Silent Hill 2: Remake Review- A study in blood

If you know anything about the horror genre, the name "Silent Hill" has probably whizzed by your ears. To be completely honest, I am not entirely sure where my familiarity comes from, but Silent Hill feels like a household name in my brain.

I've been a fan of this games' developers, Bloober Team, for a little while now so when I heard they were in charge of remaking this cult classic I knew I had to try it.

Thing is, Bloober has never made a combat oriented game before, with their projects slowly evolving into what we can see here today. Their previous venture was something very ideologically similar: a game called The Medium (review also on this site). If you have played or taken a look at that game, you can easily tell why Konami figured entrusting the task of remaking such a beloved game would be a good idea, mostly due to the similarities in horror-themed environments in that game.

Story

As with most other horror games or movies, one should suspend their disbelief while trying to make sense of what is happening here. More to the point, I personally cannot handle the thought of enduring the absolutely harrowing experiences that James (our protagonist) is dealing with. There's a lot of weird chasing little girls around that absolutely do not want anything to do with us and those same little girls screw us over at every turn.

All that out of the way, it's essentially the classic cat and mouse game, with some extra spice coming from side characters, who put their own little weird spins on it. I would not say any of us play horror games for their thought-provoking stories. (perhaps with the exception of Soma :D )

Gameplay

The game is mechanically indistinguishable from the likes of Resident Evil 4. Blonde dude with a parted hairstyle, in a 3rd person view armed with a pistol, a shotgun and a rifle takes on crazy shit. The execution is slightly different however, with this game being a lot less over-the-top and a lot more claustrophobic. Most of your time is spent in dark corridors, checking around every corner and dragging your maimed feet along the bloody floor.

Similarly to Resident Evil, I feel like this game overstays its welcome. Specifically, whereas Capcom's game wore me out by its 16th hour, this game had me heading for the exit at around 10h. It makes sense too, as the time you're able to keep a player hooked is directly tied to the complexity of your mechanics.

Resident Evil had a couple palette cleansers around every chapter, mostly in the form of open world exploration scenes or general moments of tranquility, but also in the form of vast enemy variety. Silent Hill is quite a lot more reserved in these aspects. Most of your playtime revolves around fighting the same 3-4 enemy types, with the same guns, while chasing similar find-the-object puzzles. These are fine in isolation, but I think the biggest culprit for my lack of enthusiasm are the puzzles... you cannot ask me to find 3 objects for the 5th consecutive time, because you'll bore me greatly.

The distinguishing aspect

The best part about this game is undoubtedly the atmosphere. It reminded me a lot of the constant feeling of dread I had on my first playthrough of Dead Space. The sound design of nearby monsters is a constant anxiety trigger and I think that entire thing is so well done. Enemies are very different in their behavior and their techniques of abusing you.

Conclusion

Overall, this game is a fantastic horror experience that unfortunately does not have the required mechanics variety to sustain its entire runtime. If they'd have made it a shorter experience I would have appreciated it more. It would have been harder to explain to the average gamer why they are charging 60 bucks for 10h, but as with all things in life, sometimes less is more.