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General / Re: 52 Games Challenge 2026!!!
« on: August 11, 2026, 10:29:23 pm »
Game 17 – Silent Hill 2 (PS5) - 11 Hours
First, let me say that if you’re an experienced SH2 vet, and you were expecting this game to simply be an HD remaster of the original, take that idea and throw it out the window. Pretty much everything from the original game has been altered in some way. This includes the combat, the camera angles, the music, the sound design, the voicework, the script, story elements, bosses, monster AI, weapons, the puzzles, the level design… it's pretty difficult to find something that wasn't altered with this remake. To start this review off with a blanket statement, to me it feels like the developers, when taking the base game of Silent Hill 2 as it was presented, first took every inch of this game and tried to “improve it” without really considering whether or not that change was going to be good for the game as a whole.
I don't think all the changes are bad though. Certainly, the game looks much better graphically. There are a few hiccups here and there, with some motion blur, some textures that don't load properly, and a few glitches - like one time where I got stuck in the floor in the prison. Overall, the game's graphics bring forward a more modern take on the OG game, while still retaining a very creepy and disgusting sense of dread and fear. I also really enjoyed all the redone puzzles, almost all of them were either brand-new puzzles or the existing ones were altered in some way, and they were fun to experience. I liked that the second apartment building was shifted to a nightmare apartment which matches the way that the hospital is done. Lastly, I think the sequence in between the hospital and the Historical Society was more interesting and more streamlined than it was in the original.
The biggest and juiciest change in this remake is the redone combat and camera design which is where I feel very conflicted about the decisions made by Blooper Team. The original Silent Hill 2 is not a game that focuses on combat, and it solely doesn't use combat to build an atmosphere of horror. Certainly, the combat is a part of what makes the game scary, but the horror to me comes from a carefully crafted combination of music, camera angles, sound effects, and visual design. In the remake, combat has been brought to the forefront, and it overpowers everything else in the game. Playing the remake felt like ordering an old favorite dish, but when the dish comes out, it's been covered in hot spicy pepper. It might not be a bad flavor, but it's certainly overpowering everything that made the original great. When I think back to my experience playing it all I can think of is combat, not the environmental design, not the sound, not the atmosphere. It was just fighting because it was Non. Stop.
This shift in spicyness is also contributed to by the camera, which is now directly behind James as opposed to the detached/fixed angle camera that was in the original. The camera makes the combat feels much more visceral and personal - almost like you're backing up James in the fight - whereas in the original it almost felt like you were watching him from a long distance. There are also no more fixed camera angles to enhance the effect of the game’s atmosphere and provide a cinematic experience that complements the gameplay. To accompany the change in camera angles, the monsters are far more aggressive and fast, and to compensate for that you have a dodge button now… It feels like the gameplay was really trying to emulate Resident Evil, both with the camera and combat. These are changes that to me shift the soul of the game into a different type of horror that doesn't match with what the original was trying to achieve.
On that note, I think it's also important to mention the other gameplay changes that feel directly ripped from other AAA games (particularly the Last of Us). Searching through drawers and cupboards constantly to find health and ammo… moving dumpsters and bookcases to squeeze through windows are narrow gaps… these things were not in the original, and while this is the standard for a survival horror adventure game, again it doesn't feel like it belongs. Instead of taking in the environments for what they are, I found myself more focused searching for items and fighting, which changes the vibe in a way that doesn't fit with the original. Secondly the game is almost three times as long as the original. most of the editions don’t really add all that much other than more of the gameplay (which I did enjoy) but I questioned why the additional gameplay needed to be there. By far the biggest offender is after the big reveal in the hotel, where the game forces you down another long maze-like section with fighting and puzzles. This totally ruins the emotional impact of the previous scene because your focus gets pulled right back in on exploring and fighting, when it should be focused on the story at that moment.
The other very peculiar changes were the addition of new story elements, and the altering of story progression. Personally I didn’t feel like any of them worked particularly well. Unlike the graphics, or gameplay, the story is something that you have to really consider if what you're adding is going to improve the overall experience. The first example of this is when you meet Maria for the first time and now she's the one that takes the lead leading you to the next location in the game. But they just kind of forget that she's supposed to do that, so after you leave the park area, she follows you behind like before. Her and Angela have some additional dialogue options with James but they don't add anything to the story.
Lastly I think where I get very critical is the game's voice acting and voice direction. I do not feel like the voice actors adequately captured the soul and the intention behind the characters. The remake steamrolls through all the subtleties in the original voicework, and just creates a very bland uninspired voice direction - particularly with the main protagonist James. He was the worst out of the new voice actors in my opinion, as he mumbles and stumbles through all of his lines. He has about as much personality as a wet tissue paper, and has maybe a quarter of the personality of the original James. Maria was not much better, coming off as way to sensual, way too early. Again like with the rest of the game, it just felt like they were trying to change things for the sake of change, without really considering if maybe the original delivery of these voice lines was actually the best way to convey the emotion in the game. I think the real problem is that the engine in this game does not do a good job of facial expressions, and because the camera is so up and personal, it really sucks the soul out of these characters as you stare into their lifeless expressions as they recount their lines.
Let me be clear though - I'm not saying that this game is a bad horror game - far from it. It's certainly a scary game, one of the best that I've played in a long time. I think the things that stood out to me the most was a very clear shift in soul, with the changes in the combat and camera - a move away from the game that I fell in love with because of its unique take on horror at the time – the remake just feels more like every AAA horror game that’s been released over the past decade, even though it is very good in that regard. I'll fully admit that I am incredibly biased because I have such a strong emotional connection to the original game, so I definitely recommend that you play it for yourself, and you may not find that a lot of these things bother
First, let me say that if you’re an experienced SH2 vet, and you were expecting this game to simply be an HD remaster of the original, take that idea and throw it out the window. Pretty much everything from the original game has been altered in some way. This includes the combat, the camera angles, the music, the sound design, the voicework, the script, story elements, bosses, monster AI, weapons, the puzzles, the level design… it's pretty difficult to find something that wasn't altered with this remake. To start this review off with a blanket statement, to me it feels like the developers, when taking the base game of Silent Hill 2 as it was presented, first took every inch of this game and tried to “improve it” without really considering whether or not that change was going to be good for the game as a whole.
I don't think all the changes are bad though. Certainly, the game looks much better graphically. There are a few hiccups here and there, with some motion blur, some textures that don't load properly, and a few glitches - like one time where I got stuck in the floor in the prison. Overall, the game's graphics bring forward a more modern take on the OG game, while still retaining a very creepy and disgusting sense of dread and fear. I also really enjoyed all the redone puzzles, almost all of them were either brand-new puzzles or the existing ones were altered in some way, and they were fun to experience. I liked that the second apartment building was shifted to a nightmare apartment which matches the way that the hospital is done. Lastly, I think the sequence in between the hospital and the Historical Society was more interesting and more streamlined than it was in the original.
The biggest and juiciest change in this remake is the redone combat and camera design which is where I feel very conflicted about the decisions made by Blooper Team. The original Silent Hill 2 is not a game that focuses on combat, and it solely doesn't use combat to build an atmosphere of horror. Certainly, the combat is a part of what makes the game scary, but the horror to me comes from a carefully crafted combination of music, camera angles, sound effects, and visual design. In the remake, combat has been brought to the forefront, and it overpowers everything else in the game. Playing the remake felt like ordering an old favorite dish, but when the dish comes out, it's been covered in hot spicy pepper. It might not be a bad flavor, but it's certainly overpowering everything that made the original great. When I think back to my experience playing it all I can think of is combat, not the environmental design, not the sound, not the atmosphere. It was just fighting because it was Non. Stop.
This shift in spicyness is also contributed to by the camera, which is now directly behind James as opposed to the detached/fixed angle camera that was in the original. The camera makes the combat feels much more visceral and personal - almost like you're backing up James in the fight - whereas in the original it almost felt like you were watching him from a long distance. There are also no more fixed camera angles to enhance the effect of the game’s atmosphere and provide a cinematic experience that complements the gameplay. To accompany the change in camera angles, the monsters are far more aggressive and fast, and to compensate for that you have a dodge button now… It feels like the gameplay was really trying to emulate Resident Evil, both with the camera and combat. These are changes that to me shift the soul of the game into a different type of horror that doesn't match with what the original was trying to achieve.
On that note, I think it's also important to mention the other gameplay changes that feel directly ripped from other AAA games (particularly the Last of Us). Searching through drawers and cupboards constantly to find health and ammo… moving dumpsters and bookcases to squeeze through windows are narrow gaps… these things were not in the original, and while this is the standard for a survival horror adventure game, again it doesn't feel like it belongs. Instead of taking in the environments for what they are, I found myself more focused searching for items and fighting, which changes the vibe in a way that doesn't fit with the original. Secondly the game is almost three times as long as the original. most of the editions don’t really add all that much other than more of the gameplay (which I did enjoy) but I questioned why the additional gameplay needed to be there. By far the biggest offender is after the big reveal in the hotel, where the game forces you down another long maze-like section with fighting and puzzles. This totally ruins the emotional impact of the previous scene because your focus gets pulled right back in on exploring and fighting, when it should be focused on the story at that moment.
The other very peculiar changes were the addition of new story elements, and the altering of story progression. Personally I didn’t feel like any of them worked particularly well. Unlike the graphics, or gameplay, the story is something that you have to really consider if what you're adding is going to improve the overall experience. The first example of this is when you meet Maria for the first time and now she's the one that takes the lead leading you to the next location in the game. But they just kind of forget that she's supposed to do that, so after you leave the park area, she follows you behind like before. Her and Angela have some additional dialogue options with James but they don't add anything to the story.
Lastly I think where I get very critical is the game's voice acting and voice direction. I do not feel like the voice actors adequately captured the soul and the intention behind the characters. The remake steamrolls through all the subtleties in the original voicework, and just creates a very bland uninspired voice direction - particularly with the main protagonist James. He was the worst out of the new voice actors in my opinion, as he mumbles and stumbles through all of his lines. He has about as much personality as a wet tissue paper, and has maybe a quarter of the personality of the original James. Maria was not much better, coming off as way to sensual, way too early. Again like with the rest of the game, it just felt like they were trying to change things for the sake of change, without really considering if maybe the original delivery of these voice lines was actually the best way to convey the emotion in the game. I think the real problem is that the engine in this game does not do a good job of facial expressions, and because the camera is so up and personal, it really sucks the soul out of these characters as you stare into their lifeless expressions as they recount their lines.
Let me be clear though - I'm not saying that this game is a bad horror game - far from it. It's certainly a scary game, one of the best that I've played in a long time. I think the things that stood out to me the most was a very clear shift in soul, with the changes in the combat and camera - a move away from the game that I fell in love with because of its unique take on horror at the time – the remake just feels more like every AAA horror game that’s been released over the past decade, even though it is very good in that regard. I'll fully admit that I am incredibly biased because I have such a strong emotional connection to the original game, so I definitely recommend that you play it for yourself, and you may not find that a lot of these things bother
