SILENT HILL 2 REMAKE
Release date: 8th October 2024
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PC, PS5
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami
Platforms: PC, PS5
Silent Hill 2 is widely regarded as one of the best psychological horror games. This game has won the hearts of many people around the world thanks to its deep story, interesting characters, creepy atmosphere, gorgeous soundtrack, and weird monster designs.
And recently this game got a remake, which was developed by the Polish studio "Bloober Team" (with the participation of several persons from the original "Team Silent").
In our previous article, we have already covered all the basic information about the developers, the creation of the remake, and the new gameplay features:
And in this article, we will have a detailed review of the game. Here we will analyze all the advantages and disadvantages of the remake. What things were improved in the new version of the game? What important elements of SH2 have been lost or broken in the remake? And which version of the game is better for those who want to experience the story of Silent Hill 2 for the first time? Let's find out the answers to all these questions.
The Town of Silent Hill
One of the best features of SH2 Remake is how well the town is recreated. The foggy town of Silent Hill looks beautiful in the remake, and it is interesting to explore. The town is not as open-worldish as in Silent Hill Downpour or Deadly Premonition, but nevertheless the game gives us a lot of freedom.
The developers did not change the map of Silent Hill much, but at the same time they added many new mini-locations for us to visit. Now we can get inside several different cafes, a music store, a motel, a movie theater, a car repair shop, and many other places.
This was sorely lacking in the original version of SH2. There were almost no optional places to visit, and the original developers clearly did not have time to fully flesh out the idea with the town exploration. But Bloober Team had much more time (they worked on the remake for 5 years) - so they managed to work out the town in more detail.
It's also nice to see that the remake added the ability to walk around a creepy "alternate" version of the town. Such feature was in Silent Hill 1, and now it is back again. The segment in the alternate town is quite short (there are literally a couple of streets) - but it is well done and atmospheric.
In my opinion, the episodes in the town are done very well in the remake. But there are not as many of them as I would like. All episodes in the "foggy version" and in the "alternate version" of the town together take up only about 25~30% of the gameplay time.
Exploring the Buildings
The remaining 70% of the time is taken up by episodes inside various buildings. The abandoned Woodside Apartments, Brookhaven Hospital, the Toluca Prison, and other places.
And these episodes turned out noticeably worse. The problem is rooted in the fact that the developers had a strange idea that each location must be significantly enlarged and made 2-3 times longer in terms of gameplay time.
For example, the Toluca Prison in the original version wasn't very big, and you could complete it in about an hour. But here the prison was made really huge, and now it takes 4 hours. In the original game, the Brookhaven Hospital could be completed in about three hours - and here it may take 6 or 7 hours. And so with almost every location.
Such prolongation is achieved by adding many new rooms to each location. But more often than not, these new rooms are not particularly interesting. They are constructed from template assets and serve simply as fillers.
That's why, during hours of wandering around huge buildings with a bunch of similar rooms, the game becomes boring. The pace of the game is lost, the atmosphere is weakened, and you just want the long and tedious location to end as soon as possible.
It's highly likely that all locations were prolonged in such a way simply because Konami's management gave the order to the development team to stretch the game to 30 hours by any means possible. So that no one could say that the game is too short for a $60 product.
But such senseless stretching of all locations was a mistake, and it greatly spoils the remake (especially in those episodes that take place inside the buildings).
Graphics and Design
Graphically, the game is done quite well. The town in the remake looks very impressive, and the forest at the beginning is also beautiful. You can really enjoy looking at these sights.
But inside the buildings, the game looks not as impressive. And you can feel that some rooms were put together hastily. But overall, everything is done quite decently for a horror game.
I also liked that many easter eggs and little references to the original version of SH2 are hidden in the designs of some locations. For example, you can notice some paintings from the original game on the walls, or find some familiar items in the rooms. There is even a special achievement trophy for finding these easter eggs.
The camera has changed a lot in the remake. The original version of the game used an unusual hybrid camera: sometimes it showed the character from the back, and sometimes it used various fixed "cinematic" angles. And the remake only uses the behind-the-back type of camera.
This has some advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that inspecting some rooms becomes easier thanks to the behind-the-back camera. But the downside is that with only one camera mode, the game becomes more monotonous.
The hybrid camera in the original version brought a lot of variety to the visual style (and sometimes helped to build up the atmosphere). And now for almost 30 hours we will have to look at the back side of James Sunderland's mighty green jacket, covering almost a quarter of the screen.
The models of James and other characters in the remake evoke mixed feelings. Sometimes they look great and almost photorealistic, and sometimes they can look quite cringey.
The main problems are facial animation and hair. Often in the cutscenes you can notice that the hair of the characters behaves strangely, and their facial expressions sometimes look ridiculous. Such things can significantly spoil some important scenes.
Angela and James especially often have problems with facial animation. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the developers could not decide on the designs of these two characters for a long time - and redesigned their faces at the last moment, literally a couple of months before the release.
But the monsters don't have faces or hair, so they don't suffer from such problems. The monsters in the remake look just as creepy and grotesque as in the original version. And in addition, the developers managed to improve the walking animation of some creatures.
Also, each monster now has 3 or 4 variations of the design. They are not very different, and during the battle, the differences are quite hard to notice. But still, this is a nice addition.
Battles with the Monsters
The main problem with the original version of SH2 was the poor combat. In fact, the game only had three types of standard enemies (not counting bosses and rare monsters) - lying figure, mannequin, and nurse. And only 6 types of weapons.
And of course, killing three types of enemies with six weapons throughout the entire game was not very exciting. As a result, battles with monsters were almost like a routine formality.
And everyone was sure that these problems would be fixed in the remake. That the developers will surely add new types of monsters and new weapons. Or maybe introduce some elements of stealth and defenselessness in the spirit of Forbidden Siren and SH Shattered Memories. But unfortunately, these hopes were in vain.
The developers simply transferred the old gameplay to a new engine similar to "Alone in the Dark 2024" and "Evil Within", but they still did not solve the key problems of the combat system.
Firstly, almost no new regular monsters were added to the game. The only new enemy in the remake is a "spider mannequin". It looks like a regular mannequin, but it can crawl on walls. However, it is weak and rare - so this enemy doesn't add much variety to the combat.
Secondly, the developers did not add new weapons - and even removed some weapons that were available in the original version. The remake lost the famous "Great Knife" weapon. Also, a wooden stick and an iron pipe are now basically became the same weapon.
Thirdly, no stealth elements have been added to the game. Stealth mechanics could have made the gameplay more interesting. But the game is built in such a way that we simply have to shoot and kill all the monsters that we meet on our way.
As a result, we have a very long 30-hour horror game where four types of monsters must be killed with five types of weapons. And the game quite often imposes combat on us - in one playthrough, you will have to kill about 400 annoying enemies.
At the same time, even on the maximum difficulty level "Hard", monsters are almost defenseless against firearms (a shotgun and a rifle will usually neutralize any ordinary enemy with one shot). And on "Normal", the game feels like you're playing with an immortality cheat.
Of course, similar problems were also present in the original version of SH2. But for a 10-hour game from 2001, this was forgivable. And for a 30-hour project in 2024, this is simply awful.
Overall, battles with the monsters are definitely the weak point of the game. But at the same time, the new developers still managed to improve some aspects compared to the original version of the game:
1) The fights with mannequins have been redesigned quite well. These monsters have learned to hide and suddenly attack from cover.
2) Now you can manually aim your weapon at monsters (the original version had an auto-aiming system, like in the early Resident Evil games).
3) The boss fights in the remake became noticeably better than in the original version. Bloober Team managed to improve the gameplay in boss fights, while preserving the general concept of each fight.
Therefore, the combat in the remake only becomes interesting on boss fights and on some "hide and seek" moments with mannequins. And the fights with other monsters are just annoying and tedious. But even fights with mannequins gradually become irritating when the game throws the same mannequins at you 200 times over and over again.
The Puzzles
The remake has about twice as many puzzles as the original version. All the old puzzles have been remade, and also the developers have added a few new ones.
Before the release of the game, fans had a lot of concerns about the puzzles. Because they are not only an important gameplay feature, but also part of the symbolism in Silent Hill games. And many people were afraid that the Polish developers would ruin everything.
But fortunately, nothing terrible happened here. Bloobers were able to create interesting puzzles, while more or less preserving the signature symbolism.
The difficulty levels of the puzzles are also well balanced. On "normal", everything can be solved quickly and intuitively. And on "hard", you will find some really brain-breaking puzzles similar to the legendary piano puzzle from SH1.
Storytelling in the Remake
Silent Hill 2 was a very story-driven game. And the delivery of the story was truly amazing. But unfortunately, the remake now has some serious problems with storytelling:
1) Due to the stretching of the game to 30 hours, the pace of the narrative was broken. The gaps between the important cutscenes became too long. Because of that, the feeling of intrigue and emotional involvement is reduced. And also, the focus of the game shifts significantly from following the story to wandering around huge buildings and killing monsters.
2) The developers removed several notes and diaries from the game that were important for understanding the story. And they also cut out some important phrases from the dialogues. For example, they removed the main phrase that explained the role of PyramidHead in the story. Without this phrase, it will be impossible to understand the role and true nature of this monster.
3) Also, the Bloobers added many new notes and diaries that have absolutely nothing to do with the stories of James, Eddie, and Angela. These notes will only distract players from the main story and scatter attention.
4) In the original version, any note or diary that you find in the game could be re-read any time you want. But in the remake, the developers made a strange move - now you can only re-read new notes created by Bloober Team. And you cannot read again the old notes, which were created by the original Team Silent members. This is a very unfair and extremely irritating move from the Polish developers.
5) Text comments have been removed from the game. In the original version, text comments were an important storytelling tool that was used to transmit some parts of the story-related information to the player. But now much of this has been lost.
6) The remake suffers from weak cutscene direction. Some scenes and dialogues in the game look almost like a parody. And this also has a negative impact on the perception of the story and characters.
7) The developers also cut and censored a lot of things that were related to the sexual themes.
8) Also, important scenes were cut out from some endings. From my favorite ending, "In Water", they removed the scene beside the bed. And from the "Maria" ending, they deleted the scene with reading the letter. Only the "Leave" ending remained uncut, but even there the new developers managed to ruin the final dialogue with Mary.
Ultimately, the storytelling in the remake suffered greatly due to all these problems. And this can significantly spoil the impression of a wonderful story.
How the Characters have Changed
Another problem is that some characters were changed too much in the remake.
1) In the original version, James Sunderland was a somewhat weird guy. You can easily notice that he was very withdrawn and had a hard time communicating with other people. And such personality was very fitting for his story. But in the remake, this aspect of James was lost. Now he is more like a slightly older version of Leon Kennedy - both in personality, in appearance, and voice acting.
2) Eddie Dombrowski turned out to be too pathetic and spineless in the remake. Therefore, now the final plot twist with him seems not very believable.
3) Angela Orosco in the original version was perceived as a person who was very mature for her age. But here she seems almost like a mentally retarded person. The heroine suffered greatly from the inexpressive voice acting and poor facial animation. And in addition, the developers added a new scene with Angela in the park, where she just acts like an idiot for two minutes and can't understand any phrase correctly (and nothing else happens in that scene).
4) Maria has lost her weird mysterious aura, and became just like an ordinary woman in the remake. On the one hand, she now evokes a little more sympathy - but the new image does not fit very well with her role in the story.
5) The only character who turned out well in the remake is Laura. The scenario writers managed to convey her personality correctly in the dialogues, and the new character design is quite good.
New Endings
For several years, rumors have been circulating on the Internet that Bloober Team was planning to add two new endings to the remake. In the end, these rumors turned out to be true - the remake really has two additional endings. They can be unlocked on repeated playthroughs.
However, the new endings turned out to be weak and too low-budget. They give no opportunities to significantly influence the development of the story or save any of the characters. And the endings themselves are just short 1-minute scenes.
The first ending is called "Stillness". In fact, this is the same ending as "In Water", but with a slightly changed final scene. And here the ending is cut even more (not only the dialogue beside the bed is removed, but even Mary's letter is cut out too). It feels like this was an early beta version of the cutscene for "In Water" - but the developers felt sorry to delete this beta-cutscene and they left it in the game under the guise of a new ending.
The second ending is called "Bliss". It is quite bittersweet, but very poorly done. The developers simply added +20 seconds of video to one of the existing cutscenes in the game, and called it a new ending. Moreover, the plot logic in this ending is quite strange.
Overall, the additional endings are disappointing. The Bloober Team had 5 years to come up with new interesting endings for the SH2 story. But in the end, the endings look like they were added hastily and without any serious thought.
Other Bonuses
In addition to the new endings, the remake also added several other new unlockable bonuses:
1) On the second playthrough, a pet store opens in the town, where you can find a note about the Almighty Dog Mira. Cool idea! But the DOG ending itself was censored a little, removing funny erotic pictures from the final credits.
2) There are no bonus costumes in the game, but instead, two funny masks for James were added - the PyramidHead mask and Mira the Dog's mask. They can be bought for money as DLC.
3) The developers added various video filters to the remake, like in the Puppet Combo games. You can make the image look like a videotape recording, black and white, black and red, or something else. But the game is poorly optimized for these filters. Most often, it becomes unplayable with the filters (it's too hard to see the important items) or just looks ugly.
4) The UFO ending has been completely remade. The new version turned out to be quite funny, but it's also extremely low-budget. In 2024, I would like to see something more than a dozen of static pictures.
The developers also removed a couple of bonuses from the game that were present in the original version of SH2:
1) The bonus weapon "Hyper Spray" was removed. SH2 had several versions of this spray, and the strongest one allowed you to do all sorts of crazy things (for example, make the two PyramidHeads fight each other).
2) The original version had a secret 4th difficulty mode for the puzzles called "Extra Riddle Mode". The remake doesn't have it.
3) The rating system, where the game rated you on a 10-star system after the final credits, was also removed. Although this may be for the best, because the rating system in Silent Hill 2 was very weird.
Music
The remake mainly uses Akira Yamaoka's music from the original version of Silent Hill 2. Some tracks are inserted in the original form, and some are noticeably rearranged.
Among the rearranged tracks, almost all turned out well. The only track that was a little disappointing was the new version of the main theme, "Theme of Laura".
In addition to old tracks and re-arrangements, the remake also contains some new tracks. The additional music was written by Polish composer Arkadiusz Reikowski.
Among the new tracks, I liked the melancholic guitar music that plays while James walks around the town with Maria in the middle of the game. It helps create the atmosphere in this scene. But the other new tracks are a bit bland. They are not annoying, but not memorable either.
Ultimately, the soundtrack in the remake is very good, but it is mainly based on the old tracks. And it's a bit disappointing that we almost didn't get any new music from Akira Yamaoka.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere in the game varies greatly depending on the specific episode. Some things turned out well, and some - not so well.
1) The creepiest and most horror-ish moment in the remake is the encounter with the boss "Abstract Daddy" towards the end of the game. It makes a strong impression. The first fight with PyramidHead was also quite unnerving. But there are almost no other really scary episodes in the game.
2) While wandering around the town, the atmosphere of loneliness and melancholy is conveyed well. Although these episodes feel more like SH Downpour than SH2. And it's a bit of a shame that the game constantly forces you to be distracted by breaking the windows of all the cars in the town (in my opinion, this gimmick with robbing cars only harms the atmosphere).
3) The episodes inside the buildings (Woodside, Brookhaven, Prison, Labyrinth) turned out to be boring for the most part due to the fact that these locations became too long and tedious. At first, you can feel some atmosphere there - but soon it disappears, and you start to constantly catch yourself thinking, "Oh my gosh, when will this boring location finally end?"
4) In some places, the game starts to feel like SH Homecoming. This mainly happens in the alternate version of Blue Creek Apartments and the alternate Brookhaven Hospital. These locations in the remake have almost nothing in common with the original version of SH2. Now there is a different design (visually very similar to Homecoming), a linear structure of locations, and a large bias towards shooting monsters. So these episodes were quite cringey.
5) Perhaps the best part where the remake managed to faithfully reproduce the atmosphere of SH2 was the episode in the Lakeview Hotel. The developers didn't change the hotel too much, they didn't stretch it too much, and they didn't overfill the building with monsters. As a result, this episode managed to preserve the mysterious and melancholic atmosphere of the hotel from the original game.
Missed opportunities
It is also worth mentioning separately that the remake doesn't have some important things that many expected from it:
1) The additional scenario "Born from a Wish" was removed from the game. This mini-scenario about Maria was a very significant component of the SH2 story, but it is not present in the remake.
2) The interaction with PyramidHead has not been improved in any way. I had hopes that PH would play a more important gameplay role in the remake - and that during the game you would be able to hide and run away from it, like from pursuers in Forbidden Siren and Clock Tower. But in the end, developers only added two very short 30-second "run away" scenes, which were implemented surprisingly poorly.
3) Everyone hoped to see new creepy monsters with designs by Masahiro Ito in the remake. But it turned out that there is not a single truly new design in the remake (even the spider-mannequin crawling on the walls is still the same ordinary mannequin in terms of design). So we only got a few slightly changed design variations for the old monsters.
4) Many fans also expected that the remake would add new songs by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, since this singer essentially became the voice of Silent Hill. But she was not invited to the project, and no vocal tracks were added to the remake. So in the end, Mary went to make a new song not for SH2, but for Clock Tower Rewind instead.
5) The game does not allow you to re-watch cutscenes or replay your favorite episodes. And you can't even re-read half of the story-related notes and diaries. In addition, the game only allows you to make 10 saves. So choose wisely where you are making a save, if you want to replay some episode or boss-fight later.
Pros and Cons of the Game
Pros:
+ Good graphics
+ The town is recreated very beautifully
+ You can visit several new mini-locations in the town
+ Creepy monster designs
+ Boss fights were improved in the remake
+ Fights with mannequins became more interesting
+ Excellent soundtrack
+ Pleasant melancholic atmosphere in the town and hotel
+ The episode with Abstract Daddy is quite scary
+ Interesting puzzles
+ Many references to the original game
Cons:
- Some locations are too long and tedious
- The game becomes quite boring sometimes
- Poor direction of cutscenes and dialogues
- Characters' personalities were changed in the wrong ways
- Some important notes, phrases and scenes were cut out
- The remake damages the storytelling and pace of the game
- New endings are done poorly
- The sexual themes are heavily censored
- There are only 4 standard types of monsters in the game
- Only 5 types of weapons (even less than before)
- The game only allows you to make 10 saves
- "Born from a Wish" scenario was removed
The Verdict:
The remake is certainly not as good as the original version, but nevertheless it is a nice gift for fans of Silent Hill. Here you can walk around a beautifully recreated town from your favorite game, visit new interesting mini-locations, and also look for all sorts of cool easter eggs and references. In some cutscenes, you will probably feel some degree of cringe, but in general, the remake will certainly give a solid dose of nostalgic pleasure to the long-time fans.
However, I cannot recommend such a remake to everyone else. You will simply spoil your impressions of the story due to the poor delivery of the plot, weak cutscene direction, broken pace, and the insane lengthiness of the game. Therefore, it would be better to play the original version of SH2 first.
SH2 Remake Trailer
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Author of the article: SilentPyramid
Publication date: 03.11.2024
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