It was Halloween night back in 2003 and I was sitting in my dorm getting settled for the night. I had decided not to go with some friends to a ‘party in a field’ which was more like a party in a mud pit because that’s what we did at our rural small town college. Instead, I had decided to try out my new 5.1 computer stereo system (paired of course with a Sound Blaster Audigy, big deal back then) with this cool looking horror game, Silent Hill 2. I had played through a lot of it earlier so I was in the Prison area before the Labyrinth. I turned off the lights, turned up the sound, and got to running around looking for wax and string. Then someone whispered directly into my right ear and I froze. Lights on, checked the dorm suite hallway, what the hell was that? Turns out it wasn’t a ghost, it was the game. Since that scare I’ve always deeply appreciated the atmosphere of fear and oppression that the Silent Hill team created.
Twenty-two years later and I find myself back playing this almost like it was new again. I had given up on any revival of Silent Hill over a decade ago after some bad entries and one (disclaimer: my hot take) misunderstood decent game. (I had a long draft made up for my old blog on Silent Hill Shattered Memories, maybe I’ll finally finish it.) I had been lore obsessed back in the day scouring forums, talking with people who felt they needed to determine exactly when each game took place, and peeking through game files to find secrets. A friend, who has since passed away, and I would talk about all the references we caught while playing and trade ripped sound files of hidden tracks over AIM.
This game followed me through a lot of my young adult life in ways I didn’t expect and, like a few other works of art, became important to me. I met my college advisor when a Francis Bacon show came to town and we bonded over Lost Memories and discussed how the medium was moving forward with ideas more complicated than were there in say the 70s or 80s. That was when he was last paying attention. A lot of teachers and professors during my time in school certainly shied away from the darker aspects of the art world. Joe (Piccillo) did not. We spent an entire semester going over art movements of the early to mid 20th century and how they tried and failed to influence the world in a way that, amongst other things, would prevent violence and war. See Dadaism, maybe compare it to our current era. There may be parallels there. You could also check out Hans Bellmer and watch the video series he showed us, The Shock of the New.
When Bloober team was announced as the developer I was skeptical. I remember liking Layers of Fear but not the sequel. Medium was an attempt at something that never really clicked for me. Layers of Fear 2 had an interesting concept with a not great execution was carried by the voice work of the late Tony Todd (Candyman, etc.) Of course they ended up really nailing this remake and declared that they won’t make anymore ‘shitty games.’ Good for them.
The story is what you’d expect with a remake: mostly the same. Some additions, some removals but nothing daring. Dialogue is a lot less otherworldly or strange than the original. It made James less off putting but I’m not sure he needed to be a more sympathetic character. Guy Cihi (OG James) was a weird dude and that weirdness did add a lot to the atmosphere of the original. (He was also totally right about getting paid for the PS3 remake, pay your artists and creatives.) There’s also some little polaroids you can pick up that reference the original games puzzles that were changed or removed in the remake that pull you out of the story more than add anything to it. Maybe someone can mod them out.
Combat is, however, a space where the game deviates greatly from the original. Tank controls in survival horror made you feel slow and awkward like you were really playing an average guy whose day job was sitting at a desk. In the remake you still feel vulnerable and if you’re too aggressive (remember to dodge) you will get got but James’ attacks feel much more visceral. This is a man with some anger and fire in him. Also whatever is in those syringes he picks up off the ground and injects himself with. It’s weird to just drink some off brand Vitamin Water you find sitting around in an abandoned dive bar but the needles? He just does it, no regerts.
Now those boss fights, those are good. All of the ones from the original like your first bout with Pyramid Head in the Apartments and the ‘Flesh Lip’ in Brookhaven are expanded and intense. I never thought of the boss encounters in the original as challenging but I was feeling the tension this time.
I find myself agreeing that there were too many Mannequins and this is the part of the remake where Bloober needed more confidence in changing things up. I would’ve been glad to see a new monster or similar to what they did with the Mandarin and really expand what it could do. There’s plenty of other horrors that James could manifest after killing his wife that could stalk him around town.
The endings from the original are all here plus some new ones that, again, don’t deviate but expand. You have your normal In Water ending where James drives into the lake but you also have a new ending where he talks to his wife before doing the same. There’s the one where he’s going to bring her back from the dead which I hope also cures her terminal illness because otherwise we’re just going in circles. I’ve always liked the Leave ending myself showing our boy has forgiven himself for a murder and somehow also is now taking care of a child. Did anyone from that care home call the police when Mary went missing? We know from Silent Hill 4 that he never makes it back to see his father, so, it’s probably not that ending that’s capital C canon.
I say that you should play the original at some point if you haven’t but the remake is a solid game on its own. (There are guides out if you search for ‘Silent Hill 2 Enhanced Edition’ about how to do that.) I really can’t overstate how good the atmosphere and art direction are for the environments especially in the Prison and the Labyrinth. Here’s hoping they release a ‘Born from a Wish’ expansion sometime in the future.