SILENT Hill is a horror series fondly remembered by fans as one of the best out there.
What people fail to remember is that the Silent Hill series was full of stinkers, but the series has been memorialised thanks to the strength of the sequel.
The over-the-shoulder camera doesn’t change the tense atmosphere[/caption]
Silent Hill 2 remains one of the best games of all time, thanks to its dense fog masking the psychological horror elements.
However, these days remakes seem to throw out everything that made the original games moody and mysterious.
Remake means better graphics, and teams want to show off those graphics by putting bright lighting all over the scenery.
You only need to look at the Until Dawn and Horizon Zero Dawn remakes to see how art direction has been thrown out the window.
Silent Hill 2 was groundbreaking in 2001, telling an adult story about trauma and guilt and not trying to hide it.
It puts a mirror up to James Sunderland, and sometimes even the player, and shows the evil inside everyone.
I was not assured that the remake would keep the drama of the original when I saw that I could put Sunderland in a Pyramid Head mask made of pizza boxes.
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Pizza Head aside, as soon as you actually get into the game, it’s clear that Bloober Team really do understand what made Silent Hill 2 great.
The town of Silent Hill isn’t lit up like a casino, you can’t see the glistening drips rippling off every monster, it’s as mysterious as it’s meant to be.
It’s not perfect. It’s jarring when you see trophies pop up with quirky names. But it’s 2024 and that’s what gamers have come to expect.
There are even improvements for long-time fans. The things that were made to catch you off guard in the original have been slightly altered to spook even experts.
Puzzles have also been changed, and there is more freedom in how you solve them. You no longer have to go step-by-step, you can skip some if you know the path ahead.
Silent Hill 2 thrived thanks to its purposeful camera placement, and we were concerned about the new over-the-shoulder view.
However, thanks to clever level design, Bloober creates the same feeling of unease even with a closer camera.
You still feel trapped as you roam the hospital, apartments, or prisons, and feel relief when you escape and walk back into the foggy streets.
From the performances to the music to the sound design – industrial machinery, sirens, radio static, and dragging chains – everything combines to create an impressively oppressive atmosphere.
It’s worth playing the remake for these changes alone, as it really adds to the tense atmosphere.
Silent Hill 2’s remake brings all the best parts of the original to the forefront, and it’s everything we could have asked for.
If you want to read more about recent games, check out our Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom review.
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