Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS5
Price: $69 / £59
Release Date: October 8, 2024
Genre: Surivial horror
I’ve had the privilege of reviewing video games since 2006. Yikes, I feel older than the Great Pyramid of Giza, let alone Pyramid Head typing that. That’s a long damn time. So in that context, I don’t say the following lightly: This remake of Silent Hill 2 could well be the most challenging review of my career.
After witnessing the scariest technical issues of the PC version over 16 grueling, but rarely less than compelling, hours, I feel torn. About as “torn” as hero James Sunderland after his perpetually glum keester has gone 10 rounds with the legendary, scythe-wielding monster I just mentioned.
Despite the performance issues I've had on PC, which I'll go into more detail shortly, there's a lot to admire about Silent Hill 2. When Bloober Team was first assigned the task of remaking the beloved PS2 original, horror fans lost the plot. I admit I was unsure of whether the studio could pull off the job, especially after The Medium, but I'm happy that I've mostly been proven wrong.
Boasting a revamped over-the-shoulder viewpoint compared to the fixed camera points of the PS2 original, this is very much a remake, not a remaster from Bloober. PC performance issues aside, this modernized take on Silent Hill 2 is frequently gorgeous, boasts impeccably directed cutscenes, tweaked puzzles and has the most surprisingly satisfying combat I can recently remember.
Silent Hill 2 is grim, slightly camp despite all the grotesque, slightly sexualized monsters, and if nothing else, it sure ain’t boring. For those on PS5, you’ll find James’ unhinged quest through gaming’s gloomiest town is a classy redux that will bewitch as much as it befuddles through tricky puzzles. Playing on PC? Prepare for some unintended frights.
Read on for my full Silent Hill 2 review…
Silent Hill 2: The Basics
- What is it? An Unreal Engine 5 remake of the PS2 psychological horror classic Silent Hill 2 from 2001, with a new behind-the-shoulder camera, better voice acting, tweaked puzzles and vastly improved combat.
- Who is it for? Obviously fans of the original, but also players who like their scares to be a little more visceral and a little less silly than the Resident Evil series.
- What's the price? Silent Hill 2 costs $69 / £59 for the standard digital edition on both PS5 and PC. Or, you can nab a $79 / £69 digital deluxe edition that includes a digital artbook, digital soundtrack and a special “Pyramid Head Mask” for James.
- What other games has the developer made? Bloober Team, the Polish studio behind the underrated Observer, the okay Blair Witch and 2021’s super-polarizing The Medium.
- What games is this similar to? The general themes, script and puzzles remain faithful to the PS2 original, though modern Silent Hill 2 is considerably longer, with sharper combat that reminds me of the recent(ish) Resident Evil remakes.
Wanna hear a scary story?
The basic plot of Silent Hill 2 hasn't changed since 2001. James Sunderland is one of the glummest leads in gaming. How about throwing us the odd smile, Jimmy, eh? Of course, he's got every right to be gloomy. Getting sent a letter from your dead wife three years after she popped her clogs will do that to a guy.
As Sunderland tries to decipher what's going on and whether his love could actually still be alive, he meets a, ahem, "colorful" bunch of characters. Unsurprisingly, most of the folks you meet aren't having their best day. There's Laura, a young kid who loves to insult James, normally before leading him into traps (James ain't the sharpest tool in the box). You'll also regularly meet a disturbed young woman named Angela, who has a real thing for knives. And who could forget Eddie Dombroski? A creepy dude who enjoys nothing more than eating tubs of ice cream with his bare hands sitting in an empty cinema. At least one person still hasn't lost their appetite.
The main character James has his most meaningful interactions with — aside from the monster with a Toblerone for a head — is Maria. Depending on how much you get lost (more on that later), you'll first meet her around two or so hours into Silent Hill 2. The twist? Maria looks a whole lot like James' wife Mary, at least in Sunderland's mind.
Maria will briefly team up with you at various points, and thankfully I didn't have much trouble keeping her alive during monster attacks. Although sensibly (and somewhat suspiciously) she goes for forty winks in a padded room, just minutes before James is ambushed by the game's other iconic enemy type, the "Bubble Head". Take some free advice: don't let an undead nurse try to heal your next boo-boo. Anyway, Maria remains just as hard to trust as she was in the original.
While the script hasn't aged particularly well, Bloober Team shows so much panache when it comes to picking out really interesting camera angles during Silent Hill 2 in-engine cinematics. The story is certainly far better acted than before, but even if reliving this unnerving tale didn't always hold my interest, hoo-boy did it keep my eyes engaged.
Pipe dreams
Silent Hill is a series that isn't famed for the quality of his combat. So I'm gobsmacked how much I like both meleeing monsters and sinking bullets into their disgusting flesh.
The PS2 original kept guns and ammo resources scarce, which was a deliberate, successful attempt to spook you silly. Now though, especially if you set the combat level to “Light” rather than “Standard” or “Hard”, you feel like James is a few biceps curls away from going full Terminator on the supernatural town’s monstrosities.
Want some advice? Set combat to Light with its added ammo, because honestly, in the game’s more trigger-happy segments, the vastly revamped gunplay is arguably Bloober Team’s greatest achievement when it comes to remaking Silent Hill 2.
The type of enemy you lay a fog-filled smackdown on doesn’t really matter, either. Be it “Lying Figures” or the constantly contorting “Mannequins”, putting these beasties down for good with either James’ trusty pistol, and later the incredibly punchy shotgun and rifle, feels downright devastating. Good job, Bloober.
The first few hours also deliver impactful combat long before you fire your first bullet. As Sunderland dazedly roams the claustrophobic, confusing streets of Eastern South Vale — trying to glue two halves of an old vinyl record together, for some ludicrous reason — you’ll be forced to defend yourself with nothing but a plank of wood.
Thankfully, it's one hell of a plank… that soon gets replaced with an even more satisfying lead pipe a few hours in. One on one encounters with Silent Hill 2’s early beasties are a brutal blast thanks to the clumsy yet compelling dance of whaling on them with X/Square, before dodging away their desperate swipes with a jab of B/Circle.
Combat in Silent Hill 2 may not look pretty — c’mon, what does in this town? — but it definitely feels the devastating part.
Not so Silent Hill
One order of business I want to touch on is the fact that Silent Hill 2 is the greatest piece of false advertising since 1984’s “The Never Ending Story”. And yes, I know full well I’m pilfering an all-time great Lionel Hutz gag from “The Simpsons”. One thing this perpetually foggy burg definitely ain’t is “silent”.
Not that I’m actually complaining. I’m glad this newly 4K (3840 x 2160) town never once went quiet on me during my lengthy PC playthrough. Silent Hill 2 is a masterclass of pitch perfect audio design. If I owned a hat, I’d tip it in the direction of Bloober Team. I know the studio collaborated with a few members of the OG’s (sadly now defunct) Team Silent. Whatever advice those Japanese devs imparted to their Polish counterparts, hot damn was Bloober listening intently.
Silent Hill 2’s audio is a character in itself. My colleague Ryan Epps wrote a lovely piece on the “auditory fear fest” this remake pours into your ears when using a high-end Bose soundbar system.
On the flipside, I experienced James’ twisted psychological horror on my beloved Sony Inzone H5 gaming cans. And my poor ears will never forgive me after fighting an even more off-putting version of the Flesh Lip boss.
My ears will never forgive me. To hell with my cochleas, though: Silent Hill 2 is one of the finest adverts I can think of for investing in one of the best gaming headsets.
Despite several nights of my lobes being thoroughly petrified every time one of Silent Hill 2’s disgusting fiends let off a ghastly wail or scowl in the distance, I’d physically reclench in one of the best gaming chairs.
Silent Hill 2 is an audio masterpiece. Whether through its raspy radio broadcast signal that pierces your hearing everytime a monster is in close proximity or the constantly downbeat score that gradually wears away at your physique, this is an all-time harrowing audio experience. The only game I can recall that’s outdone its sound design? The GOAT of this nerve-shredding genre, Alien: Isolation.
The puzzle problem
Silent Hill 2 remains a perplexing horror/lowkey puzzle game. That was a definitive design choice Team Silent made in 2001, and it’s one Bloober honor 23 years later. Struggle with in-game brain-teasers? Ouch! This remake is going to put you through a more traumatizing experience than receiving a calf massage from Pyramid Head.
Konami’s legendary horror launched on the PS2 waaaaay before YouTube or its subsequent, playthrough-saving video walkthroughs. If you got stumped in a game like Silent Hill 2 back in the day, your best bet of solving those obtuse conundrums was to pony up $20 for a physical guide to help steer you right.
Thankfully, YouTube is very much now a thing. So if you find yourself bamboozled by a cranium-scratching conundrum, I’ll hold nothing against you from seeking out the solution. Hell, I had to use some form of video or written guide at least half a dozen times in the 16 hours it took me to finish 2024’s Silent Hill 2.
To Bloober Team’s credit, the studio gives struggling players a leg up, just as they do with combat (as I previously mentioned). Light, Standard and Hard are once again an option here, with the hardly shocking twist that the former has the clearest hints.
Even on Light, though, I can see players getting seriously flummoxed by multi-layered puzzles that make about as much sense as Resident Evil 2’s card suit key systems.
The big difference between Silent Hill 2 (2024) and Resi 2 (2019)? The latter, in my opinion, for a multitude of reasons, is the vastly superior game, in large part because it’s far more tightly edited. If you know what you’re doing in Capcom’s sublime Raccoon City remake, you can polish it off in under 5 or 6 hours, which feels expertly judged considering you have two, slightly different playthroughs with Claire and Leon to survive.
By contrast, Silent Hill 2 feels padded, and quite frankly, too damn long. And this is coming from someone who recently replayed a large chunk of James’ OG fright fest courtesy of the Silent Hill HD Collection because I was lucky enough that my best pal kept the PS3 Slim I “lent” him a decade ago. Despite remembering Konami’s genre-pushing horror reasonably well, it still took me almost 17 hours to see one of the game’s optional 8 endings. Spoiler: I’d rather buy a timeshare in Silent Hill than replay this rebooted sequel another 7 times.
Though I think it’s somewhat bloated, I do appreciate Bloober inserting a number of canny puzzle tweaks that means even the most diehard of Silent Hard 2 fans may get befuddled on occasion.
For those of you who haven’t played Silent 2 before/for years, may I suggest you have an online guide near to hand? Because trust me, when you get to that damn “Director’s Safe” double combo book/safe puzzle in Brookhaven Hospital, you’ll thank me.
Stutter sadness
Even with Nvidia’s RTX 4090 powering one of the best gaming PCs, there’s a good chance you’re going to have a better experience with Bloober Team’s remake on PS5. Why? Because of a villainous entity that’s scarier than the prospect of smooching Silent Hill 2’s Flesh Lip boss. That would be the dreaded Unreal Engine stutter compilation struggle.
This issue, which causes regular micro stutters throughout the entire game, is particularly noticeable when James is jogging around Silent Hill’s sinister streets. Sadly, there’s just no way to power past shader stutter — just ask poor Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on PC, 18 months after it launched. It’s a constant visual nuisance that even the best TVs or gaming monitors cannot fix regardless of whether they have VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) or Nvidia G-Sync.
I’ve seen Steam’s frame rate counter often show my fps into the high 90s at 4K resolution using Nvidia DLSS. Yet despite the impressive on-screen number, Silent Hill 2 rarely feels smooth to play on PC. Are the stutter issues unbearable? No. Are they annoying enough to break your in-game immersion far more often than they should. Saldy, yes.
Silent Hill 2: Verdict
Silent Hill 2 honors the landmark PS2 scare ‘em up in many ways. It’s constantly creepy, it’s got a knowing “Twin Peaks”, head-messing vibe that throws you a cheeky wink while simultaneously trying to make you soil yourself. And like Rory explained earlier, horror fans are likely going to have a great time with this remake on PS5. Also, pro tip: turn on the “90s Graphic Mode” option if you want to see the game at its most faithful, desaturated best.
The trouble is, if you’re playing on a high-end PC like I did for this review or one of the best gaming laptops, you won’t be able to brute force your way through its shader compilation stutter. That’s a real bummer, because without that distracting defect, I would have definitely considered giving Silent Hill 2 a higher score.
Judging by Rory’s experiences, I feel confident PS5 horror fans are going to have a good time with James’ haunting adventure whether they play in Quality or Performance mode. As for my fellow fans of the best Steam games? I suggest you wait for confirmation of stutter-kiboshing patches before you invest in a PC version that is currently often uncomfortable for entirely unintended reasons.
