Silent Hill 2 review

Our VerdictSilent Hill 2’s remake is a fun but flawed take on a flawless gem.

Our Verdict

Silent Hill 2’s remake is a fun but flawed take on a flawless gem.

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Need to knowWhat is it?A remake of a horror legend with a few surprises of its own.Expect to pay£60/$70Release dateOctober 8, 2024DeveloperBloober Team SAPublisherKonamiReviewed onIntel i9-13900HX, RTX 4090 (laptop), 32GB RAMSteam DeckUnknownLinkOfficial siteCheck Amazon407 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆

Need to know

What is it?A remake of a horror legend with a few surprises of its own.Expect to pay£60/$70Release dateOctober 8, 2024DeveloperBloober Team SAPublisherKonamiReviewed onIntel i9-13900HX, RTX 4090 (laptop), 32GB RAMSteam DeckUnknownLinkOfficial siteCheck Amazon407 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆

Check Amazon407 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆

Check Amazon

407 Amazon customer reviews☆☆☆☆☆

☆☆☆☆☆

WE COM !

(Image credit: Konami)

Walking towards a broken welcome sign

The remake’s treatment of the series' signature fog is just as remarkable. It seems to roll over the scenery, pool in dirty corners, and settle on the ground. It’s a choking physical presence that can move and change intensity, something protagonist James Sunderland has to force himself through, rather than a simple cloudy overlay trying to obscure my view.

(Image credit: Konami)

Meeting Pyramid Head

And it’s a good thing, too, because while the story’s general structure is the same as before, the maps for each major location have been completely redesigned. All of the key features are still in there, somewhere—a doctor’s office, an ornate clock, gallows in the middle of an unnervingly large area—but appropriately it plays like a hazy recollection of the original, with snatches of the familiar transformed into something new and different. Much like being trapped in a nightmare, it’s a collision of the familiar and unfamiliar, leading you down paths you think you know, only for you to become totally lost. My old experiences and favourite FAQs were of little use here, and that helped the remake feel as fresh and dangerous as the original.

Some of these curveballs come from the game’s mix of new and redesigned riddles. The standard difficulty is pitched just right, giving me something flavourful and satisfying to solve without needing to be tracked in a notebook. Sadly, the new physical puzzles are less successful, too often involving pushing a box from one place to another, and the chance to update or omit a few of the original’s less exciting challenges wasn’t taken. Dropping a few cans down a third floor garbage chute to dislodge a key item wasn’t a fun, clever, or thematically relevant puzzle 23 years ago, and it hasn’t got any better with age.

Many of the better puzzles that didn’t make the cut have been transformed into non-interactive echoes of the past. Newcomers will no doubt wonder why anyone would leave a horseshoe covered in wax lying around, but returning fans will immediately understand the reference. These optional discoveries silently seem to imply that James' 2024 adventure is just the latest loop in an endless nightmare, layers upon layers of jumbled torments, but they also serve as an awkward reminder that I’m playing another developer’s take on Silent Hill 2, rather than the original team’s.

Monster mash

(Image credit: Konami)

James fighting a monster

As clever and restrained as Silent Hill 2 can be, sometimes its horrors take on more straightforward monstrous forms, writhing in corridors and spitting… I don’t even want to wonder what fluid these tied-up sacks of flesh spit, really. Even on the default combat difficulty setting, and with decades of experience with the original game under my belt, these beings are still vicious—to survive, I had to treat even the lowliest monsters with caution.

Or bash what I hoped were their heads in with an iron pipe. Close range combat is scrappy and frantic. Technically, it’s also very simplistic—just keep smashing the attack button until they fall over—but when we’re talking about a desperate man trying to fight off unknowable, hideous entities with whatever he has to hand, an elegant, complex system doesn’t necessarily sound like a good fit. Basic, violent clobbering makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately, it also has diminishing returns.

(Image credit: Konami)

James and Laura by a wall

Shattered memories

(Image credit: Konami)

A torture device

In many places Bloober Team has seized the opportunity to offer a fresh twist on a true classic, and pulled it off perfectly. I enjoy listening to Akira Yamaoka’s new arrangements of his old soundtrack—a cursed radio screeching through my headphones as I explore old locations given a second lease on life. I love being able to quickly brush James up against a door to see if it’s locked instead of making him manually rattle a corridor’s worth of handles. I’m thrilled just to be back here, to have an excuse to play some version of this amazing story again.

But the stumbles can’t be ignored, and at times even manage to display a worrying lack of understanding of the source material. A few key cutscenes, the sort that sent shivers up my spine on far weaker hardware, fall flat in their modern forms, the direction stiff and wooden where it used to be raw and emotive. Mystery and suspense is too often replaced with unnecessary close-up reaction shots and another bunch of leggy monsters in the shadows, as if someone was concerned that the one game that can definitively prove it’s adored for being a subtle, understated, psychological experience might be called boring instead of brave.

When it’s good it’s excellent: any game that hews as closely as this one does to something with Silent Hill 2’s high standards can go toe to toe with any other modern horror game. But it relies too much on its repetitive, violent encounters, and I just wish it had been a little more careful to capture the spirit, as well as the look, of the original.

Silent Hill HD Collection: Price Comparison

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The Verdict78Read our review policySilent Hill 2Silent Hill 2’s remake is a fun but flawed take on a flawless gem.

The Verdict

78Read our review policySilent Hill 2Silent Hill 2’s remake is a fun but flawed take on a flawless gem.

78Read our review policy

Silent Hill 2Silent Hill 2’s remake is a fun but flawed take on a flawless gem.

Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2’s remake is a fun but flawed take on a flawless gem.

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More about silent hill 2Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 was more remix than remake and that’s why it was greatPlayers have decoded even more secret messages in the Silent Hill 2 remake

More about silent hill 2

Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 was more remix than remake and that’s why it was greatPlayers have decoded even more secret messages in the Silent Hill 2 remake

Silent Hill 2

Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 was more remix than remake and that’s why it was great

James approaches an armchair in front of a television displaying static

Players have decoded even more secret messages in the Silent Hill 2 remake

LatestWatching an all-romances speedrun of the legendarily janky Fallout: New Vegas is a delightSee more latest►

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Our Verdict#

WE COM !#

Monster mash#

Shattered memories#

Our Verdict

WE COM !

Monster mash

Shattered memories