Silent Hill 2 is extremely depressing (and that’s why it’s fantastic)

There is no enjoyment to be found in Bloober Team’s remake, but that is precisely as it should be.

The Silent Hill 2 remake is the most unpleasant gaming experience I can remember.

Expecting to read a very negative critique of developer Bloober Team’s recreation of Konami and Team Silent’s survival horror classic with an opening sentence like that. However, in this exceedingly uncommon situation, total and relentless suffering is indeed a good thing. Bloober Team has managed to maintain the dark and gloomy essence of the original Silent Hill 2 in this remake, making it a truly unsettling and terrifying experience.

The adventure starts with sound and sight. The dense, impenetrable fog enveloping Silent Hill is a key part of the story’s iconic imagery, and the remake’s advanced volumetric effects make it even denser and more isolating than before. Escaping the monster-filled streets should bring relief, yet you must seek refuge in some of the gloomiest, most disgustingly depressing homes you have ever encountered. A significant portion of Silent Hill 2 focuses on a decline, with a noticeable change in the visual design of each region to represent this spiraling descent. Places appear neglected and deserted at first, like apartment buildings with peeling wallpaper and empty cabinets. However, if you continue forward, the architecture will start to feel more suffocating. Familiar forms and patterns are substituted with rough, fragmented options, leading to the complete transformation of the space into a rusting, deteriorating shell. As you continue to press forward, what begins as unsettling becomes increasingly terrifying.

The famous fog in Silent Hill 2 feels overwhelming, particularly in its current version.

Adding to everything mentioned, as is customary in the horror genre, there is minimal lighting. For most of the game, you’ll be confined in dark buildings for a significant period of time (ranging from 12 to 18 hours, based on how you play). It becomes more and more worrying, especially when exploring Toluca Prison – the lights in the facility can only be activated briefly, making you rush between breaker switches in a mostly futile effort to keep the darkness at bay. Going without sunlight for extended periods makes seeing daylight feel as essential as breathing after being underwater for what seems like days. It’s incredibly effective in a negative way.

The visual palette is not complemented by a musical score, but by a highly disturbing set of noises from the original Silent Hill 2 composer Akira Yamaoka. It is especially impactful in the end game, where the sound of an oncoming creature is incorporated into the music with skill during moments of intense suspense. It causes you to question every noise you hear and gradually wears down your perception of what is real. Simulating insanity is challenging, but this soundscape gets you uncomfortably close.

Our thoughts on Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 is a refreshing update of a survival horror classic. It refines the combat of the original game and enhances the terrifying environments by roughening them up with sandpaper, creating a more menacing and challenging exploration experience. Past boss battles that were once basic have now evolved into much more intense encounters, with a daunting audio design that reminded me constantly that every dark street I ventured down could lead me to a sudden demise. Some parts feel a bit too long, and I wish Bloober Team had made some of the complex puzzle sections more straightforward to keep the story moving smoothly. Despite some occasional pacing issues, Silent Hill 2 remains a fantastic option for both newcomers and returning players looking to experience one of the most fear-inducing settings in survival horror history. – Tristan Ogilvie, October 4, 2024

The key feature of numerous horror games has been their impressive art and sound design, however, these aspects only scratch the surface of the overall experience. I don’t say this to be insulting – the exterior is important – but it’s what lies underneath that really solidifies the fear. Games such as Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space are essentially action games disguised as horror, and thus are seldom genuinely terrifying. In contrast, Silent Hill 2 is a frightening game down to its core and deepest level. Its atmosphere and deliberate layout draw on similar elements as the art and sound, always striving to unsettle you in fresh ways. Every place visited presents a challenging mystery to unravel.

You have no choice but to walk around each floor, going back to look for keys or secret entrances to rooms that will make you backtrack in order to move forward. This nearly spiral-shaped path through the buildings, including apartments, hospital, hotel, and others, requires you to withstand mounting mental fatigue.

This exhaustion, along with the never-ending stretches of each section, takes away any sense of optimism from you. It’s especially awful towards the end as you have to go through the prison and then the maze without any breaks. These places include extended periods of nearly impenetrable darkness, dark-themed puzzle solving, and the most aggressive, terrifying foes in the whole game. The emotional toll that results effectively conveys the mental state of protagonist James Sunderland. That is Bloober’s, and also Team Silent’s, most remarkable, disturbing accomplishment: the skill to evoke empathy through the design of gameplay.

The constant darkness in the corridors of Silent Hill 2 slowly wears down your mental strength.

Other gameplay techniques are used to uphold the gloomy atmosphere of Silent Hill 2. As previously stated, the narrative focuses on James’ journey into terror, which is symbolized through the visual elements and also occurs literally as he often jumps into dark holes. Press the action button multiple times for each jump, mimicking his feelings of hesitation and unwillingness to take the leap.

As the tension in the atmosphere heightens, the campaign lacks any elements of lightheartedness or reassurance. In games like Resident Evil, you gather a more potent collection of weapons as you progress, making the end-game a thrilling and action-packed journey through carnage and violence. It also adds humor to its dialogue and monster creation, frequently choosing silly character portrayals that ensure the series maintains its cherished ‘cheesy horror’ reputation. Alan Wake 2 from last year, inspired by Team Silent, integrates absurdist humor and Lynchian direction to emphasize the bizarre rather than scary, creating moments of laughter amidst tension. However, Silent Hill 2 lacks all of this. Primarily, your arsenal consists of a damaged pipe and a handgun; and when you do acquire more powerful weapons, they are just basic shotguns or rifles with slow reload times and restricted ammunition. Silent Hill 2’s environment constantly manages to overwhelm you with its atmosphere, while the difficulty curve escalates with enemies acting unexpectedly.

It is unusual for an evaluation to view words such as ‘suffocate,’ ‘oppressive,’ and ‘miserable’ positively, but the horror genre is not typical. It is one of just two forms of entertainment that aim to provoke a spontaneous reaction from the audience, with the other being comedy. Horror is a machine that manipulates emotions, and the genre’s most successful stories can make us feel emotions that we don’t normally feel in our daily lives. Horror movies work throughout their duration to create varying degrees of tension to manipulate viewers, with the most successful creating lasting images that haunt us in the dark.

Video games, being a distinct medium, have the ability to affect us more profoundly due to their experiential quality. Instead of requesting our observation, they require our interaction, usually for a duration much longer than a typical scary movie, ranging from four to ten times. This has the potential to make us encounter a completely distinct reality. While some players argue that games are solely for enjoyment or escape, many developers do not prioritize these aspects. Occasionally the objective involves sharing disagreeable concepts, and the way to achieve that is by revealing a harsh reality to us. Silent Hill 2 is not focused on enjoyment, but rather delves into themes of grief and guilt that are typically shunned in human existence. Oddly enough, there is a thrilling discomfort in engaging with those concepts through a video game.

The technical constraints of the original 2001 game added some challenges to the gameplay; the semi-fixed camera created a sense of confinement and the clumsy aiming made each battle tense. Bloober Team’s remake removes those difficulties and introduces contemporary third-person controls, making the gameplay more accessible. However, those are the only important compromises made, meaning that even though the combat scenes are slightly less frantic now, Team Silent’s terrifying world is maintained. It suggests that the remake serves as a contemporary symbol of both Konami’s dominance in survival horror and the enduring impact of Silent Hill 2’s relentless bleakness.