I still find it odd that Silent Hill 2 got remade. Original game was such a surprise to those who played the first game, but that one did not get a remake and is still exclusive to PlayStation 1. When I revisited both Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 last year it felt “right” to play them in sequence, despite no direct story connection between the games. But that is far from the only reason I wasn’t exactly sure about what to expect from this new game. The franchise has been dead for over a decade and apart from few bright spots here and there, Silent Hill began losing relevance with SH4, 20 years ago. Was there even a point in reviving the franchise not just with a remake, instead of a new game, but also a remake of one of the most praised games in history?..
Well, whatever the case, Silent Hill 2 (2024) is here now. And it’s… alright, actually. I can see lots of people loving this game much more than the original. But only time will tell, if the remake will have the same “timeless” appeal. I have my doubts.
To start off, I have to stress that for all my respect for the original Silent Hill 2 I don’t love playing it. I’ve explained my reasons in the retrospective review, so for now I just want to stress that I lack the holy reverence for the original some people seem to have. I also want to establish that I like classic survival horror games, good story driven games and am very sensitive to padding in games. This will be important in understanding what I feel about Silent Hill 2 (2024).
But how can I define the remake? What type of game is it? It’s a horror themed story driven action adventure game that has some parts that fit the mold of a classic survival horror, parts that play as a linear horror action title and parts that are fully dedicated to storytelling. You get to find key items, fight or evade enemies, engage in forced boss encounters and manage your limited resources as you explore the streets and interior locations in Silent Hill. The general flow of the remake follows the one from the original, with some scenes shuffled around, some shortened and many made much much longer.
If you check the story and the way it’s told isolated from the gameplay, it looks almost as a match to the original game. It’s still well written and well acted. Scenes follow a lot of the same camera angles and beats and when things do change a lot of these changes are usually not making things worse. I’d say, some of the changes do make the scenes they appear in feel weaker and less impactful but at the same time, some of the changes work much better. The visuals of the game also work in its favor, allowing to add subtlety to performances and also making the locations look amazing. I’d say, there are few moments where, despite the far superior technology, the transitions between scenes or specific elements of the look feel less impressive than those of the original 2001 game, but this doesn’t happen often. Music and sound got similar treatment and quite a few new tracks that were added sound nice, while all of the classic music is as great as it ever was. Well, except for some new arrangements that, in my opinion, sound like a “local bar cover band” performance.
Gameplay-wise, the game follows the popular over the shoulder third person shooter blueprint. Melee, a big part of Silent Hill series, is still in and I can say for sure that I found it better than that of the original game. But at the same time – I also find the combat in the original game to be worse than Silent Hill 1 or 3. And if I had to compare the remake’s melee to melee in those classics, I’d actually stick with the latter. But don’t take this as me saying that “the combat is bad” – it isn’t. It’s just not particularly well done, if you’re the type of person who thinks that games should be designed around the idea of being able to not take damage at all if you play them well. The remake, sadly, has way too many bad design choices and outright unfair enemy patterns and attacks to work that way and the auto-aim for melee strikes is absolutely horrid. If you are fine with taking hits, however, you’ll find it less frustrating and the game showers you in healing items anyway. Plus, it has a lot of genuinely cool little details that you can learn, most bosses have fun tricks you can learn to exploit and one particular boss fight was one of the best boss encounters I’ve experienced in years. Absolutely loved it and was happy to see that the team at Bloober knows how make great combat scenarios.
What they don’t seem to know is restraint. The original Silent Hill 2 was a very sad, quiet and simple affair in contrast to the rest of the series. Even when looking just at the first three titles, you’d quickly notice how dramatic Silent Hill 1 and 3 could be and how they loved to show off and surprise you. The game world would transform in a very cool looking way into the rusty coloured Otherworld as sirens would be blaring and Silent Hill 3, especially, had lots of very cool visual effects that still look great. But that’s not what Silent Hill 2 did. It was often grey, green, dusty, rotten and covered in simple white sheets – even the “Otherworld” as a concept was used only once and its iconography was wildly different from how the other two games did it. However, that isn’t the case for the remake. It’s loud, bombastic, with huge shocking moments and big arena fights. Boss battles now have multiple phases that often involve crushing walls and big cool looking visual effects. And the overall “style” of when things are “normal” and when they are not is far more in line with the rest of the series. Which feels absolutely out of place with the story Silent Hill 2 is trying to tell and, occasionally distracts from what is happening emotionally and story-wise.
On top of that, the game is exceedingly long. It doesn’t add anything meaningful to justify the length. It’s the same story and the same locations, they are just experienced slower. Elements and rooms that used to be optional and mysterious were now made part of the required path. Several new small locations were added, but they either don’t have any story or have the story that previously happened in other locations… that are also still in the game. Two new endings were added, yet they just rehash the themes and elements of already existing ones and do not create any new fun treasure hunts for replays. The pace, especially for the first playthrough, feels completely off as a story element would be brought up and then just left hanging for hours of gameplay before you get any continuation. Where in the original game you’d get from one plot point to another far quicker.
To give the developers some praise – on replays a few sizable chunks of the game can be skipped. The puzzle solutions remain unchanged and a lot of the time during the first playthrough is spent on looking for a solution that you can then write down and use for replays. Yet, this approach also highlights a different issue – the original game was very ambitious with its gameplay ideas for puzzles and did a lot of things that even today feel very cool. The remake, on the other hand, simply doesn’t even bother with making anything inventive. To the point where I don’t really understand why there is a separate difficulty for the puzzles. In the original game that setting could create a very different experience for the players, but in the remake it either doesn’t matter, or matters so little it might’ve not been there in the first place.
The general feeling I got from the remake is that the developers either didn’t really have big ambitions to do something inventive and fun with it, or were prevented from doing it by Konami. Because the Silent Hill 2 (2024) has this general vibe of the “modern horror themed game that must appeal to broadest audience” project, of playing it very safe, of neither retaining the “other-ness” and inventiveness of the original, nor having any voice of its own. For how dull the original can be, for how poor its combat gets, there’s a clear vision in that project, a clear ambition and desire to be something unique. Not a desire to “create a sequel to a successful game so it can form a coherent series”. While the remake feels extremely formulaic and predictable. It doesn’t make it bad. I enjoyed playing it quite enough. And people seem to love it. It is a good product that is ticking all of the necessary boxes to please the modern audience for this type of game. But will this audience remember this game after 23 years? I dunno. I do know that now that I’ve seen everything I wanted to see out of it, I have no desire to revisit this game in the future.