Silent Hill 2 Review (PS5) – A Restless Dream Come True

Since the announcement of Silent Hill 2’s remake and Bloober Team’s attachment to it, there’s been a sense of trepidation about retreading the sacred ground that Team Silent laid out. It felt like an insurmountable task to even attempt to recreate. The original is a deeply obtuse game full of quirks, genuine terror and an impactful narrative that could go awry in the wrong hands.

Cue Bloober Team, a divisive studio whose last efforts, The Medium, left players dumbfounded at their heavy-handed approach to a sensitive subject matter. Couple this with some questionable pre-release footage, alongside a high bar from fans of what a remake should look like, and you’ve got a litany of reasons to doubt how well a revisit would go.

The original is a survival horror cult classic that has been dissected for decades, becoming more the players’ game than Konami actually owning the rights to the IP. This must mean Bloober Team have to be some of those in the aforementioned cult — perhaps sent by The Order themselves — as the studio has actually achieved the impossible; making a Silent Hill 2 remake that fans, and myself, are happy with.

Bloober’s remake isn’t perfect, but there’s so much love for the original series, not just SH2, that it’s undeniably a great time for players new and old to take the plunge once more. So let me be your critical tour guide of Bloober’s Silent Hill 2, just don’t tank my Tripadvisor score.

Welcome Back, James

For the uninitiated, you assume the role of James Sunderland — a regular guy in irregular circumstances to say the least. He makes the trip to Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife, Mary, to meet her there. The only problem is, Mary’s been dead for 3 years. Despite the glaring red flag, James ventures forth into the town shrouded in fog and deeper into the horrors that unfold.

If you’re familiar with the original, you know where this ends up and the remake is no different. Every story beat and most of the dialogue is untouched, which is an absolute win for both types of players. As someone who’s adored the game, the remake has only enhanced the story. Performances across every character are captured perfectly, whether that’s the voice acting or motion capture. Luke Roberts’ characterisation of James is forlorn and moving. Roberts sells the lack of care James has for a situation only he would go through with precision.

It’s easy to become unsold on the premise of a man going through hell for someone presumed dead. But the pain of a love lost and the lengths James goes through in this iteration is the most present I’ve ever experienced, in the handful of versions Silent Hill 2 has. Another stand-out for me is Gianna Kiehl’s Angela. A tough portrayal of pain with a backstory difficult to tackle in fiction. However, with Kiehl’s performance and Bloober’s subtle rewrites, it was Angela’s scenes that hit the most. It’s clear at this point there’s the utmost respect for the source material and attention to care for the sensitive subject matter.

In That Town

Whilst there’s an inherent charm to the wooden and amateurish acting in the original, the remake sells the story on a much deeper emotional level. The camera work during the cut scenes also plays out similarly as they lean on the off-kilter Dutch angles and uncanny, almost nauseating framing, creating that brilliant dissonance the original made you feel.

Silent Hill’s atmospheric mis-en-scene has not been replicated since the originals, but Bloober Team have nailed the presentation. The infamous fog the series is known for is of course ever present here, obstructing you from seeing a few feet away from you. On top of that, Bloober aren’t afraid to use darkness as a means of disruption. Silent Hill 2 teeters on the line of being too dark sometimes but it creates a long-forgotten tension I’ve had with other survival horrors.

Outside of that, the environments I can see are a visual feast. More specifically the times you’re stepping into the Otherworld — where the monsters come from. The rust and drenched decay surrounding you almost gives you a taste of iron in your throat with how enveloping it all is. Wallpaper weeps from the walls, torn showing the rusted cage-like carcass; enemies have a slick rubbery quality to their faceless and almost formless humanoid bodies.

It starts off damp and dreary and mildly grotesque, but as you get further you’re chasing a dream through a decrepit nightmare. With it being a shiny remake, you are missing some of that lo-fi grunge from the original. However, Bloober’s Silent Hill 2’s atmosphere is going to be hard to top in terms of properly frightening environments. The last third of the game was always my least favourite because of how oppressive and dizzying it all felt and the remake is somehow even more terrifying.

Making Good On My Promise

The other contentious talking point of a Silent Hill 2 remake was how the gameplay would be modernised for today’s standards, and will that lose some of the original’s magic. Bloober has gone for an over-the-shoulder approach to the gameplay, bringing a lot of dynamic differences to how the original played. Something I instantly noticed was the level of exploration that this camera angle lends itself to.

The game’s known for its cleverly woven environmental puzzles. You’ll often find key items out of chronological order and will have to solve one big puzzle by sifting through the areas, cupboards, draws, locked boxes and of course those gag-inducing squelchy holes. The bespoke feeling of fixed camera angles and James’ head turning to points of interest in the original is lost here. Instead, there’s a lot of busy work of scanning your surroundings and looking for interaction prompts.

Couple this with your environment feeling twice the size of the original, and you’ve got some slower pacing that can detract if you’re not sold on its other aspects. Silent Hill 2 works better in more confined spaces where the nuggets of key items or memos are less sparse and the looming threat of monsters is persistent. The second half of this game does lean closer to that and really nails that claustrophobia I was sadistically seeking.

One nitpick that made the slower moments more glaring was James’ walk by default. He is an absolute slouch if you’re not holding ‘L1’ to run and for a game brimming with melancholic terror, I wasn’t prepared to spoil the vibes to shave some minutes of my playtime, but he really needs some better walking boots.

Fogging Blindsided

The original game’s puzzles are largely intact with only a couple left out. If you’re a veteran, your prior knowledge will only go so far as the key items for puzzles are mostly in new areas of the map. Bloober has also introduced a handful of their own puzzles into the mix, but they’re mostly side objectives that will give you ammo or health supplies rather than progressing the story.

It’s a neat way to add their own spin on both old and new, as well as creating more gameplay overall. We still have the maps to help us navigate and James still writes on them to signify where an objective is, what’s locked or where you can go but they feel more in-depth than before. It doesn’t make the game any easier though as even someone who’s been through the fog before I was still stuck on puzzles or stuck in the trenches of battering monsters.

Speaking of, there’s a lot more of the twisted tyrants to contend with. Having more enemies has altered the flow and feeling of my time with Silent Hill 2. What was once a house of horrors with some great puzzle design, now feels like a constant battle for your life. It’s an aspect I’ve wrestled with for a while now – how much is maybe too much. And Bloober’s remake may have leaned too hard on the combat for the sake of keeping the average player engaged.

Silent Hill Slugger

I am overall fine with it as the combat is simple yet engaging, but it got a little tedious. The mannequin enemy type in particular is overused to hell as an ambush-type enemy. Keep a keen eye out and you’ll see them standing around the corner or tucked under a table ready to pounce. It got tiresome, especially when it’s the only trick in the book outside of set pieces.

James is no brawler and the gameplay reflects that. Aiming your weapon at a monster has a ton of sway if you’re moving and your melee attacks pack a punch, thanks to his wide swings and the DualSense providing some heft with the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. Side note: if you’re playing without a headset, the radio that detects enemies nearby goes off on the DualSense speaker. It’s a light detail but one that brings so much to the atmosphere.

Melee will probably be how you dispose of most of the monsters as ammo is understandably limited. There’s an odd amount of magnetism that drags both you and the enemy towards each other during an attack by default. Sometimes you’d be at that perfect distance where you almost glide to fit into the hit animation. Dodging is also frame-based so even if an enemy attack looks like it should hit, it won’t.

OG fans rejoice! We have a new combat system that sounds janky too; which it kind of is but works to a benefit. There may even be a parry unspoken in the game where if you attack at the exact moment an enemy’s attack should connect with you, you kind of dodge and counter in one motion. I only have my own claim to back that but it felt seamless enough to be true.

Abyssal Bosses

The controls during combat encounters don’t always feel the most responsive. Silent Hill 2 Remake likes to chuck a few enemies at a time, so you’re constantly looking out for enemy attack animations to dodge. Then you’re looking for your window to either move, attack or heal. There were a couple of times when pressing ‘triangle’ to heal just didn’t register because I was overwhelmed with a flurry of a few attacks.

You’ll also be grabbed, giving you a button prompt to repeatedly tap until the monster lets go. I turned off the UI for that as it looks a bit ugly and those slight HUD changes made a big difference to the game’s aesthetic. But despite those slight problems, the combat is an overall evolution from the original.

Whilst we’re on the topic of evolution, the biggest change and my most welcome one are the boss fights. Bloober has expanded on how they’re tackled in brilliant ways. Now, instead of being put in a tiny room to run from the big bad and fire when appropriate, they are a spectacle that still retains the original feeling.

Abstract Daddy is the biggest change, making it a multi-room run from the disgustingly suggestive monster. They’ll charge through walls and try to leap onto you whilst you run, dodge and shoot. It’s an intense battle made better through simple yet effective changes and that permeates across all fights.

New Coat Of Rust

I harped on about the design of Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 being so grotesquely excellent, but it also runs quite the treat on PlayStation 5. I’ll always opt for performance mode if it means more frames, over some slightly better graphics that impede on how it runs. However, I leant on using the quality mode instead as both share similar levels of frames whilst retaining the disgusting look in high fidelity. There wasn’t any stuttering or screen tearing, it feels like the first example of how good Unreal Engine 5 can look on current hardware.

The original game’s composer, Akira Yamaoka, is back with fresh takes on the soundtrack which evoke the same feeling as the original. But it’s Bloober’s audio team that has really outdone themselves here. The use of audio is more often than not the scariest part of this game. Every paranoid creak, metallic clanks from the other rooms and questionable splatters are overbearing to the senses, in the best way possible.

As well as that, there is also a somewhat decent selection of accessibility options to sift through. A multifaceted High Contrast mode, button prompt changes, visual audio cues to display the direction of enemies, dyslexic subtitle options as well as a couple of other ways to assist. There are some noticeable omissions that could have invited everyone to play, but at least there are a few things to help.

One Hell Of A Trip

Overall, I think Bloober Team have overcome the near-impossible standards that the original Silent Hill 2 put in place. Whilst this remake doesn’t ultimately replace the original by just being shinier, modernised and more accessible — I’m more excited at the prospect of more people getting to experience this game for the first time and it still hitting almost the exact way.

Bloober knew where not to get in the way and where to improve. They also built upon an excellent foundation set by Team Silent and made it all the more terrifying again. The performances nail the tone that I’ve been missing for a long time and as a fan of the original, I can also say I’m a fan of the remake.

This is undoubtedly one of the highest quality remakes we’ve seen so far. I hope this opens the discussions to preserve the originals separately because Silent Hill is always a place worth visiting, and the Silent Hill 2 Remake is no different.

Silent Hill 2 is available now on PlayStation 5 (review platform) and PC via Steam.

Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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