Silent Hill 2 Remake Review

After a very long anticipation, Silent Hill 2 Remake is here. Before the official release, thanks to company, we got an early access for the game and prepared this Silent Hill 2 Remake review. In this review, we will share all the experience we had while playing the new version of Silent Hill 2.

Silent Hill 2 Remake Story

The story evolves around a character named James Sunderland who lost his wife 3 years ago. In the beginning, James got a letter from her wife and she says that she is waiting for him at their “special place”. The story starts besides James’s car and we go deeper inside Silent Hill and hope to find James’ dead wife.

Just like in the original game, we met same characters, learn their story and meanwhile search for James’ wife. The characters we met in the story are Angela, Eddie, Maria and Laura. Angela searches for someone just like James. She is looking for her mother. We meet her in various locations during our adventure. We meet Eddie in various locations but he is a different character than Angela. He is disturbed about how people look at him because his weight. James warns him to not shoot people how they look at him. Eddie is a different character but eventually he becames boss fight during story.

Maria is a very strange character. Because she looks just like Mary but more fancy way. We meet Maria at Rosewater Park and she becomes our company for some time. But there are lots of things to discuss about Maria but we keep this section for later.

The last character we meet is Laura, who is a friend of Mary and also searching for Mary. In the beggining, Laura always run from us because she thoughts that James will hurt him but actually James and Maria are trying to help her because Silent Hill is a “dangerous” place.

Silent Hill 2 Remake Gameplay

Silent Hill 2 Remake has an atmospheric and tense gameplay. Silent Hill town is already full of fog so you can’t see what’s in front of you unless you really get close to it and fog hides everything around it. Town is a big place but in your playthough, most locations are empty or leads to dead end. You have certain places to visit in order to progress your gameplay.

Just like in the original game, you have your map which updates everytime you either enter a room or control a door and see if it’s open or not. If you encounter certain puzzles which needs to be solved, this will be updated on your map as well. This feature helps you progress your gameplay a lot because in certain areas like Woodside Apartment and Brookhaven Hospital, it’s hard to keep track which door you explored which one you didn’t. This feature is available for almost all Silent Hill games.

In Silent Hill 2 Remake, you can find weapons like Handgun, Shotgun, Rifle and other close range weapons like Chainsaw, Steel Pipe. If you want to save your ammunation, you can go for close range weapons but keep that in mind that close range weapons can be dangerous against some enemies which spits on you. But in these situations, dodge mechanic is here for you. In the exact time enemy attacks you, you can use your dodge option to not take any damage. This feature sometimes can use to be more mobile and move quickly around enemies. If you are surrounded with multiple enemies, dodge button can save your life.

Puzzles are big part of the game. Some puzzles can be solved immediately, if you already know safe code, you can simply enter the code and get the item in it. In Silent Hill 2 Remake, some puzzles are not required to be solved in your all playthroughs, some of them are necessary to solve.

Enemies are sometimes easy to beat, sometimes annoying. In certain areas, enemies can easily stagger you and you can’t defeat them without getting less damage. There are three types of enemies. First one is mannequins, mannequins can sometimes blend with environment, especially in dark places. They are hard to spot, because of that you can most likely take damage everytime you see them. Mannequins can also walk on walls and sealing. If they start walking on sealing, it’s better to not try shoot them because they move faster and it’s very important to save ammunations. The second one is nurses. Nurses can carry various weapons such as blades, steel pipe. Nurses with blades are more dangerous because they have chain attacks. You can easily get stun locked and lost most of your healing items.

The third one is enemies which can spit on you and hit you from a distance. This enemies can also crawl quickly, which is annoying to shoot with ranged weapons. If they are crawling, it’s better to hit them with steel pipe.

While fighting with enemies, it’s more enjoyable to fight against them with close range weapons. You can dodge their attacks, crush them and keep your ammunation but close range attacks are always dangerous, enemies are agressive to fight with close range but dodging their attacks, learning their attack pattern is the key.

Differences Between Original vs Remake

There are few differences between original Silent Hill 2 and Remake. First one is gameplay changes. Inventory management, camera angle are different from original game. It’s because developers wanted to make the game playable for all players. Some players can’t keep up with original camera angle. TPS is most prefered angle for such games.

The second one is playthrough changes. General playthrough is almost the same but some puzzles and new sections added to game. You can complete the original game around six hours if you play it normally. Meanwhile you can complete the Remake around ten hours. Some new cinematics and new dialogues are added that’s why the game takes longer to complete.

The third one is character designs. Almost all of them are same, but Maria got new outfit with Remake version. Developers probably wanted to give her new look different from original, since she is one of key characters in the story.

The Symbolism in Silent Hill 2 and Explanation

Note: This section might contain some spoilers. If you haven’t play the game and want to avoid spoilers, be warned about it.

Silent Hill 2 story explains the things going around James’ mind. He is taking care of her sick wife for a while. After her situation getting worse, he doesn’t want to see her like this. She is enduring a lot of pain. One day, James couldn’t handle it anymore and choke her with pillow and end her pain. Then he takes her corpse and goes to Silent Hill, to their “special place”.

Silent Hill has a effect on people, which brings bad memories, desires into reality, more correctly, Silent Hill takes shape around that person’s subconscious. In James’ subconscious, her wife is sick for a while, they can’t live a normal life and he is lacking from a lot of things. Maria is equivalent of Mary, because her sickness, she can’t take care of herself. Comparing to Mary, Maria is so much beautiful and well-groomed. James wanted to see Mary like that, that’s why Silent Hill created Maria for him.

Mannequins are equivalent of sexual deficiency between Mary and James. Mannequins has four legs and they don’t have head. If you stay too close to them, they can grab your head and bite your head, similar to sexual act.

There are also enemies like nurses, that’s because of during Mary’s sickness, they spent a lot of time in hospital, talking to nurses and such.

The most important thing is Pyramid Head, which is responsible for judging James. That’s why he chases him all game and judges him by killing Maria several times. The last time Pyramid Head kills Maria, James surrenders himself, saying that he already punished enough. That’s when Silent Hill town convince that James went through a lot and that lesson is enough for him. After that, two Pyramid Heads kills theirself.

Overall Thoughts about Silent Hill 2 Remake

Silent Hill 2 Remake is a loyal remake to the original game. Some changes made to game and even some sections added to game. Multiple endings such as Dog, Ufo endings are also available in the game as well. But Born from a Wish content, which let us play as Maria is not added to game. Probably Bloober Team is preparing this content and this content will be much more longer compared to original.

With cooperating Bloober Team, Konami bring back Silent Hill franchise to life. And we think Silent Hill 2 Remake is a successful and faithful remake. Bloober Team did make changes but all of these changes are necessary and well made.

If you are a Silent Hill fan and played Silent Hill 2 at least once, you will enjoy this remake a lot. With new recorded musics, new designs and much more modern gameplay, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a great adventure. Even if you haven’t played played any Silent Hill game or don’t even enjoy horror games, you can still try the game. Once you get used to game, you don’t want this game to end.

Aside from performance issues which can be solved in the first day of launch, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a wonderful experience for all players. We thank to developers for sharing the game with us and let us prepare this Silent Hill 2 Remake review. We hope to see Remakes for other Silent Hill games and new entries to franchise as well.

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Silent Hill 2 Remake will make it’s launch for PS5 and PC at October 8.