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Silent Hill 2 review: a loving renovation of a masterfully miserable horror classic

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Silent Hill 2 review: a loving renovation of a masterfully miserable horror classic | Top Gear

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Silent Hill 2 review: a loving renovation of a masterfully miserable horror classic

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Silent Hill 2 review: a loving renovation of a masterfully miserable horror classic

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Silent Hill 2 review: a loving renovation of a masterfully miserable horror classic

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Silent Hill 2 review: a loving renovation of a masterfully miserable horror classic

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James Sunderland has a lot on his mind. Foremost is his dead wife, who nonetheless seems to be writing letters to him, telling him she’s gone back to their ‘special place’, a town they once enjoyed a getaway to. Then there’s the perpetual, ethereal gloom of that town, Silent Hill, that greets him when he makes his way there to search for her, the gathering feeling that it’s not such a special place now. And finally, his crippling inability to emote convincing human emotions in any of his line readings. It’s a lot on the guy’s plate.

As he ventures into the mist, James discovers not a glorious reunion with his departed spouse but an assortment of similarly troubled visitors to the town who all seem to be looking for loved ones too. And hang on, is that blood on the floor? Maybe that nice man with a pyramid on his head who’s lurching out of the fog can tell us.

So begins one of PlayStation 2’s best-remembered horror games, first released in 2001 to a combination of fearful respect and admiration. Original developer Konami used the console’s technical limitations as a feature, bringing the draw distances uncomfortably close with that trademark fog.

Unafraid to turn you off with its confrontationally muted colour palette, it wasn’t here to give you a thrill ride like your Resi 2s or your various Dino Crises. Here was a horror game whose scariest beats happened in between the fights, moments of grim realisation that turned the narrative on its head, reframed recent events, and had you laying awake at night, thinking about it all. Piecing it all together.

For Bloober Team, the architects of this remake and veteran horror developers with the likes of Layers of Fear under their belts, the hard work’s already been done. Or so you’d assume. After all, all that delicately constructed narrative framework carries over verbatim, and that was always the juicy bit. The combat was never a highlight, and even the most avid viewer of Richard Osman’s House of Games would agree that the puzzles merely served a purpose.

However: we all know about the plot by now, don’t we? Its twists and turns, once capable of blindsiding the player to controller-dropping degrees of astonishment, have been diminished by two decades of us all talking about it. So in fact, Bloober Team’s job here is trickier than it first appears, and not just because ‘Bloober Team’ sounds like a kids’ TV show about gunge and bogeys.

What you realise, after retreading James’ footsteps through Silent Hill for a couple of hours, is that this remake is all about conjuring the right atmosphere. And it’s something the developer does a fine job of. The fog was there to disguise the PS2’s graphics capabilities in 2001, but in 2024 it does the opposite job, showing off how rich and thick and immersive modern lighting and volumetric particle effects can be. Of course, the effect’s the same: tension.

Oppressive, constant tension. You rarely see more than six feet in front of you when you’re outdoors, and that means there’s almost always the potential to be surprised by a fleshy horror at a moment’s notice. It’s draining, after a while. Psychologically exhausting. Just as it’s supposed to be.

We’re still on the fence, even now, after two decades, as to whether all the non-combat traversal through that fog really works, though. As much as it’s creepy and foreboding to walk down a particular street of the abandoned supernatural community once, when you’re constantly back-tracking to solve a puzzle or looking for the door you passed 45 minutes ago and just found the key to, it starts to feel like filler.

There’s certainly an adjustment period to tuning your ear to the stunted performances, too. James’ aforementioned robotic quality is obviously a nod to the similarly awkward original voice acting, and however strong a case you can make that it gives the game a Lynch-ian, surreal quality that ends up serving the narrative, at time you just want him to react to the fact he’s bludgeoned a pile of angry gore to death like a human being would.

But, as Silent Hill 2 is only too happy to keep reminding you, this game isn’t about having fun. It’s about feeling miserable. Feeling confused, out of your depth, missing some key piece of information that gives all these bizarre events some kind of sense. That’s exactly the point, and this remake executes on that remit with brutal efficacy.

Probably not one to unwind with after a long shift on the A&E ward, then. But for horror purists, historians and single-player aficionados, what Bloober Team’s constructed here does brilliant service to one of the genre’s darkest corners.

# data.attributes.body.processed
James Sunderland has a lot on his mind. Foremost is his dead wife, who nonetheless seems to be writing letters to him, telling him she’s gone back to their ‘special place’, a town they once enjoyed a getaway to. Then there’s the perpetual, ethereal gloom of that town, Silent Hill, that greets him when he makes his way there to search for her, the gathering feeling that it’s not such a special place now. And finally, his crippling inability to emote convincing human emotions in any of his line readings. It’s a lot on the guy’s plate.

As he ventures into the mist, James discovers not a glorious reunion with his departed spouse but an assortment of similarly troubled visitors to the town who all seem to be looking for loved ones too. And hang on, is that blood on the floor? Maybe that nice man with a pyramid on his head who’s lurching out of the fog can tell us.

So begins one of PlayStation 2’s best-remembered horror games, first released in 2001 to a combination of fearful respect and admiration. Original developer Konami used the console’s technical limitations as a feature, bringing the draw distances uncomfortably close with that trademark fog.

Unafraid to turn you off with its confrontationally muted colour palette, it wasn’t here to give you a thrill ride like your Resi 2s or your various Dino Crises. Here was a horror game whose scariest beats happened in between the fights, moments of grim realisation that turned the narrative on its head, reframed recent events, and had you laying awake at night, thinking about it all. Piecing it all together.

For Bloober Team, the architects of this remake and veteran horror developers with the likes of Layers of Fear under their belts, the hard work’s already been done. Or so you’d assume. After all, all that delicately constructed narrative framework carries over verbatim, and that was always the juicy bit. The combat was never a highlight, and even the most avid viewer of Richard Osman’s House of Games would agree that the puzzles merely served a purpose.

However: we all know about the plot by now, don’t we? Its twists and turns, once capable of blindsiding the player to controller-dropping degrees of astonishment, have been diminished by two decades of us all talking about it. So in fact, Bloober Team’s job here is trickier than it first appears, and not just because ‘Bloober Team’ sounds like a kids’ TV show about gunge and bogeys.

What you realise, after retreading James’ footsteps through Silent Hill for a couple of hours, is that this remake is all about conjuring the right atmosphere. And it’s something the developer does a fine job of. The fog was there to disguise the PS2’s graphics capabilities in 2001, but in 2024 it does the opposite job, showing off how rich and thick and immersive modern lighting and volumetric particle effects can be. Of course, the effect’s the same: tension.

Oppressive, constant tension. You rarely see more than six feet in front of you when you’re outdoors, and that means there’s almost always the potential to be surprised by a fleshy horror at a moment’s notice. It’s draining, after a while. Psychologically exhausting. Just as it’s supposed to be.

We’re still on the fence, even now, after two decades, as to whether all the non-combat traversal through that fog really works, though. As much as it’s creepy and foreboding to walk down a particular street of the abandoned supernatural community once, when you’re constantly back-tracking to solve a puzzle or looking for the door you passed 45 minutes ago and just found the key to, it starts to feel like filler.

There’s certainly an adjustment period to tuning your ear to the stunted performances, too. James’ aforementioned robotic quality is obviously a nod to the similarly awkward original voice acting, and however strong a case you can make that it gives the game a Lynch-ian, surreal quality that ends up serving the narrative, at time you just want him to react to the fact he’s bludgeoned a pile of angry gore to death like a human being would.

But, as Silent Hill 2 is only too happy to keep reminding you, this game isn’t about having fun. It’s about feeling miserable. Feeling confused, out of your depth, missing some key piece of information that gives all these bizarre events some kind of sense. That’s exactly the point, and this remake executes on that remit with brutal efficacy.

Probably not one to unwind with after a long shift on the A&E ward, then. But for horror purists, historians and single-player aficionados, what Bloober Team’s constructed here does brilliant service to one of the genre’s darkest corners.