Processing Silent Hill 2 is a paradoxically enviable and unenviable endeavor for anyone. I imagine that most creators involved in the horror genre would like to have something that has long been considered one of the pinnacles of this art form. On the other hand, it encourages endless scrutiny from legions of passionate fans and you will never, ever please everyone.
In fact, attempts to improve the original suggest that it was not yet perfect. That wasn’t the case, but the sentiment is somewhat understandable. Without going into the most granular detail, it’s challenging to say what compromises the original team had to make and what did and didn’t meet their vision. What resulted from the technological challenges of those times? No one answer will be correct in every fan’s mind.
So the direction in which Silent Hill 2 The Choose remake adds a lot, yet changes little.
In this case, James Sunderland is looking for his wife Mary. He receives a letter from her telling him to meet her in the titular town of Silent Hill. The problem is, as James says, she’s been dead for three years. However, although he is not sure why, he goes into the city anyway to try to find her.
When he arrives, he finds it shrouded in fog and completely abandoned. And not lately either. It looks like this place has been rotting for a long time. To make matters worse, he quickly discovers that it is full of monsters. Nevertheless, he decides to find Maria and will not let anything stand in his way. Then things get weirder. Big twist Silent Hill 2 is one of the most broken in video games, but I’m not going to add to that resonance. Also, if you want to know more about its depth and execution, it has been covered many times by people much more dedicated than myself.
If you are nearsighted, your place is in Silent Hill, where there is always fog, and if there is no fog, it is murky. 23 years of extra power certainly made everything look a lot more busy and detailed. Most of the time Silent Hill 2 the remake looks fantastic. He constantly enhances the atmosphere of the original. It’s not quite as foggy, but the billowing white plumes that hidden your vision still have the right effect. On one side of the street you can only make out the lackluster outline of a roof on the other side. It’s even better when it’s murky, where the little pinpricks of featherlight trying to illuminate it in the distance give the city an even more pronounced sense of otherworldly desolation.
The downside is that it’s a bit of a technical mess. I played this game on PS5 and chose quality over performance, but the FPS drop isn’t really my problem. My biggest problem was the ghosting effect, which is a common problem in Unreal Engine 5 games. Often it just distracted me, but sometimes it affected the gameplay, making some creatures evident in the murky just because of the streaks, that they left behind when they moved.
There is one particular fight in the meat freezer (you know the one if you played the original) where the enemy was moving in the murky, making it challenging to track. However, because of the ghosts, I could usually see exactly where they appeared and where they hid. I suppose everything in Silent Hill can be explained as the work of some supernatural power controlling everything, but it looks gross and is clearly not an intentional stylistic attempt.
Original Silent Hill was exceptional in many respects, including graphics, atmosphere, sound design, and especially narrative, but the combat was legendarily terrible. Fortunately, it wasn’t at the top of the game. There was quite a lot of it, but also long swathes without any enemy. Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the combat has been significantly improved. The bad news is that this is currently the main focus.
There’s a lot going on in the fight. For melee, there’s an auto-targeting system in place, which means James will often swing at things around him, even if you’re not pointing at them directly. The downside is that it will sometimes interpret an intended attack on an upright enemy as stomping on a supine enemy, but this happens infrequently enough to not be a problem. Meanwhile, in the case of firearms, you can aim over your shoulder like in any other action game, but James is as unsteady as you’d expect from someone sleep-deprived and unfamiliar with guns.
You can also dodge, and that’s the most significant thing. Essentially, it grants James a brief moment of immortality during which he will react to anything that comes his way, even if it is highly unlikely that he would be able to get out of its way. Sometimes this causes an attack that clearly hits him to miss, but it’s probably better than the uncertainty. I feel pretty good and that’s the most significant thing. I would definitely choose the fresh combat system over the venerable one.
But this unfortunately brings me to my biggest complaint about the game, its length. The original playthrough took about 7-9 hours, while the remake took me 18 hours, which includes a lot of fucking around the city. Some will understandably see the significantly increased length as a good thing, but I don’t think it’s meritorious.
The plot was not developed too much, which is definitely a plus. Everything works exactly as in the original, with a few additions and minor tweaks. But everything between narrative moments was bloated. You’ll spend more time wandering around apartments and the hospital, fighting the same diminutive handful of enemies and searching rooms that sometimes only contain a monster, a health bottle, and nothing else of interest. It’s worth noting that most of the extra length goes to the interior sections. If they had instead focused on extending the moments where you walk through a city steeped in mystery, this probably wouldn’t have been such an issue.
Length is rarely a positive thing in horror movies. The longer you play in the game world, the more comfortable you feel in it. You feel more capable. You’ve seen enough monsters to know how to deal with whatever the game throws at you. Surprises lose their effectiveness, tension turns into discomfort, and investing becomes challenging. Some people complain about this Alien: Isolation is too long (and I agree), but at least I feel like a lot of that mid-game malaise pays off when the final twist is revealed, while the added mess of Silent Hill 2 the remake just feels like content for content’s sake.
Whether this is a problem will depend on your tolerance. Largely, while I felt it was a detractor, I don’t think it’s a huge issue that completely ruined the game for me, it’s just an unnecessary self-inflicted wound that gets in the way of what most people are here for is: seeing a beloved classic benefit from current equipment.
Largely a remake Silent Hill 2 it was a success beyond my expectations, but I kept my expectations in check. In fact, much of the game’s success is a direct result of what Team Silent had already established in 2001, but maintaining the atmosphere while improving the visuals is a feat in itself. I also found that the reworked cutscenes, while largely reproductions from a single shot, have much more nuance thanks to added facial animations and detail.
Some restraint when it comes to the length of the remake would do wonders. But aside from the unnecessary bloat and technical issues, there’s still a lot to like. Processing Silent Hill 2 it could have gone horribly wrong, and perhaps for some this modernization won’t replace the original, but at least it’s a valuable fresh perspective.
