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.

This was it, took me a long time to finally play it.

There's a lot of discourse surrounding it with it's "incredible" story and characters, and I would always be like "Yeah cool", but now that I've finally played it I understand. The story really is phenomenal.

The combat/exploration I also really liked, but I'm also a huge fan of classic Resident Evil so clunky movement and combat don't bother me in the slightest.

Absolutely incredible, thank you Team Silent

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

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.