Silent Hill 2 Remake: Rebuilding a Classic

Rebuilding a game as storied and Iconic as Silent Hill 2 from the ground up is a daunting task. You're taking an iconic piece of work, loved by millions and attempting to recreate it in a way that the fans will love while also adding your own additions to create something fresh. I can't imagine the stress of attempting to the walk tight rope between honouring the original and making something new for fans to enjoy. I am happy to say that Bloober Team walks that rope with skill, only teetering a few times in the wind here and there.

Set in the town of Silent Hill Maine, Silent Hill 2 follows James Sunderland, a grieving widower who comes to the town after receiving a letter from his dead wife. As James begins to explore the town he quickly discovers its strange and deadly inhabitants who hunt him through the abandoned streets.

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Silent Hill 2 is the atmosphere. The thick fog, the abandoned buildings, the eerie music. Silent Hill is an almost dreamlike, and surreal horror experience. The atmosphere it creates is integral to the game. Bloober Team has done an excellent job recreating that atmosphere with the remake. Walking through the streets of Silent Hill is just a stressful, and fun here as it ever was in the original. I loved hearing strange noises from all around me, unable to see what it was that was lurking just out of site.

Bloober team took full advantage of the technical advancements that have been achieved since the original. Silent Hill is a much more fleshed out location, full of different buildings to explore. It was really cool to see the town recreated so lovingly. While later I will discuss some of the slight padding issues throughout the game, every addition to the streets of Silent Hill felt like a true expansion to what the original game intended to depict. If I were to have one criticism of Silent hill 2 remakes presentation, it would be that I wouldn't have minded a bit more of the fog. It adds so much to Silent Hill 2's identity, and I sometimes felt that I could see just a bit too much at times.

One of the standout changes in Silent Hill 2 when compared to the original is the character's. While I absolutely love the campy, cheesiness of the original, the awkward line delivery, and sometimes laughable voice acting would certainly not have worked in this modern rendition. The awkwardness of the original certainly has its charm, and lends to the surreal tone, but the performances offered in this remake are absolute stand outs.

Luke Roberts, gives James a whole new range of emotions. You can hear the struggle in his voice, you can feel the weight, and guilt that he feels. Some of Jame's dialogue in this game gave me chills from just how well it was preformed. In my opinion Luke Roberts more than deserved best performance at the Game Awards last year, and it is a crime that he did not get it.

Along side Luke Roberts the other voice actors all deliver stellar performances. Scott Haining as Eddie was brilliantly off putting, and creepy, and Gianna Kiehl preforms beautifully as Angela. But perhaps my favorite performance in the entire game is Salome Gunnarsdóttir as Mary and Maria. She plays these two similar yet so different characters beautifully. In particular, her final speech at the end of the game brought me to tears. The way she expresses all the pain, anger, love, and fear that Mary feels is so raw, and genuine.

Playing Silent Hill 2 Remake feels great, perhaps too great. The original Silent Hill 2, was clunky with rough combat. However, this incentivised the player to focus on running from their enemies instead of fighting them. I really enjoyed this approach to the original and it leaves me a little torn on the remakes implementation of combat. The Remake feels much more focused on combat, in particular the implementation of a dodge button gives you a whole new way to avoid taking damage, and feels as though it incentives you to stand, and fight. While doing so is fun, for me it felt as thought it took a little away from the vibe of the game. James is supposed to be a normal guy desperately making his way through the town, but with these new additions you become a bit of a killing machine.

The game also feels as though it forces you into more situations where you are required to stand and fight, and again while this is fun, and I did enjoy it, I did also find myself kinda missing the ability to run away sometimes. Running is still a viable option, however it feels less stressful as I know I can simply turn around and easily win a fight.

To balance this easier combat, the game sometimes feels as though it massively increases the health of some of the later enemies, making them more irritating than fun to fight at times.

Where these changes to the combat shine is during the boss fights. While a few are relatively unchanged, most of the boss fights in the game feel so much better than they did in the original. A particular stand out happens later on in the game where you must face the boss in meat freezer shrouded by smoke. It turns into a bit of a game of hide and seek where you have to avoid getting surprised by your enemy if you wish to defeat him. These changes felt good and it was in these moments that I especially understood the new combat system.

The game is incredibly tense, and so fun to play. There are some really fun and unique puzzles that wouldn't have been possible in the original due to the camera perspective. I quite enjoyed attempting to solve them even if there were a few here and there that totally stumped me, and required me to look up the answers.

On the whole the additions to the game feel earned, however, as mentioned earlier the game does have a bit of a minor padding issue. Given that the original is only about 8 hours long it is understandable that Bloober team felt they needed to add more content to justify consumers spending £60 on this game. However, doubling the game length from 8 to 16 hours will inevitably lead to some parts feeling needlessly drawn out. Most of the additions to the game felt good and I was glad I got to spend more time in Silent Hill, but there certainly times (particularly in later sections of the game) where I felt that an area had over stayed its welcome just a bit. None of this ruined this experience for me, but it is noticeable enough for me to mention it.

Revisiting Silent Hill in high definition was a joy. Despite some flaws here and there, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a near perfect game in my opinion and even rivals the original in some aspects. If you're a fan of the survival horror genre than you've probably already played this, but if you haven't, I urge you to give it a shot.