Silent Hill 2 review: faithful remake understands the assignment | Digital Trends

Silent Hill 2

MSRP $70.00

“Silent Hill 2’s remake is a faithful tribute to a horror classic that hardly holds anything back.”

Pros

• Detailed characters and world
• Fantastic sound design
• Strong puzzles
• Redesigned boss fights
• Original story is still impactful

Cons

• Padded with backtracking
• Combat gets old

After hours spent hiding from twisted nurses, I’m finally ready to escape Silent Hill 2’s Brookhaven Hospital. I frantically search for a front door key in the lobby, but I find one final doctor’s note first. The journal entry ruminates on an illness that’s taken over the small town, one that’s left its victims lost beyond the borders of reality. The medical world is on the hunt for a cure, but this doctor questions if it’s really a sickness at all. Sure, their patients are lost in a world within their head, but they seem at peace there — happy, even.

“So why, I ask myself, why in the name of healing him must we drag him painfully into the world of our own reality?” the writer wonders.

That’s always been the key to Silent Hill 2’s horror, and it’s carefully preserved in Bloober Team’s faithful remake. The PlayStation 2 classic is filled with creepy monsters that will stalk anyone unwise enough to enter the town of Silent Hill, but that’s not the source of its fear. The real scary part is what lies outside of the city limits: a harsh world where monsters roam free on two legs instead of hiding in the shadows. Maybe it’s safer in the fog.

While it may be an unnecessary project, Silent Hill 2’s remake keeps the original’s haunting essence intact by staying true to its unsettling atmosphere, off-kilter tone, and uncomfortable moments. It’s a respectful revisit that only veers off course when it tries a little too hard to add pounds onto a sleek horror game. Even with some extra weight, the tortured story told here is every bit as harrowing as it was in 2001.

New look, same feel

Remaking Silent Hill 2 is no easy task. Though many games over the past two decades have been inspired by the PS2 classic, very few have quite nailed its feel. It shares DNA with genre peers like Resident Evil, but it’s a horror game that feels as otherworldly as its own alternate universes. It’s eerie, antagonistic, and always just enough off-center to keep players off balance at all times. I was skeptical that anyone could pull it off, let alone Bloober Team; psychological projects like The Medium have always felt indebted to Silent Hill, but they’ve never quite hit the mark. Perhaps sensing its own shortcomings, Bloober dials in on the original game to truly understand what makes it special and deliver a remake worthy of its legacy.

The core is still the same. It’s a survival horror game about James Sunderland’s trip to a foggy, monster-infested town in search of his “missing” wife. All of the set pieces, disturbing bosses, haunting music, and iconic cinematics appear as I remember them, but with a modern sheen. That begins with a visual overhaul that trades in PS2 dreariness for Unreal Engine 5 realism. Though the original release derives its power from its filthy textures, Bloober finds a new eeriness in its uncanny approach.

Characters are more painstakingly detailed, capturing more physical nuances from its top-notch cast. Characters like Angela benefit most from that change; she’s more manic when she’s wildly swinging around a knife, more detached as she ascends a flaming staircase. Eddie is especially haunting, with a rougher face and dead eyes that contrast with his total mental collapse. Then there’s James, brought to life by a well-cast Luke Roberts, whose unsettling nature is only emphasized by upgraded animations. He sleepwalks through some of the story’s most disturbing moments, seemingly unphased by it all, but he turns into an aggressive killer the moment he starts wailing on a monster with a lead pipe. You can feel that something’s off about him well before the truth of his quest is revealed.

The town of Silent Hill is more realized here too, with more explorable spaces around town. A ratty American flag hanging from a porch gives me a better sense of who might inhabit its homes. When I run into a laundromat, I’m met with dingy washing machines that look like they haven’t been cleaned in a decade. Despite having a modern sheen, Bloober works more grit into every corner of the deteriorating town. It feels like a true ghost town, but one that’s still just left of reality.

More technical updates double down on horror. While the original release is plenty scary, it’s more on a psychological level. The remake brings more horror to the fray through darker lighting that hides monsters in shadow. The sound design especially stands out, creating a wall of unnatural sound that persists throughout. When an enemy is nearby, radio static erupts from my DualSense speaker. At first, I think that it too clearly telegraphs approaching enemies. By the end, it becomes a source of madness. When it begins to crackle, it triggers a Pavlovian reaction in me. I’m suddenly activated, sent into a blind rage as I try to smash every enemy I can find just to make it stop.

Of course, the most crucial part of Silent Hill 2 is its fog. That’s so important that its previous remaster was heavily criticized largely because of its changes to its density. Bloober opts for a white wisp haze over the ashen haze of the original. It may be contentious with nitpickers, but it works here. It’s less apocalyptic, but it’s still a thick wall that’s hard to see through. When I hear an enemy creeping nearby, I’m sent into a panic as I struggle to find it through the noise. It’s still an oppressive mystical force that lords over me, only showing me what it wants me to see and when it chooses to. I’m powerless to its almost holy presence.

Gameplay overhaul

The changes here aren’t just technical ones; Bloober gives the original a major gameplay rework too that brings it more in line with Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes. There are pros and cons to that approach that create a clear contrast into how the scope of big-budget games has shifted between 2001 and 2024. It feels like publisher Konami’s directive here was to make Silent Hill 2 feel like a modern game. Beyond the makeover, it’s a bigger game with expanded combat, more puzzles, and much larger explorable spaces. While there’s nothing about those changes that’s actively bad, they don’t always feel additive.

For instance, locations like Toluca Prison are expanded into sprawling mazes that take a few hours to complete. Bloober often justifies that growth with deeper puzzles that feel in line with the original release, even when they’re entirely new additions. One has me finding weights throughout the prison and correctly placing them on a scale to unlock different doors. Another has me matching snippets of poems about execution victims to make sense of their crimes. Each one very much feels in the spirit of Silent Hill 2, reimagining it as a more robust series of puzzle boxes.

What’s less effective is all the backtracking that adds to the experience. The remake takes around 14 hours to complete, which is a few hours more than the original, but most of that extra time is spent running back and forth between corridors to solve puzzles. Brookhaven Hospital is especially exhausting at times, as I spend a lot of time trying to remember how to get from point A to point B again as I walk a far off item back to where it’s needed.

Combat has a similar dynamic. On paper, it’s a great upgrade. It’s a tense third-person shooter that effectively creates tension through resource scarcity. Enemies like Mannequins can be unpredictable, skirting away from my bullets. If I don’t want to waste my shots on a monster that skitters into the shadows the moment my flashlight hits it, I have to take my chances with close-range melee combat. That can be dangerous, as a short evasive dodge is only so effective against piles of limbs that erratically lash out.

That system does wear thin eventually, as the remake forces players into battle a lot more because of its tighter spaces. In the original, I could largely choose to leave monsters alone if I so desired. I could let a nurse keep roaming Brookhaven’s halls, leaving a creepy obstacle in my path. It’s more imperative to clear them out here, which reveals how few monster types the original game actually has. I’m largely fighting variations of the same three monsters who become easy to deal with once I know their patterns.

It’s moments like that which bring the folly of remakes like this into light. The original Silent Hill 2 works as well as it does because of its dated design decisions, not in spite of them. Its smaller spaces and concise runtime keep the story moving while offering just enough to do between cutscenes. The remake, on the other hand, stuffs padding into that sleek sequence. The solution to making the PS2 game feel modern often translates to adding more “content,” but what does killing 30 more Nurses or backtracking Brookhaven for an extra hour or two actually add to the story? Some decisions feel more about justifying a price tag to new today’s audiences than supporting the story.

There are plenty of moments, though, where the remake does add meaningful changes. The biggest example comes in its reimagined boss fights, which make some of gaming’s most uncomfortable moments even more visceral. In the original release’s most upsetting moment, James fights a boss dubbed “Abstract Daddy” — a sentient bed that visualizes Angela’s sexual trauma at the hands of her father. That moment falls a bit flat in the original, as James simply guns it down in a bland square room. The fight here is enormous by comparison. The beast chases James through a labyrinthian apartment, smashing through walls like a rampaging bull. Angela’s pain feels more tangible in that moment, her father getting better represented as the dangerous, destructive force he is. Interpretive changes like that are where game remakes can offer value, continuing a conversation with the source material instead of talking over it.

Through the fog

While Bloober Team’s remake takes a lot of liberties with gameplay and upgraded visuals, it stays true to the original where it counts. Silent Hill 2’s story goes largely untouched in the remake aside from some additional dialogue and collectible memos naturally weaved into the PS2 game’s script. Only a few new additions feel out of place and a scene or two loses its edge with cleaner visuals (the iconic prison chat with Maria doesn’t quite feel as haunting here), but it otherwise lets Konami’s original vision play out in all its glory. That’s a bolder decision than it sounds like.

On revisiting Silent Hill 2 for the first time in years, I’m struck by just how unflinching it is compared to today’s big budget games. It’s never out to please players, like the B-movie romp of Capcom’s Resident Evil games. It’s an actively uncomfortable game that skirts the boundaries of sensitivity, something that may shock modern players. But that’s not done without purpose: A story about the ugliness of humanity needs to be ugly.

Silent Hill 2 deals with deep-rooted trauma by meeting its characters at their lowest points. James is a guilt-ridden antihero who practically begs to be punished by the menacing Pyramid Head. We meet Angela in the midst of a breakdown as she struggles to process grief in tandem with grotesque abuse. Eddie, who is sure to uphold the title of the story’s most controversial character, finds himself pushed onto a psychopathic path after years of bullying. Each character is screaming out in pain, even when it’s through their disassociated eyes. And we’re trapped in the fog with them.

The remake barely filters the original’s most grotesque moments. A dog’s murder is described in brutal detail. James remains a loathsome worm of a hero. One puzzle has him wrapping a noose around his neck as it almost looks like he’s praying he’s actually receiving his final judgment. Creepy Mannequins are great for a jump scare, but these are the moments of lasting horror that will stay with me forever. The real fear is that there’s no hope for redemption in a world of unimaginable pain, a horror that feels just as suffocating as the fog of Silent Hill. Who would want to survive in that place?

“There is no healing of thy bruise,” one note scratched into a wall threatens. “Thy wound is grievous.”

Silent Hill 2 was tested on PS5.