Silent Hill 2 developed by Blooper Team and published by Konami is a remake originally developed by Team Silent. Everyone who calls themselves a gamer would know of the Silent Hill franchise even if it is only from one of the main creatures Pyramid Head. However, if you are unaware of the eerie horrors of Silent Hill dip in a toe, and see how it feels, I will say that Silent Hill touches on some heavy themes and may not be suitable for those who might be a little more fragile. Still, I’ll leave that up to you, as an individual to decide.

Silent Hill was one of the big horror games back in the day alongside Resident Evil, though as mentioned above unlike the more jumps-scare-zombie horror, Silent Hill has always been a little more psychological horror, I mean it does have its jump scares and terrifying creatures, but I never found it too terrifying visually more emotionally instead. It’s a dark gloomy game and that’s what makes it different to a lot of other horror games and was the foundation for the newer generation of psychological horror games.

From what I remember, it’s been a while since I played Silent Hill 2 the original, but the remake is spot on, like scene for scene. There are changes due to the availability of updated graphics, larger scale landscape and environmental design, with fewer constraints on model movements, and combat. For those unfamiliar with the premise, I’ll try to explain without revealing too much. The story follows James Sunderland who receives a letter from his deceased wife Mary saying she is waiting for him in their special place in Silent Hill.

Finding this odd he ventures to Silent Hill to investigate becoming more desperate to find her as time passes. Along the way, you run into Angela and Eddie others who have their issues that brought them here, along with the bratty eight-year-old Laura who knows Mary and the mysterious and flirtatious Maria, who resembles Mary in appearance. Trapsing across Silent Hill and its various locations you learn more of the history of Silent Hill and that of the other characters. Like the original, I found it less combat-based, and more story-based, which I liked, for me, the combat was not the highlight.

The gameplay is like most horror games run around with a flashlight finding keys and completing puzzles, whacking, or shooting creepy creatures, all while uncovering the deep dark secrets of the place and people. The combat for me was the least fun and I don’t mean that negatively, it just unfortunately got repetitive quickly, there are three main creatures with two alterations once you figure out their weaknesses, they become a nuisance getting in the way of a good story.

The bosses are the same only a couple were challenging and only because you have no context on them, tip dodging is your friend, for horror game enthusiasts I suggest starting on hard mode you can always change the difficulty later. It was an interesting dynamic on my run through at one point I would have so much ammo I thought I would never run out but barely any healing items then it would shift I would run low on ammo and have heaps of healing items.

At one point more so towards the end I had heaps of both, I do wish they would lessen the number of draws and cupboards you could open because I swear ninety per cent of them were empty.

The puzzles were fun and, once you sort of zone out the whole thing flows and feels very seamless like you’re not being led but genuinely just moving through the area however you can. I don’t know if this was intentional, but I started to realise all the puzzles, well all the ones I noticed when I started focusing on them, that they all have three parts to them, nothing to do with anything just an interesting note. You can change the complexity of the puzzles, I ran through it on normal, and some were a little challenging but altogether not too difficult.

The graphical changes are an improvement to the original, but even so, the dreary, sad look of the game highlights the emotional turmoil the characters are going through. While the creatures all look wonderfully horrifying and the facial features of the characters show an amazing amount of emotional emphasis. The real winner is the atmosphere created, by the classic Silent Hill Fog, the empty buildings, and the worlds created by the psyche of the characters give that feeling of hopelessness, anguish, loneliness, and guilt.

This makes uncovering each character’s stories hit a little bit harder. Angela’s story is extremely sad and will have your skin crawling at certain lines if you understand the meaning and out of all the backstories is the most confronting. How it is portrayed visually made me feel so sorry for her like I wanted to help her however I could with the end of her story, just visually stunning in the saddest way.

The Voice actors did a great job selling the emotional states of their characters especially as they progressed and changed throughout the game. Akira Yamaoka returned to compose the music for Silent Hill, and it did not disappoint the music and sound effects for Silent Hill complimented and brought out the atmosphere I mentioned earlier.

The visual and music combo is what makes Silent Hill so great, the sound effects and music can chill you to the bone, the scraping noise letting you know that Pyramid Head is near or the slurping, sucking noise made when sticking your hand in a mystery hole made me feel unclean every time.

Every aspect of the music in this game I swear is to make you feel uncomfortable which is so amazing in its delivery. Even the songs especially beautifully sombre and dark I loved it, for those who know I got “Leave” on my playthrough but instead of Promise they changed it to Theme of Laura which I think suits it better.

Blooper did a great job on Silent Hill Remake even shouting out the original team in the credits which is a beautiful way to honour the original team. I can’t say much but along with the Four main endings they kept in the two extra endings and even have two more new endings making a total of eight to unlock. I never ran into any issues; I mean once I had a creature T pose on me but that was the extent of any problems.Anyone who is a fan of Silent Hill will love this game as it is almost shot for shot with just a few changes, for anyone new to the franchise this is a great place to start your Silent Hill deep dive.

Written by: Adam Brasher