This is one of those games I'd show to an English teacher, this has become one of my favorite stories ever, not just in gaming.

Every cutscene was engaging and beautiful, the music was some of the best i've heard in a game, and the world was intense.

The only criticisms I have for the game were just the effects of this game's release date, while the combat and camera feel dated, it never really got in the way.

kinda weird that they only made silent hill #2 and no other games

something a friend of mine has talked about is the idea of separating games into "gameplay games" and "experience games," and hoo boy is this game an experience.
obviously this one is a classic to the point where i'm not sure what i can say that hasn't already been said? the atmosphere is incredible, the map of silent hill is great, and the opening is honestly one of the best ones i've experienced in a game

the story has already been discussed to one thousand deaths, so my meager contribution to that conversation is that i enjoyed it and found it emotionally resonant enough to land

in summary: the combat being complete shit works perfectly in the game's favor up until the exact second you have to fight a boss

Si el Silent Hill 1 plantó las semillas de la formula del horror, Silent Hill 2 fue sin lugar a duda el pico máximo de la franquicia.

Tanto es así, que mucha gente cuando habla de "canones" de la serie y elementos de ese estilo, el 99% solamente hablan habiendo jugado solamente Silent Hill 2, al punto que los mismos devs en las redes sociales tienen que decirles que están equivocados y que los demás juegos son igual de validos que este.

Esto es así porque Silent Hill 2 es casi un juego perfecto, tiene en mi opinion la mejor historia, el mejor antagonista, los mejores diseños de enemigos, y para algunos el mejor soundtrack (me excluyo en esto porque personalmente creo que el del 3 es superior).

Basicamente, si nunca jugaste un silent hill, pero queres tener la experiencia de la que todo el mundo habla, este es el juego que tenes que jugar.

I always knew that I'm gonna love this game.

you know that meme "huge sh2 fan excited to play it for the first time" that was me. it took me nearly a year to play this game just because I was scared that I hyped the game too much for myself and it's gonna understandably disappoint me, In that time frame I was even spoiled about the twist at the end.

for a bit of context; there are a couple of story themes that I find very interesting and nearly everything that I love in any medium is considered a work that touches on those ideas.
one of them is "unreliable narrators" and another one is "self-hatred". I have more but these two are by far my favorites. the works that explore these ideas are few and the good ones are even fewer. honestly the reason I got back to gaming was because I couldn't find anymore good stuff that satisfy my needs, hell I'm on my seventh rewatch of Bojack Horseman. I still can't find stuff that satisfy my needs.

but this does actually. I wasn't disappointed, I was nailed to my sit and even though I knew the twist it still surprised me. I really wasn't expecting it to hit me this personally.

there's some goofy voice acting in there too but that's how I think I sound like when I talk about something important so for that I'll give it a pass.

so should you play it? no this game sucks and double no if you had a breakup recently don't make the mistake I did.

- Great atmosphere, world and plot.
- Has one of the most tense sections in all games making it truly special.
- OST is great and can actually be enjoyed outside of the horror elements and industrial sounds of it.
- Combat is not the strongest part of the game, i don't know if its an actual flaw but i am unbothered by it.
- Camera can be a little obnoxious.

Not simply one of the best horror games, but one of the best works of horror fiction ever crafted.

Its story is rooted heavily in horror tropes of the past but ascends past its typical dead wife plot line thanks primarily to its restraint and self-respect. It takes the time to cultivate a unique atmosphere inspired by its filmic cousins (Jacob’s Ladder primarily) not interested in just scaring the player but forcing them to endure truly horrifying environments. All of this aided by one of the greatest soundtracks ever composed for a video game.

A high mark in the medium that all studios should be aiming for.

An example of turn of the century obsessions in Japanese art about mental instability and suicidality with the extremity of its lugubrious design inhabiting that sense of annihilation. The intrigue that raises after playing is that I'm unsure if its dramatics would be as profoundly felt if its presentation exhibited them more directly. There is a potential broadness to the events it implements when compositing the characters in relation to these harrowing topics. I wouldn't be interested in Silent Hill 2 if it extended into its narrative details beyond genre mystery. However, if the work produces such a punishing effect, that's only further proof that form reigns as art's true expressivity, as thing can't be isolated from their presentation. The past situation is the source of the game's narrativity. The paulatine revelation of the details implicated in the trial subordinating James. Those are more important for decoding characters than anything in the present tense, as all gets rendered metaphorical. The past blends with imagination and creates a distortion of the spatial navigation, the player's most recurrent activity. It is a distortion responding less to geographical coherency but a psychosexual cartography ridden by guilt and self-deception, guided by the diegetic representation through Maria of James' desire for making his image of his wife persist beyond the complication behind the person we never get to see, an exaggeration of the woman she yearned over the one her wife was. There lies the notion that a true understanding of a mind comes from taking into equal consideration fantasies, memories and anything that remains liminal and rather obscure if we determined it with exactitude as belonging to these correspondent registers. Even the speculative power of sound, as it signals unrecognizable factors without resolving them as they exist purely for the intensity of nurturing paranoia complements its perspective on cognition. Everything finds a unity in this sublimation of sin through hyperbole where plights transform into horror. An imprisonment where all characters, as well as the very enviroment, directs James to confront himself. A grotesque mirror that gazes back to show all its monstrosity. And our own comprehension as players inhabiting James displays a distance between our shared knowledge, as his deception makes him even admittedly unreliable in his rationalization of his deeds. The question motivating the player becomes less about the possibility of reencounter, as we're certain about Mary's death, but about what were the circumstances that confronted the couple requiring James for observing to his responsability in what happened, searching for the reason why he must endure punishment. The metaphor about the literal battle against fears might sound trite, but the act in the experience of falling deeper into the abyss, persevering against these terrors as we complete the image about James' culpability and disgusting feelings, is what makes it so atmospherically remarkable. An achievement in synchronity between narrative contracts and ludic ones in the medium's equivalent to Tarkovsky's Solaris, the conception of a subjective space adapted to challenging the illusions created deceptively by our desires until they become untenable.

I beat this game close to a month ago and it hasn't left my mind once since. Is it the soundtrack I've had on repeat? The reminiscing of atmosphere and setting? Maybe the gut wrenching story. I don't know exactly what has kept me so infatuated with this game, but I can't think of any other experience I've had with any media that left me just so... stuck. Whatever it is, I've been craving for more and have started a journey to play the other Silent Hill games. This game is nothing short of a masterpiece, and is a generational work of art that will be highly regarded as long as video games stay in the mainstream.

E aqui eu encerro minha jornada (pelo menos na campanha principal) em Silent Hill 2.

Esse jogo é uma obra prima, no momento sem palavras pra descrever tamanha experiência...

Peguei o final "Leave", acho que é o melhor que eu gostaria de ter, simplesmente divino...