Even if you haven’t played the original games or watched the movies, you are likely familiar with the foggy town of Silent Hill to some degree. As one of the most popular horror series from back in the day, Silent Hill has been MIA for a long time. Konami has been fast asleep on many of its IPs, Silent Hill being one of them. Thankfully, Silent Hill 2 Remake is exactly the jolt of electricity we all needed to fall in love with the town again and hopefully, get Konami motivated to release other games too.
Undertaken by Bloober Team, Silent Hill 2 is a direct remake of the original 2001 game. It follows James Sunderland on his search for his missing wife who has ended up in the town of Silent Hill. Almost everything in this Silent Hill 2 Remake plays true to the original experience but at the same time, it has been modernized with features that make it feel even more incredible.
Instead of the set camera angles, you can freely move the camera about and get into the superb detail of the world. Of course, the game’s visuals are top-notch thanks to Unreal Engine 5 even though the PS5 port is a bit rough. More on that later. But where the magic comes from in Silent Hill 2 is how the game’s core spine-chilling experience has remained intact. Not to mention Silent Hill 2 is probably the most immersive horror game you can play right now.
Bloober Team made sure to keep the classic mechanics around. This means there’s no HUD in the game besides icons that appear when you pull out your handgun or want to use a medical item. These icons stay up briefly alongside interaction prompts depicted as small circles. As a result, Silent Hill 2 feels unlike anything else to play. The full immersion of the world around me kept my heart racing and the lack of distractions meant every location looked and felt incredibly uncomfortable.
Then there’s the sound design which on its own, is award-winning. With only a few select tracks that play throughout the game, Silent Hill 2 is exactly that – “silent”. To only hear the wind blowing and the distant crawls of monsters around me was unnerving. Opening doors and hearing them squeak closed and slam shut behind me added even more ambience to this world. Silent Hill 2 is so silent that every sound becomes deafening.
Then there’s the DualSense Controller speaker which bursts out in radio static sounds whenever an enemy is around. Now this is truly a nightmare because you never know what sort of enemy lurks in the darkness ahead. It could be something deadly or maybe even an overgrown roach. Either way, the sound no doubt sets panic in whenever it starts. I often just fled the scene when I didn’t feel mentally prepared to take on the threat.
Most of Silent Hill 2 is spent exploring, collecting items, dodging enemies and solving puzzles. The game doesn’t provide many hints on where to go next besides James jotting down some marks on his map now and then. This works in the game’s favour as the sense of exploration had me walking into every door, even though most of them are locked, and opening every cabinet to find items.
It means I also had to use my brain. I often found myself returning to previous places to see if I missed a window that I didn’t smash and climb through or perhaps a piece of paper on a table revealing a puzzle.
As Silent Hill 2 progresses, it also gives off a clear sign that the town and the dangers are getting worse. The world starts to deteriorate around you, enemies come in larger hordes and the uncomfortable atmosphere grows.
The game’s biggest strength is the world itself. Every object has been carefully placed down and every surface has been built to represent this dilapidated town of Silent Hill. Be it inside buildings or roaming the streets, Silent Hill 2’s production levels are on the high end here. Of course, the series’ iconic fog is brought to life too as it drapes over the town like a suffocating sheet of dread.
All this works in the game’s favour because Silent Hill 2 is quite simple when it comes to the story and mechanics. You can see that even back in the day, the game wanted the town to be its biggest attraction. I think now more than ever before, this has come to life.
Silent Hill 2 does rework a few things here and there, however. Some puzzles are different now and there are some expanded areas with more rooms to enter and places to explore. As a package, it still delivers a thrilling trip through the town. But then we have those damn hooker-heel monsters.
Those thrills also come with the same nail-biting difficulty. Enemies hit hard healing items are far and few between. You’re forced to play the cautious route to avoid death. I can’t tell you the number of times I ran around with no healing items and no health. There was just this red bar around my TV screen as crept through the area hoping to find a medical supply.
I don’t know if I loved this feature or hated it. I get the whole focus on horror and surviving but there were times when I felt the enemies didn’t stop coming and I had no ammo and health items. I was forced to scurry around beating things with a stick. This happened a lot and became more of a chore than fun. It also doesn’t help that the same jump-scare cliche “around the corner” encounters are littered all over the place. Often without warning too.
This takes away from the world, in my opinion. Instead of drowning in the fog and atmosphere, I spent more time button-mashing the melee button and hoping to avoid further button-mashing. The original game did this right. The enemy count felt appropriate, making Silent Hill more about the horrors and town. This remake starts to border an action game and it feels out of place. This isn’t Resident Evil and the world is unsettling enough to carry the game if there were fewer enemies.
James is also an ordinary man. In the original game, you felt this. It was relatable to some extent. Fighting off an enemy felt rewarding and like a “oh dear god I hope that was the last one” moment. Now, however, the over-populated town detracts from this appeal. It slowly goes from an experience about a weak man up against the horrors to a tiresome combat game oversaturated in hooker-heel monsters.
Instead of leaning towards its strengths, the repetition gets in the way. Many evenings I would boot up the game, load my save and close the game soon after because the joy of exploring the town and escaping to its dark corridors became less about the sense of discovery and more about turning the DualSense speaker volume down and spamming the melee button. It just wasn’t it.
The PS5 version of Silent Hill 2 is also choppy to play. Frame rates are all over the place and rough visuals take away from the horror too. The game’s reliance on Unreal Engine 5 means that, once again, the PS5 struggles. Reflections in puddles are black spats of mist instead of tree branches. FSR causes horrid smears across shadows in the dark. Even standing in a room, you can see the PS5 trying its damn best to get ray-traced shadows working by all the ugly noise moving about in the corner.
There was a time when games like this would shine on consoles. Before studios began making games for the top 5% of gamers who own RTX 4080/4090 GPUs. Screen space reflections were much better than ugly spats of gunk. Smoke and mirrors were used to fake incredible visual styles. But Silent Hill 2 falls into that same old UE 5 category where Alan Wake 2, Immortals of Aveum, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Black Myth sit-games with major compromises to get them running on aged technology.
Silent Hill 2 is a good remake. I wish it was a better remake, however. I wish it relied less on its combat and, like the original, let me absorb the world around me as I explored it. The monster hordes get in the way but if you’re playing this for the first time, it won’t bother you. This is also best played on a high-end PC because I did not enjoy the PS5 port with its visual issues. I will likely visit this later down the line on PC and replay it.
This Silent Hill 2 Remake review is based on a code sent to us by Konami. The game is available now on PS5 and PC. You can pick up a SteelBook copy starting at R1349 here.
Silent Hill 2
Summary
Silent Hill 2’s best features are often drowned in button-mashing combat that takes away from the true horror of the game – its world. Sadly, the focus on cliche jump-scares and overpopulated monster hubs makes this less about the Town and James and more about the action. However, there’s still a lot of love here and we can be thankful Silent Hill is finally getting the fame it deserves.
