Me reviewing the Silent Hill 2 remake is like Francis Ford Coppola reviewing a Godfather remake. There’s almost nothing it could do to get me to like it as much as the original. The original Silent Hill 2 is the type of game that can’t get made to today, at least not in the AAA space. It was a game born from a small team of like-minded creative people who wanted to make the game they wanted to make. Silent Hill 2 is to gaming what Citizen Kane is to cinema, even people who never played Silent Hill 2 can have a deep connection to it simply by watching video analysis essays on Youtube, and honestly, they’re not even wrong for feeling strongly about a game they never experienced first hand, Silent Hill 2 is just that amazing of a game. I say all this because the reality is that the remake was always going to feel like exactly what it is; fans remaking a beloved classic. Kind of like watching the western remake of a beloved Japanese movie, Silent Hill 2 remake is a bit different to the original while still mostly staying faithful to the source material, but is that enough to make the game stand up to the legacy of its predecessor?
I must admit I had a little laugh like Joker being dragged back to his cell in Arkham when it was announced Blooper Team was doing a remake of my all time favorite game. To say I have been critical of Bloober in the past is to make a huge understatement, as 3 of their 6 previous games have ended up on my year end worst list. That being said, Bloober Team are competent technically and from the get go there were no big red flags about them wanting to significantly change things. At the end of the day, I figured that Konami despite being what they are in this point in time, wouldn’t let them fuck up their golden goose and I can say that they did a pretty amazing job faithfully recreating the game in a modern context.
I’m not going to go over the minutia of the story or every little change they’ve done. If you want to watch a video analyzing the story or the themes, then there are quite literally hundreds if not thousands of better ones that are more worth your time. You’re here to watch the cynical gaming boomer talk about how they ruined his favorite game of all time, how Bloober Team are talentless hacks that need to go back to making walking simulators while I complain about every single small detail that got changed. Surely he wouldn’t come out of semi-retirement for nothing, he’s obviously going to tear the game to shreds… Right? There’s no way he got emotional during the first scene of the game… Right? Well, you’re wrong, I do think the remake is great and fuck you, I did tear up during the very first music drop in the game.
For the most part, I think the Silent Hill 2 remake faithfully recaptures the atmosphere, story and characters of the original. The biggest change is of course the gameplay. Changing the title from an old school horror game with pre-rendered camera angles to a fully over the shoulder camera that you would see in any third person action game these days (especially the Resident Evil Remakes) was a change that I was very apprehensive about because the core gameplay of Silent Hill 2 has never been the selling point. Yes, it was partially technical limitations that caused them to use the camera relative controls, but the game also made the most out of it by using different types of cinematography to convey certain emotions at the right times. The gameplay in the remake is perfectly fine, despite there being some clunky animations, but the game loses an aspect of its atmosphere when the fixed camera perspective is taken away. One of the most unique aspects of Silent Hill is that it used the fixed camera to add to the warping sense of reality; it made the game feel even more like a bizarre nightmare. I’m not saying one approach is objectively right or better, and honestly, I’m glad the remake differentiates itself in a significant way so there’s one less way to compare it unfavorably to the original, but as will be a reoccurring theme here, the remake just doesn’t feel the same. With all this having been said, the biggest change to gameplay and story is the pacing. The game has now been almost doubled in length, with my playtime clocking in around 15 hours. Honestly, while the increased focus on exploration and combat is a nice change of pace and something to further separate the remake from the OG, I also feel like a lot of these sections could have been trimmed down as they start to get repetitive, and when a Survival Horror game starts to spin its wheels, things tend to get significantly less scary. The other big gameplay change was the puzzles. There are returning puzzles but also completely new ones and really, they don’t add all that much to the game except being in the way of progress, even if they are way more in depth here.
The story is mostly unchanged from the original, thankfully. There are of course added scenes and scenes that have been cut and chopped and rearranged. Sometimes this is to the game’s benefit; specifically them adding a scene in the Heaven’s Night which I quite enjoyed where Maria offers James a drink. The camera pans to his hand, James clearly reluctant to accept the offer given that a history of alcohol abuse is in his past as indicated by the flavor text in the original. It’s little touches like this that I loved and there are a fair few that I think definitely add a lot to the story and feel organic. But as always, sometimes the need to remix scenes or remove them entirely feels unnecessary. I’m not going to sit here and go over every individual change in the script, but Bloober Team tried their hand had adding their own ending (In addition to pretty faithfully recreating all the original’s endings) and it’s a dud. They also added in a time loop element that seems like a complete copout way to basically allow you to say “The original still exists and is untouched.” And frankly, I don’t even get how it works because Silent Hill is not a real place, so is James just trapped in a time loop Groundhog’s Day style until he realizes “Damn, I was horny in the hospital?”
The game’s presentation was always going to be a huge selling point, as however you feel about Bloober Team, their games are undeniably good looking, especially The Medium which was one of the first games that really showed off the prowess of current generation hardware. And this game does look superb. While James and Angela kind of give off a goofy uncanny valley feel, overall I like the new character models. The fog was such a massive part of the original game’s atmosphere, and I’m sure Bloober Team were chomping at the bit to fill the game with all that cutting edge volumetric fog they so love. The fog effects are really well done, but I wish there was a bit more consideration when to show more and less restraint with it. The initial walk into Silent Hill through the forest path could have used more fog to enhance the atmosphere, while fighting enemies in the labyrinth at the end of the game is like trying to catch an underage Hollywood male starlet at a P Diddy party in a Japanese bath house.
The one part that really took a substantial fall off with the remake is the voice acting, and it’s honestly no fault of anybody involved, especially not the actors who I feel all did an amazing job. The fact is that the circumstances surrounding the voice acting in the original cannot be replicated because you cannot accurately replicate genuine emotion, and a lot of the original voice acting was given the weird Lynchian-quality by the fact the VA’s either weren’t given proper voice direction and/or weren’t professional voice actors to begin with. And unfortunately, there are just things in the overall sound direction and sound design that are objectively inferior to the original. In the PS2 version of the game, the scene where James finds Angela dead, the soundtrack plays a dissonant, haunting tune in the background as James comes to terms with the fact that one of the only people who has bonded with in this nightmare world is gone. Meanwhile, the remake sees a still beautiful, but just not as impactful piano piece put in its stead. It’s one of the many, many ultra powerful moments that is slightly diminished because of the change in sound direction. While the soundtrack overall is still the absolute masterpiece it always was, just now with better instrumentation and sound quality, it goes to show an underlying issue with the remake that is unavoidable; there are just some things that get lost in translation when you’re adapting another person’s work and the application of the soundtrack and the voice acting simply doesn’t have the same impact as the original title, and none of this is more obvious than the penultimate scene of James finally confronting Mary and facing the music in the hotel. James’ voice actor does an amazing job with the dialog, but it just isn’t the same and that’s kind of a prevailing theme throughout the game.
I could sit here and nitpick every single little change they made but it’s a waste of time and I’m already probably sounding like you’re asking a starving dog’s opinion on sausages when it comes to me and Silent Hill 2. I was never going to be fully happy regardless of the quality of the game and while the remake tries its darndest to recapture every single nuance, it’s just impossible to completely remake a game that has so many minute details that make it special. That being said, there’s no changes on a macro level that really have me upset with the remake, other than it getting a bit trigger happy at times.
Overall, Bloober Team has done what I thought impossible and actually made a phenomenal recreation of a title that is probably the hardest game ever to adapt purely because of so many small details that end up meaning a lot. The remake is a perfectly great representation of what the original game is. That being said, I still hope that Konami finds a way to port the original at some point. The remake while being a great facsimile of what the PS2 masterpiece offered, simply is not a replacement for the original and while I enjoyed my time with it, I still suggest people find a way to try out the PS2 version. The latest version of the game does a great job of allowing the original to be its own experience while still being a faithful enough recreation that both die hard fans of the game and complete newcomers will be able to enjoy. Hats off to Bloober Team I guess, they can finally see the spot where I ripped the hair out of my head playing Blair Witch.