Warning: This article contains subtle thematic and environmental spoilers for Silent Hill 2.
The Silent Hill 2 remake is the most pathetic gaming experience I’ve ever had.
With an opening sentence like that, you’re probably expecting to read some very negative criticism of developer Bloober Team’s recreation of the Konami game and Team Silent’s survival horror classic. But in this very uncommon case, total and unrelenting poverty is actually a positive phenomenon. The original Silent Hill 2 is arguably the darkest and bleakest game ever created, and Bloober Team has successfully retained its pathetic magic, ensuring that this remake will be a deeply effective transition into truly uncomfortable terror.
This journey begins with sound and image. The broad, unclear fog that envelopes the town of Silent Hill is part of the story’s instantly recognizable iconography, and the remake’s impressive, current volumetric effects make it feel denser and more isolating than ever. Getting away from the monster-infested streets should feel like an escape, but instead you’re forced to take refuge in the dankest and depressingly disgusting mansions you’ve ever seen. Much of Silent Hill 2 is centered around the descent, and the visual texture of each area features a distinct gradient that communicates a downward spiral. The locations initially appear neglected and abandoned, e.g. apartment blocks with peeling wallpapers and empty cabinets. But go any further and the architecture becomes more and more oppressive. Recognizable shapes and textures are replaced by rougher, broken alternatives, until the entire area becomes a rusting, decayed shell. What is initially disturbing becomes truly nightmarish as you venture further.
Compounding all this, in keeping with horror tradition, is minimal lighting. For most of the game’s long runtime (12 to 18 hours, depending on your playstyle), you’re locked in gloomy buildings. This becomes increasingly unsettling, especially as you explore Toluca Prison – the facility’s lights can only be turned on for a few seconds at a time, forcing you to run between switches in a mostly doomed attempt to keep the darkness at bay. Not having access to the sun for such a long period means that just seeing daylight is like gasping for air after spending days underwater. It is deeply and unpleasantly effective.
This visual palette is accompanied not so much by a musical score but by the most oppressive collection of sounds your ears have ever experienced, once again provided by Silent Hill 2’s original composer, Akira Yamaoka. This is especially effective tardy in the game, when what sounds like an approaching beast is dynamically woven into the orchestration during moments of high tension. It makes you second guess every sound you hear, and over time you lose your sense of reality. Simulating madness isn’t simple, but this soundscape is as close to (un)comfortable as you can get.
Effective graphics and sound design are the hallmarks of many horror games, but these disciplines are the surface of the experience. I don’t say this lightly – the surface is key – but it’s what’s underneath that really cements the terror. Games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space are actually action games with horror masks, which is why they’re rarely truly scary. Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, is a horror game right down to your nerve endings and bone marrow. Its environments and objective design follow similar themes to art and sound, constantly looking for modern ways to throw you off balance. Each location you visit is a puzzle to solve. You are forced to walk around each floor, backtracking to find keys or hidden room entrances that will once again send you backwards to progress. This almost spiral route through apartments, a hospital, a hotel and more forces you to endure increasing mental exhaustion.
This exhaustion, combined with the seemingly unrelenting length of each area, robs you of hope. This is especially terrible in the final third, when you are forced to navigate the prison and subsequent maze one by one, without any respite. These locations are characterized by long stretches of almost impenetrable darkness, thematically grim puzzles, and the most aggressive, grotesque enemies in the entire game. The resulting emotional charge effectively reflects the mental space in which the main character, James Sunderland, finds himself. And that is the most impressive and disturbing achievement of Bloober, and by extension Team Silent: the ability to evoke empathy through gameplay design.
The miserable tone of Silent Hill 2 is maintained through a number of other gameplay tricks. As mentioned earlier, the story revolves around James’s descent into horror, which is depicted both metaphorically through the visual design and literally through his constant need to jump into pitch-black holes. Each jump requires pressing the action button several times, reflecting his hesitation and reluctance to jump into the unknown.
As the atmosphere becomes increasingly unbearable, nothing has been incorporated into the campaign to provide levity or safety. In the Resident Evil series, for example, you gradually build up an increasingly powerful arsenal, making the tardy game a thrilling, explosive fight for blood and guts. He also plays around with the dialogue and design of the monsters, often opting for goofy characterizations that give the series its beloved “cheesy horror” feel. Last year’s Alan Wake 2, despite being clearly inspired by the work of Team Silent, features absurdist humor and Lynch’s direction, which leans towards the bizarre rather than terrifying, allowing laughs to break the tension. However, Silent Hill 2 doesn’t have all this. For the most part, your weapons are a cracked pipe and a pistol, and even if you have access to something a little more powerful, it’s just a regular shotgun or rifle with a long reload time and circumscribed ammo. In addition to a difficulty curve that turns familiar enemies into unpredictable, wall-crawling weirdos, Silent Hill 2’s atmosphere constantly finds ways to choke you.
It’s not customary to exploit terms like “suffocating”, “overwhelming” and “wretched” when assessing positives, but horror is not a customary genre. It is one of only two categories of entertainment that focus on provoking an uncontrollable reaction from the audience (the other being comedy). Horror is an emotion-manipulating machine, and the most effective stories in this genre can force us to experience feelings we don’t usually experience in everyday life. Horror films spend their entire runtime applying varying levels of pressure to achieve this manipulation, most effectively engraving images into our minds that continually reappear when the lights go out.
However, video games are a completely different medium, and their experiential nature allows them to manipulate us in more intense ways. Instead of asking us to observe, they demand interaction, usually for four, five, sometimes even 10 times longer than the average scary movie. This can force us to experience a completely different reality. While some parts of the gaming community often insist that games are purely for fun or escapist entertainment, this is often not the goal of many developers. Sometimes that goal is to communicate uncomfortable ideas, and the way to do that is to expose us to a reality that is deeply unpleasant. Silent Hill 2 isn’t about fun, it’s about exploring sadness and guilt – parts of the human experience that we traditionally avoid. Oddly enough, there’s an uncomfortable thrill in actively exploring these ideas through a video game.
The technical limitations of the 2001 original contributed to a few thorns in this painful experience; the partially immobile camera made the environments feel restrictive and claustrophobic, and awkward aiming made every encounter feel desperate. The Bloober Team remake removes these thorns, replacing them with current third-person controls, making the gameplay a bit more genial. But those are the only significant concessions, so while the fight sequences are perhaps a little less panicky than they used to be, Team Silent’s nightmarish vision has been retained. This means that the remake recalls not only the era in which Konami was the master of survival horror, but also the significant force of Silent Hill 2’s unrelenting misery.
Matt Purslow is senior features editor at IGN.
