screamed!
I kid you not.
I also let out a looooong tirade of explicit profanities!
How could I not?!
I was familiar with Silent Hill 2! I used to play it loads back in the day! I knew what to expect…right?
The original, the Greatest Hits version (which included the Born from a Wish side story) and even the Xbox version! I could run around Silent Hill without a map back then! Just like I can run around Kabuki-cho without a map now due to the Yakuza games.
Enemies didn’t get back up after you killed them in Silent Hill! This isn’t Resident Evil with its Crimson Head zombies! You don’t need to burn enemies to keep them from coming back!
Well…that assumption bit me in the ass hard in the Silent Hill 2 remake.
You know what?
I love it! It made backtracking a highlight because you never know who might be waiting for you! I literally dread returning to past areas!
The faster, more responsive combat makes battles much more satisfying so I looked forward to smacking around whatever Silent Hill 2 threw at me. It also meant that the game’s melee weapons are much more useful than its guns. Make no mistake, guns are still super powerful…but ammo’s so scarce it’s just better to not use them till you really need to.
I found myself holstering them for the majority of the game, only unleashing them on bosses because they sure as hell don’t regenerate and come back. The reliance on melee’s changed the dynamics of the game though; it’s now no longer as terrifying because while James is a still a puny weakling, he’s now a puny weakling who can fight as an option and not only when you’re cornered.
Silent Hill 2’s also undergone other changes. The town’s now more interactive for one. James can smash windows, which lets you break into some of the stores in town. That opens up a ton of new exploration avenues. Places that you were never able to go into in the original game are now fully explorable.
I found myself going around town like a hooligan after my favourite football team lost a match. I looked for windows everywhere and smashed them whenever I could! I smash car windows, I smashed shop fronts…I smashed everything!
Certain walls can be broken too! Like the windows, they usually give you access to hidden areas, so definitely keep an eye out suspicious markings. James’ a one man demolition crew in this version of Silent Hill 2!
You might find useful items in them in these new areas…or (more likely) enemies to kill.
The streets of Silent Hill are now a much bigger part of the game because of that. You’re not just using them to get from one set piece to another like in the old games. You can now explore them for optional content.
Sweaty palms inducing content.
The changes don’t stop at the game having new locations.
Places you visited in the original have changed. Their layout’s different now! Rooms that were closed off are now accessible. Items moved around! Enemies waiting for you when it was clear before!
If you thought that Silent Hill 2 would be a by-the-numbers remake, the changes I’ve highlighted should’ve dispelled that misconception pretty well.
The new stuff’s so beefy that it took ages for my first trip to the Otherworld to happen.
I have to say though, I’m a bit underwhelmed by the representation of the Otherworld in this game. I expected it to be much more rustier, with more exposed metal and stuff. Or like the bloody walls (that resemble slabs of quivering flesh) from Silent Hill 3.
The Otherworld is still unmistakably creepy make no mistake.
It’s just that I wish it was creepier.
While you knew unmistakably that something was clearly f-ed up in the Otherworld of the older games, the Otherworld here is much more subtle about it. There wasn’t even a siren or ominous signs when James entered the Otherworld the first time.
In fact, I didn’t even know it was the Otherworld until an achievement popped up for it! I just thought was a really rundown apartment building. Subtlety can be a good thing sometimes. It’s not a good thing here.
I want the Otherworld to be in my face with its rusted metal, exposed rails and general spookiness! Bloober Team has a done a tremendous job on expanding the content, but they did a piss poor job on the Otherworld’s art direction.
Speaking of extra content, I find the new locations to be a bit unbalanced though.
I realize this is a survival horror game, but the new places you visit seem to have a lack of items to collect that bolster you. Sometimes you’d go for long periods without finding anything other than notes or lore pieces. Other times you’d be showered with bullets and medical items in rapid succession that make you think that a boss battle is incoming when it’s really not.
It’s weird.
Take an early game example where you get to explore multiple apartments in an apartment block.
You can search multiple units yet you barely find anything useful. Not ammo, no new weapons and barely any meds…just a few cryptic notes from the residents and an item to be used in a puzzle.
Then there’s the opposite situation in the Otherworld, where you can find a boatload of handgun bullets, some medical drinks and even a syringe within the span of a few rooms.
This inconsistency even extends technically.
The framerate for the game can fluctuate pretty wildly, whether your hardware is capable or not. On the desktop rig with a RTX 3080Ti, the game stutters somewhat when exploring the streets of Silent Hill. The framerate doesn’t fluctuate too much outside but it’s the interiors that are problematic weirdly.
Entering indoor locations like the Woodside Apartments will bring my FPS down from a relatively stable 60FPS to the high 30s.
Even if the drop was caused by data being loaded, that doesn’t explain why the FPS still remained sluggish after some time had passed since I entered the area. These FPS drops persist throughout the game too, almost always in the indoor locations. Turning off Ray Tracing does alleviate the problem somewhat, but I actually prefer the game with Ray Tracing as the lighting looks much better.
To rub salt into the wound, the in-game cutscenes are locked to 30FPS. It’s jarring to come from a 60FPS gameplay experience into a cutscene that’s half the framerate. There are mods to unlock the FPS for cutscenes, but why weren’t they 60FPS in the first place is anybody’s guess.
Frame rate issues aside, Silent Hill 2 is majestic to look at. The town of Silent Hill has never looked more depressing. Puddles, mud, rain and fog. Everything is so wet. It’s so dour and depressing that you can almost feel the sogginess coming off the game.
Past games only portrayed the town as foggy…Bloober Team’s decision to go overboard with the damp, clammy look (which is a natural consequence of all that fog if you think about it) paid off big time. From now on, when I think of Silent Hill, it’s Silent Hill 2’s version of the town that will be the first thing that comes to mind.
Running through the deserted streets, the fog slowly peeling back to expose the surroundings…there’s this feeling of unease. Of being trapped by something malevolent. Something just inside the fog, that darts away as you get close.
It’s so awesome!
The Otherworld design is a bit of a letdown to me weirdly. I mentioned that I’d expected it to be more in your face about it. It’s a bit too toned down (some parts of it even look normal enough) for my liking, especially when you compare the versions of Otherworld from the other games in the series.
Enemies are your bread and butter Silent Hill baddies. I’ve always preferred the fleshy abominations from Silent Hill 3, so the enemies (most of which return) are a bit of a letdown too. I don’t really appreciate the generic twitchy nature (you know like the nurses) they gave to Pyramid Head too. It makes him feel too much like a generic Japanese yurei like Sadako or Sayako.
It’s also a feather in the game’s cap that Akira Yamaoka’s back doing the music. Dude’s music is iconic Silent Hill and I couldn’t have imagined a mainline entry without his involvement. He turns in a superb score in the game, one that perfectly fits it.
The ambient music in the game is creepy as hell, and it makes exploring the foggy town all the more terrifying. You don’t know whether that sound you heard was a new enemy noticing you, or the music just faking you out.
It works really well for the game, but my heart wished that it didn’t. I played this game with a surround sound setup and got spooked out of my skin. I can’t imagine playing this with a headset. I’d probably need a diaper to go along with it.
Surprisingly, the game holds up well on the ASUS ROG Ally X! You’ll need to play on 720p, with the 30W Turbo mode but performance is pretty good. Let the expectations of a 60FPS experience go, and target 30FPS instead.
I had every turned up (even Ray Tracing) with SSR turned off and shadows dropped to medium, FSR 3.0 set to balanced, Dynamic Resolution activated and had a great experience. The game was weirdly too washed out without Ray Tracing enabled, so I had to turn it on for it to look right.
Now, the similar issues that plagued my playing on the desktop were also present on the handheld. Stuttering and hitches, drops in FPS in interior locations. Those should hopefully be ironed out in future patches though.
One thing you should note, the loading time (whether you’re starting a new game or loading a save) is much longer. My ROG Ally X is outfitted with a 2TB Samsung 990 PRO SSD, but even with that the loads are lengthy.
Unfortunately, there’s a big drawback to playing on two different machines. Silent Hill 2 doesn’t support Steam Cloud. Your saves won’t be transferred automatically. Of course, you can manually transfer your saves but that’s extra work. I’m just disappointed there’s no Steam Cloud support, especially in this day and age.
At least, the game runs decently on a portable machine. That’s something to be thankful for, if you’re thinking of playing the game on the go.
The Bottom Line.
Silent Hill 2 is a surprisingly capable remake that’s only held back by some technical hiccups.
The game looks amazing when unleashed, and the new gameplay mechanics make it seem like a totally different game. It’s not just window dressing on the same game; Bloober Team’s fundamentally changed stuff around that even veterans will find revisiting the town worthwhile.
That’s not even touching on Akira Yamaoka’s awesome music. I’ve always loved his style and it’s
The game’s performance on a portable machine like the ROG Ally X is also a welcome surprise. Sure, the performance isn’t as stellar as a fully decked out desktop and there are sacrifices to be made. Despite that, Silent Hill 2 still looks incredible on a portable, and most importantly, is playable with a decent framerate.
I’m disappointed that the game has zero Steam Cloud support though. That’s unforgivable in an age of Steam Decks and other portable machines. Having to keep transferring saves back and forth is truly annoying and I don’t see why Steam Cloud support wasn’t built-in to a modern game like this.
At the end of the day, that does nothing to detract from the facts. Silent Hill 2 is a stellar remake and more than worth your money. More than that, it opens up hope that Konami will remake other entries in the series in the future!
Here’s hoping the Alessa duology (Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3) are in the pipeline!
TLDR:
A great remake for new fans and veterans alike. This is what Silent Hill should be from here on out.
The Good:
- Incredible visuals.
- New, updated gameplay mechanics.
- Expanded content.
- Playable on handheld machines with some tweaking.
- Akira Yamaoka’s music.
The Bad:
- Technical issues.
- No Steam Cloud support.
- No Born From A Wish.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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