Silent Hill 2 Review

Descend into something much more profound than a mere ‘remake’...

As a self-proclaimed survival horror aficionado it pains this writer to admit the Silent Hill series entirely escaped me in its initial release phases. For reasons, back then, related to platforms of choice and a certain stance against a certain super console, I was readily and foremost a Resident Evil fan. Unfortunately, when my blinders were eventually REmoved and I realised the profound sentiment of “why not both?”, the world and its videogaming fidelity had jumped so far, I just never looked back.

So going into Silent Hill 2 means this review is coming at you, dear reader, from the perspective of a first-time player, which means I’m more likely writing to engage other potential first-timers. Spoilers and an apparent lack of cohesive understanding of the push and pull of the titular town and its ubiquitous disquiet clearly governed by something else, will be landlocked to this release specifically. An experience in absolute isolation in a celebrated series, but one that more than has me intrigued in its mythos and in understanding more of the choices and direction around the world-building at play here, and hopefully throughout.

Equal parts mysterious, dreadful, shocking and long, Silent Hill 2 has kept me gripped from start to finish with its drawn-out pacing, its twists and turns and its allusion to some sort of answer to its ridiculously broad, near-amnesic narrative strokes. And while there are some gripes to address and relay in analytical form, on the whole it has been jarring and engaging all at once, and our collective hat here is off to Bloober Team for delivering not only a stunning remake, but one that clearly has the studio’s own stamp on proceedings, which gives us the warm and fuzzies about what it has in store in 2025.

Silent Hill 2

Genre: Survival Horror
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: September 24, 2024
Classification: MA15+
Author: Stephen Farrelly
Date: October 23, 2024

Foggy Memory

Where other established survival horror titles tend to come packed with context and at least a reasonable call to action, Silent Hill 2 does no such thing. You are James Sunderland and you’ve found your way to the mist-laden and very sleepy town of Silent Hill. Drawn here through a letter you received from your deceased wife of three years, James inextricably and against all good judgement is compelled to seek answers. Is his wife alive? Why is she here? What could she want after three years of mourning? Which way do I head?

"But in Silent Hill 2 James is almost T-800-like in his resolve to push forward. Grotesque figures sewn up in sleeping bags made of flesh? Whatever, let’s just club ‘em and move on..."

That last point is pertinent, and tied exclusively to James’ lemming-like drive towards what might as well be a ghost, or a fevered dream. But this affords Bloober Team (and much of the original studio, Silent Team) to force the player and James into places they might not naturally want to go. In so many other survival horror games, progression is tied to an altruistic end goal; Leon is saving the President’s daughter, Isaac is fixing a malfunctioning ship and seeking survivors, Alan is writing and acting out pages from a book and Amanda is literally playing hide and seek with a xenomorph, just to survive. But in Silent Hill 2 James is almost T-800-like in his resolve to push forward. Grotesque figures sewn up in sleeping bags made of flesh? Whatever, let’s just club ‘em and move on. Scantily-clad reanimated nurses straight out of a Tool film clip from the 90s wielding knives? Sorry, undead (and unheralded) carer, I need to shoot you in the knees to wail on your skull with a steel pipe to go and solve a puzzle…

And the above goes on for an incredibly long time with little-to-no context. It’s maddening in its own right, and while die-hard fans are quick to point to the lite-on structure of story here as psychological horror, it can become a bit tedious early on wondering just what it is you’re truly scrounging ammo and health drinks and health syringes for, because at times it all feels a bit foggy.

Would you like to know more?
Bloober Team is no stranger to horror, and very specifically psychological horror. Its Layers or Fear titles centre around artists of different ilk. In the original, released in 2016, players take on the guise of a troubled artist attempting to complete his “Magnum Opus”, done so by solving puzzles in a huge mansion and exploring its many parts, all while unlocking parts of his mysterious past. An expansion came later where we play as his daughter, then a sequel set upon a ship where we now take on the role of a troubled actor, with the game exploring art in the moving image landscape. Finally, a composite of all of the above was released in 2023 as a sort of ‘remake’ that wasn’t all that well received and is one that Bloober Team is also not overly proud of. The studio is now focused on its upcoming 2025, Cronos: The New Dawn which will be a sci-fi survival horror inspired by the likes of Dead Space and BioShock.

The Petina World

This becomes truest when you first enter what is elsewise known as “Otherworld”, a barbed-wrapped, rusty place of total decay not to be confused with rustic that is very much an alternate version of the titular town. This is where some of that psychological horror does come into effect, as it appears Silent Hill, from a metaphysical and psychological perspective, has been torn asunder (get it… Sunder-land?) with Otherworld likely a manifestation of its entrant’s imaginings -- in this case, James’. Though this idea isn’t set in stone, there are allusions to the state of mind of things, which are teased at and mildly explored most in the tropey settings of Silent Hill’s rundown mental facility, Brookhaven Hospital, constructed after a great plague swept through the town, and its penitentiary complex, Toluca Prison, which was built from a Civil War-era internment camp.

"There’s a genuine perversity to the game, amplified through the body language and dialogue of some of the support characters, Maria in particular..."

Explaining the difference between the two worlds is more easily summed up in the presentation of most of the game’s monsters, which would be to consider one dressed and ‘normal’-ish, and the other a kind of bent or kink built out of dark S&M and fetishism. There is a constant theme that permeates the game around non-believers, witchcraft, misogyny and oppressive thoughts and practices. And this also plays very well into the ‘psychological thriller’ tag the game comes packaged with, and is perhaps its most alluring in terms of peeking beneath the equally ubiquitous white sheets that not only drape much of the environment in Otherworld, but also help guide you through Silent Hill proper. 

There’s a genuine perversity to the game, amplified through the body language and dialogue of some of the support characters, Maria in particular, who James meets seemingly randomly but who has a striking resemblance to his deceased Mary. Though clearly not her, Maria is flirtatious and uninhibited, toying with James and his emotively unhinged state at every possible point. In so many ways, if we’re to lean into it, Maria is the Otherworld Mary… or maybe it's vice-versa…

Unimaginative Names for Imaginative Monsters

The game itself doesn’t reveal the name of its monstrously grotesque inhabitants. For that we rely on Trophies and Achievements, but curiosity did get the better of me in wanting to know just what it was I was dispatching of at a steady (and ever depleting) clip. A quick glance at the Fandom Wiki revealed maybe the most unimaginative names for monsters, ever, despite them clearly having had some twisted thought thrown into their creation. Which was at first a bit disappointing, but then I wondered what someone like a James or a Mary or even more importantly, a Laura -- the eight-year-old girl James also has run-ins with, might name these things should they find themselves face to face with them, and it all kind of made sense. 

Silent Hill 2 does that to you, as well. It simplifies things in a way that’s relatable, but as such makes them somehow more terrifying.

"... waiting silently and patiently for you before pouncing and just causing you trouble. But then they're worse when they can climb walls and become like spiders..."

As you progress monsters naturally get harder and variants of most of the base ones come into play. For example, the ‘Mannequin’ monster, which is animated hips, crotch and thighs, times two, joined vertically, literally, at the actual hip, forges some sort of… well, something. These annoying things will find the most inconspicuous ways to hide, waiting silently and patiently for you before pouncing and just causing you trouble. But then they're worse when they can climb walls and become like spiders, as a later variant.

Like so many of the creatures you face, you’ll need to work out the best ammo-conserving strat to take them down, and melee is usually the best way to do this. But to be effective, especially in the late game, you need to understand telegraphed positioning, animations and timing. A mistimed evade will net you all sorts of trouble and the game’s camera does not play nice in close quarters with unrelenting monsters with rubberbanding arms and lunges. On PS5 you do get a nice little ‘alarm’ bonus (see our “Would you like to know more” box out), but the truth is there’s no real easy fodder here, and their attacks and patterns are just unpredictable enough to always keep you on your toes, especially when playing on Hard Combat (and Puzzle) mode.  

Would you like to know more?
While Silent Hill 2 is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the best experience can be found on the PS5 thanks largely to the DualSense controller and Bloober Team’s utilisation of its unique features. For one, the built-in speaker acts as a radio wave that goes off when enemies are nearby, creating a handy alarm system that tends to help mitigate any overabundance of jump scares and helps players tread cautiously. The haptic feedback controls are also used with various rumblings for different elements of the game, right down to rain, which when in interiors genuinely feels like it’s actually raining in the real world!

James Blunderland

We mentioned the camera woes above, and at times with up to three monsters, especially when they’re all different, in close quarters is essentially a recipe for immediate demise. Even running or corralling can be ineffective. On said Hard Combat mode, we found ourselves losing weight with the amount of jogging back to save points we were constantly doing after successfully dropping even just one monster on our path to whatever, or wherever we were headed next (in Otherworld Brookhaven Hospital in particular). Moreover, adding to the camera woes, is the very, very small hit box for collectible or interactable items and parts of the environment. You’ll see an icon easily enough, but you can’t engage with it unless it fills, and often this requires the camera to be just so, or for James to be positioned awkwardly, which can cause real headaches when you might be in a boss fight scrounging for what little gains are scattered in the area, while also running away and not knowing just how close you are to being run down from behind.

"It’s just when those expectedly slow movement elements marry up against actual issues in the camera and interactivity camp, frustration can rear its ugly..."

To be honest, the camera and the above were the biggest issues overall we had with the game. James’ slow movements, lack of urgency when ‘sprinting’ and equally slow recovery animations were a hard pill to swallow, but are par for the survival horror course, so still forgivable. It’s just when those expectedly slow movement elements marry up against actual issues in the camera and interactivity camp, frustration can rear its ugly head in ways at odds with the game’s otherwise excellent pacing.

The Longest Yard

Depending on your survival horror playstyle and the difficulty levels you choose, Silent Hill 2 can be anywhere between a 12 to 20-plus-hour experience. As mentioned above, we played both the Combat and Puzzle elements on Hard, but it’s awesome that you can select a personal combination of both, and depending on what you choose for Puzzles, how they’re solved is quite different between difficulties. Naturally ammo and health a scarcer on the harder setting, which is where management of your save files might balloon out your experience, working hard to maintain a clean bill of health kill to kill, rather than wasting a sip of a Health Drink just because a stupid Mannequin jumped you from behind a pile of pallets. 

"Design and layout of these, and how you progress through or around locked or impeded elements of them is simply amazing..."

How you scavenge is essentially a window shopping exercise. Shop fronts and most vehicles have breakable windows and tend to hide either ammo, health or other collectables, such as the mysterious polaroids scattered throughout the world. You’ll find pieces of puzzle solutions, and these aren’t unceremoniously placed adjacent to one another and are more brilliantly spread over any broader environment you’re in, especially when pushing through the game’s involved interiors, that you could almost label as ‘dungeons’. Design and layout of these, and how you progress through or around locked or impeded elements of them is simply amazing, and hats off to Bloober for all the updated parts of the world and map it brought into its vision for this version of Silent Hill 2.

We’ve also mentioned pacing a few times, and you will need to be ready for a fairly long journey start to finish, even if you golden path the thing. You won’t receive the shotgun, for example, until the beginning of the second act, and the rifle is even further on than that. Doling out weaponry like this, however, is the hallmark of a studio confident in the design of its game, albeit one with a solid foundation already to build from, and while we spoke at the top of it all about the lemming-like mindset of James, and therefore the player, the breadcrumbs you do follow eventually serve up a heady narrative meal befitting that ‘psychological horror’ tag. And there’s no denying this is very much Bloober Team’s spin or riff on a classic, and one we definitely think is the better of the pair.

Survival horror at its psychological finest.

What’s Boss?

  • Visually stunning with incredible art direction
  • Paced wonderfully, if a little slow to begin with
  • An intense survival horror experience that doesn't rely on jump scares to build tension
  • Excellent puzzles and level design
  • A slowly building narrative that does eventually give you much needed and wanted answers

Not Boss Enough?

  • James is a hard character to care about
  • The lack of an immediate pull can be off-putting early
  • Camera issues in close quarters
  • Woes when collecting or engaging with parts of the world

Not simply a remake of the 2001 classic, Bloober Team's vision for Silent Hill 2 is simply revelatory. Paced beautifully with stunning art direction, audio and minimalist writing, this survival horror experience is a psychological trip that prefers the "idea" of pain, rather than the direct and physical blunt force trauma of other titles in the space.

Learn about our reviews

About the Author

Written By Stephen Farrelly
Stephen Farrelly is a veteran journalist and editor with more than two decades experience in the worlds of gaming, entertainment, lifestyle and sport under his belt. He is a proud pug dad, loves art in all forms but particularly street and tattoo culture, and is the director of Swear Jar...
More from this Author
  • + Den of Wolves - Information, Extortion and Extraction... to the Highest Bidder
  • + “Snake Eyes!” A Sort of Hands-On with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
  • + It's a Festivus Miracle - The Update You Never Saw Coming for Cyberpunk 2077
  • + Everybody was Gun Fu Fighting - SPINE Teaser Trailer is all Kinds of Action Class

    • Explore More in Gaming

    Den of Wolves is from the creators of GTFO and Payday but looks to be far more in-depth and meaningful in its approach to heists and the reasons behind them. Here's everything we know so far...

    We played a *little* bit of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, but also had an in-depth chat with Warhorse Studios about the game's depth, choice and consequence, why we couldn't just create a character rather than play as Henry, and much, much more. Click through to get all the 1403 Bohemia goss!

    Not only the best Indiana Jones game ever made, but also one of the year's best action-adventure romps, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle just continues to get better the more you play it. Our in-depth review will tell you why...

    An out of left-field update is coming to Cyberpunk 2077 in news you never saw coming. And it's happening on the four-year anniversary of the game's initial release date, because CD Projekt RED just does stuff like that!

    SPINE is a Wick-inspired shooter-brawler filled with gun fu and cinematic camerawork that is dynamic to the action at hand. It's ambitious and stunning in its presentation, but will it deliver in full, or just remain flash in the pan?

    The closer we get to New Year's, the closer we get to this gem making its way into our hands, and the hands of your friend, whom you can now play with in real-time. We spoke with the game's Creative Director, and fellow Aussie, Alex Hutchinson. Have a squiz...

    What could a Black Ops game-universe look like? Shared universes are all the pop culture rage right now (though not very new), but does this one, in particular, have the chops to not just stand out, but even dominate? And we're not even adding other Call of Duty titles... this is strictly Black Ops' time to shine. Click through to learn more!

    Available now on Steam alongside a massive title update and the first story DLC, Star Wars Outlaws has re-entered orbit as a game to jump back into. And we've got all the reasons why inside...

    Halls of Torment is a new roguelike survival game that might not stray far enough from the formula laid out by Vampire Survivors, but it has enough new things to keep you coming back. That is, in addition to the awesome retro Diablo-style visuals that look like they're straight from 1998.

    Our definitive Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 review. We dissect its three key pillars in Campaign, Zombies and, of course, Multiplayer and how they stack in the grand scheme of things. There's more here than initially meets the eye, too, so strap in and give it a digest of some possessive reader-type form...

    Comment

    Please note, comments need to be approved before they are published.