The Silent Hill 2 remake feels like the PS2 classic in a Resident Evil 2 remake wrapper, and you know what? That’s not bad
I get the impression Bloober Team knows what you think of it. Ever since the studio was announced as the driving force behind Konami’s remake of the impossibly beloved Silent Hill 2, it feels like the game’s fanbase has been sucking air through its teeth, keeping one wincing eye on development to see how badly Bloober messed up.
I don’t think it has. Having spent three hours with the game, it’s not perfect, but I didn’t come away thinking the devs behind Layers of Fear and The Medium have massacred a classic. Instead, I think people’s scepticism has inclined them to play things safe, turning out a UE5 embellishment of the original that feels a lot like Silent Hill 2 filtered through the design sensibilities of the Resident Evil 2 remake.
For die-hards and purists (terms I don’t use pejoratively; I’m a die-hard and purist about plenty of stuff), that shift will likely be too much by itself. But if you’re just Silent Hill-curious, or someone with vague memories of the now-23-year-old original game who’d like to return to that town? I think Bloober might have actually pulled it off.
Leon Sunderland Kennedy
It does feel a lot like that RE2 remake though, in terms of how it plays. The three hours I spent with Silent Hill 2 took me from its opening—James Sunderland getting his head together in the roadside toilet we all know and love—through the streets of Silent Hill and into the Wood Side and Blue Creek apartments. If I’d squinted I probably could have convinced myself I was playing Capcom’s 2019 banger using some kind of greyscale ENB preset.
Bloober has dispensed with the fixed camera angles and tank controls of the original game and given us something all about shaky over-the-shoulder aiming and rotating objects you pick up in the world. A transition from Resident Evil (old) to Resident Evil (new) in gameplay.
If you’re not wedded to those fixed camera angles, it works. The pitch-black and creaky flats of the Wood Side apartments didn’t feel any less tense and fearful just because I was looking at them from over James’ shoulder and not from a viewpoint placed somewhere in the corner of the room, and I suspect the angle will be a lot more palatable to a disturbingly adult-aged population of players who didn’t grow up with games that refused to let you control the camera.
If I’d squinted I probably could have convinced myself I was playing Capcom’s 2019 banger using some kind of greyscale ENB preset.
Besides, not everything feels new. You’ll still have to solve slightly baffling puzzles to progress at times, just like in the good old days. That’s baffling in a “why would a human design this?” sense, mind you, not difficulty. On normal puzzle difficulty (you can choose separate difficulties for combat and puzzles, just like the old game), I had little trouble getting through puzzles old and new: things like fixing the Neely’s Bar jukebox, solving an expanded version of the coin puzzle, and figuring out the code to a safe by pointing my torch at spots on the wall.
I’m glad those puzzles are there, because they gave me a break from what’s probably my biggest gripe with the whole experience: the combat. Just like the RE2 remake, Silent Hill 2 makes gunplay a high-risk, high-reward proposition. Hit your enemies and they go down relatively quickly, but miss and you’re wasting your very limited supplies of ammo.
But where RE2 remake’s zombie foes were good cannon fodder—they were slow and shambling, which kind of made up for the fact that Leon had a tendency to sway as he aimed—Silent Hill 2’s don’t feel suited to shooting. They can be fast, particularly the Mannequins, and that makes for a frustrating combo when James’ aim wibbles and wobbles like psychosexual jello.
Melee’s a little better: Fighting single enemies with James’ club is a matter of whacking away at them and hitting dodge as they telegraph their counterattacks. It’s not the meatiest or most engaging combat you’ve ever played, but it works. Trying to go mano a mano with groups of foes, though, is a surefire recipe to end up getting mobbed.
Fighting is plentiful, which gives you a lot of time to pick away at its flaws, but to be clear, Bloober hasn’t turned Silent Hill into a character action game. There’s still lots of room for the atmosphere to breathe and seep into you, and I never actually died in all my time with the demo, despite a few close calls. Perhaps the real problem is the cramped environments I spent the demo in: Encountering foes on the streets isn’t so much of an issue given that you can just run around them, but a lot of my time in the apartments—which were sprawling—was taken up by fights that often felt more frustrating than tense.
But combat in the PS2 game was no picnic either. Maybe making it kind of a chore in the remake is just Bloober trying to be extra faithful. It’s the atmosphere and narrative that makes up for it. The monsters might not be super-fun to fight, but they are truly horrifying, all squeaky and shiny and unnervingly sexual, and the sinister crackle from your radio that signals their approach never stopped being creepy and ominous to me. Silent Hill’s vibes have survived its transition to modernity even if the fighting sometimes leaves something to be desired. And hey, iffy combat never stopped the original from becoming a classic.
So despite some missteps, I think the attempt to modernise the game is a success. Sure, it feels a lot like Silent Hill 2 in an RE2 skin, but that remake was pretty excellent. There are far worse examples for Bloober to follow, and for the most part it’s done well at wrapping the vibes of SH2 in that modern package.
Story mode
Narratively, the remake is the Silent Hill 2 of old: James has got a letter from his wife saying she’s hanging out in Silent Hill. As an attentive husband, James is like 85% sure his wife died three years ago, so that’s concerning to him. Off he goes on an adventure to figure out just what’s going on, finding a town filled with monsters and a few kindred spirits who have also found themselves inexplicably drawn there.
In my time with the game, I met characters like Angela and Eddie, and they, too, are pretty much as they were 23 years ago. Their voices have changed, though. Bloober isn’t reusing the voicework from the original game or the HD re-recordings, and the new direction definitely feels different. The PS2 version felt like it had a bit of a stage-acting thing going on: Characters tended to speak clearly and with great enunciation, maybe even getting a little hammy at times.
Not so in the remake. Here we have acting that sometimes dips into Silent Hill 2 ASMR; James and co speak quietly, naturally, often muttering to themselves as they work through the tumult in their heads out loud.
It feels more, well, modern. Acting you’d see in a movie or on prestige TV as opposed to the kind of thing you’d find in the bombastic annals of videogame history. I liked the performances, but if you view acting in the original game as a crux of the whole weird, off-kilter experience, I can imagine being disappointed that Bloober didn’t try to capture that essence.
Mostly, though, things seem to be staying as they were. Cutscenes like James’ first meeting with Angela in the graveyard and his first encounter with Pyramid Head are very much as you remember them from 2001. There may have been actual unrest in the streets if Bloober had tried to change the game’s storytelling, so I’m pretty sure we can all rest easy that the studio—which has always been criticised for its narratives—seems to be taking a light touch.
Pretty sure. Like I said, I spent most of my time wandering around the Wood Side and Blue Creek apartments, so I wasn’t exposed to much beyond the beginning of Silent Hill 2. Could Bloober try to pull the narrative rug out from under us later on? Maybe, and boy I do not envy its email inbox if it does.
See that town? You can go there
Fans have been rightly sceptical of Bloober’s involvement in the Silent Hill 2 remake, but I think the studio’s instinct to stay mostly faithful has paid off. Despite being a long-time advocate for remakes getting weird with it and mixing things up, I don’t think that attitude would have served the developer well in this case. Let’s be honest: To Silent Hill 2 stalwarts, perfection brooks no improvement, and the studio’s writing just wouldn’t be up to the task of doing something interesting with the game anyway.
Yes, there are jettisoned aspects of the old game that will rub devotees the wrong way, and some things (the combat) that just don’t quite feel great to me, but overall? My time with the remake gave me the feeling that Bloober has taken an admirable stab at a nearly impossible task.
