Silent Hill 2 Remake Review (PS5) – A Nightmare Out on the Town

I remember that game—Silent Hill 2. It’s widely considered one of the best horror titles of all time, and rightfully so. The 2001 psychological horror game is light on jump scares but heavy on atmosphere as players explore a haunted town as a haunted man. But time hasn’t been kind to Silent Hill 2. So thankfully, Silent Hill 2 Remake has come along to set things right.

Game Name: Silent Hill 2 Remake
Platforms: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PC 
Developer: Bloober Team
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: October 8, 2024
Price: $69.99

First off, a bit of context. The original Silent Hill 2 sold well and proved a critical and commercial success. Unfortunately, the story goes that Konami lost its source code, meaning that only those with a PlayStation 2 copy, or a modded PC version, could play it. Even then, like another two-word horror series, Silent Hill 2’s tank controls haven’t aged well. If any horror game deserves a remake, it’s Silent Hill 2. And Bloober Team, known for the eerie Layers of Fear series, has delivered.

Welcome to Silent Hill 2 Remake

Silent Hill 2 Remake kicks off just like the original. It opens in a bathroom as grimy as it was in 2001. Well, even grimier, really. If nothing else, this title scene encapsulates what the remake does. It’s more or less the Silent Hill 2 you remember but looking and sounding even better (and grimier).

For those who never played the original, Silent Hill 2 Remake is a fitting place to start. A stand-alone story, it puts players into the shoes of James Sunderland. Sunderland travels to Silent Hill, famous for small-town Americana sights and, uh, fog, to look for his wife, Mary. What he finds may be more than he bargained for, but perhaps just what he needs. The town is different than he recalls, with fewer tourists and more terrifying creatures.

Fleshing Out Some Story

Silent Hill 2 Remake keeps the core story in place—nothing major changes—but adds extended character interactions and cutscenes. The original eccentric supporting characters still help or hinder James’s journey. When joined by Maria, for example, I enjoyed interacting with the environment to hear her wry remarks. One wardrobe interaction even made me crack a smile as it called back to the 2001 original.

The cutscenes in particular serve as the ideal side dishes for whatever the given gameplay course offers. Sometimes after a particularly long and tense stretch of gameplay, they provide a necessary breather. After one white-knuckle escape, I could feel myself relaxing once a cutscene unfolded with the soothing tunes of Akira Yamaoka’s soundtrack.

Other times, cutscenes serve to ratchet up the tension. The supporting characters in Silent Hill 2 are famously an odd bunch. Just as the remake humanizes the characters a bit more with added backstory, it also makes them a bit more threatening. Eddie, for example, came off a little goofy in the original. Here, his mile-long stare seems a bit eccentric at first but becomes eerier and eerier the more he engages with James. On the flip side, Angela proves eminently watchable as her face telegraphs her erratic moods. Facial expressions have come a long way in gaming, and Silent Hill 2 Remake makes the most of this in showcasing its characters’ fragile psyches.

The Fights and Frights of Silent Hill 2 Remake

Much ado has been made about the combat. Does Silent Hill 2 Remake have the rough-and-tumble combat of the original? No. But as a friend of mine said, “If I wanted to swing a bat like a middle-aged dad I wouldn’t need to play a video game.” So this James is a little lighter on his feet. That said, you’re still no Leon S. Kennedy. James can do a bit of a dodge—more of a back step really—and give a mean swing. And while sure, the latter might be a tad unrealistic, it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

Every swing of James’s wooden plank has a really good “thwack” to it. All the elements come together to support said thwack. The dualsense rumbles, the enemy on the receiving end takes a good hit, and, of course, the sound provides that satisfying thwack. Once a monster goes down, you can wail on it so that it stays down. And continue to hit it some more even when it’s absolutely, definitely, 100% not getting up. And in a way, James taking his anger out on a limp monster feels more emotionally true than if he was constantly stumbling.

The boss battles, for the most part, prove particularly inspired. Here, Bloober Team took a few more liberties. One late-game boss battle that played out pretty anti-climactically in the original becomes a highlight. Instead of planting and shooting, players wage battle across an ever-expanding labyrinth. Sadly, a major fight shortly after it becomes worse than in the original. They can’t all be winners. But overall, the boss battles of Silent Hill 2 Remake nod to those in the original while adding a bit more flair for the better. And you can bet, Pyramid Head is still as scary as ever.

Surviving and Thriving

Silent Hill 2 Remake’s map offers some small yet significant mechanics. As much as I love survival horror games, I’m not a big fan of having to backtrack to an entirely different area just to realize that I misread a clue. In Silent Hill 2 Remake, the map continuously updates with where you need to go. It doesn’t spell things out for you too much, just marking the general area of where something is located. It also updates with other helpful tidbits like closed-off routes and checked-off locations.

It’s always satisfying when form and function go hand in hand in a game. In Silent Hill 2 Remake, the bizarre movements of the monsters come off as suitably creepy. The humanoid Lying Figures often slither on the ground. The kicking Mannequins, or “Johnny Legs” as I used to call them (read: still do), flip and scuttle about. Even Pyramid Head and the Bubble Nurses have new erratic twitches that unnerve.

But these behaviors also make combat more strategic. You’ll want to hit a monster with a melee weapon while it’s down. For those that spurt acid in this state, a ranged finisher becomes appealing. I thoroughly enjoyed studying each monster’s movements to figure out how to exploit them. In this way, Silent Hill 2 Remake’s combat alone encompasses elements of survival, puzzle-solving, and horror.

A Longer Stay in Silent Hill

Again, Silent Hill 2 Remake doesn’t make any major changes, instead seeking to flesh out what’s already there. This works great for the combat, puzzles, and scares, when more is always a good thing. In lengthening the runtime of the game itself, it extends James’s stay in Silent Hill—and yours by extension. The original Silent Hill 2 is a fairly short game by contemporary standards, clocking in at around seven hours. The remake extends this to about fifteen.

Since the remake doesn’t add any new sections, everything from the original goes on for slightly longer. This is great for cutscenes and sections occurring in the town itself. But for the already long stretches of major locations like the apartment building and the hospital, clearing out room after room becomes a tad repetitive. Is James looking for his wife or working as a cleaning service? That said, the larger locales generally make it clear as to where players need to go. These sections often involve clues with numbered combinations. Even though the larger areas can feel as bloated as a Bubble Head Nurse, players can bypass the extra padding on repeat playthroughs by simply inputting known combinations.

And players may very well wish to replay the game. Like the original, Silent Hill 2 Remake has multiple endings. In addition to the ones from the original, the remake adds two new ones as well. As such, with prior knowledge of puzzle solutions (or a trusty guide), players can replay Silent Hill 2 Remake in less than ten hours. There’s even a trophy for it.

The Sounds of Silence

The audio is hauntingly beautiful and also hauntingly, well, haunting. The score by Akira Yamaoka sounds more ethereal than ever. Luke Roberts and Salome R. Gunnarsdottir, the voice actors for James and Mary respectively, sound suitably tortured and wearied. On the sound design side of things, the audio design really sells the supernatural. Entering the town of Silent Hill through the woods, I was immediately put on edge by the sounds of rocks falling down the path and rustling in the trees against the wet plop-plops of James’s shoes in the mud.

Lifting the Fog on Accessibility

Silent Hill 2 Remake has a ton of accessibility options. You can adjust reticle visibility, thickness, opacity, and color. You can also adjust interaction icon visibility and size. And notably, you can adjust traversal icon visibility as well. You can choose to have an icon appear for climbable areas or just figure it out on your own. There’s no yellow paint in these places, but instead white cloth. It comes off as believably unobtrusive while still cluing you in should you get stumped.

And those are just for gameplay. There are a host of options for graphics, such as a colorblind mode, for controls, such as aim assist, and for text, such as tutorial visibility. I chose defaults. I also chose Quality Mode, prioritizing graphics over frame rate, over Performance Mode. The game still ran like a dream, through this nightmare of a town.

And that’s to say nothing of the main settings page, which offers separate challenge sliders for combat and puzzles. For reference, I went with standard for both. Here players can also choose what interface and graphic mode they want. I went with the defaults, meaning I did get some HUD elements while playing as well as a semi-vibrant color scheme, as opposed to the more muted “90s filter.”

On the technical side, I only encountered minor issues. Occasionally when smashing a large bug its body would just hover in mid-air. Another time the game wouldn’t let me pick up some ammo. Nothing major. I imagine these will get patched fairly quickly.

Finding and Saving in Silent Hill 2 Remake

While it seems like a small thing, but Silent Hill 2 Remake really made me appreciate environment design. Nothing is handed to you, but generally, items are where you expect them. Open a kitchen drawer and you have a good chance of finding a health drink, for example. As mentioned before, resources are not abundant. In my sixteen-hour playthrough, I generally didn’t feel like I missed too much. The game feels confident that in placing resources in places that make sense, you’ll have what you need to survive and hardly a bullet more.

Similarly, the placement of save points feels warranted while not being overly abundant. It’s worth mentioning that there’s no quicksave option in Silent Hill 2 Remake. Harkening to the original, players must save the game at pieces of red paper scattered around the town. They’re located in many of the same places as the original. However, the remake does add an occasional auto save. Dying after clearing out half a floor of enemies, I reappeared at the start of the floor. It did mean I had a few enemies to fight again, but it was much preferable to loading back at the save point 30 minutes prior. Silent Hill 2 Remake is tough but fair.

Review Disclosure Statement: Silent Hill 2 Remake was provided to us by Konami for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.