2021, which is 20 entire years since this game has come out. Are you feeling old yet? Cause I sure do. I was only 5 years old when this game came out so I ended up missing out on it since I was much too young to play games like this at the time.
Silent Hill 3 is approaching that ripe ol' age as well. I plan on writing a review for that game too since I did get a physical PS2 copy as a Christmas gift a couple years ago. After beating it a couple times and finding every secret and all the content the game has to offer, I consider it one of the greatest survival horror games I have ever played.
I played Silent Hill 1 many years ago and I enjoyed that game a lot as well.
In 2011, Konami announced to the public's excitement that Silent Hill 2 and 3 would be returning in an HD Collection for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
However the first red flag was how the collection was missing Silent Hill 1 and 4 entirely, due to the fact that Tom Hullett, the guy in charge of the franchise at the time, said Silent Hill 1 wasn't included in the collection because it's a PS1 game, and that porting PS1 games to current generation hardware was "difficult."
But then he would go on and say that Silent Hill 4 wasn't included because of "how polarizing it was to the fanbase."
Right off the bat something was wrong here. Then screenshots were leaked of Silent Hill 2 HD on Twitter, around one month before the collection came out, in which Masahiro Ito, the level and monster designer of the first three Silent Hill games, responded in complete shock.
The game looked like total shit compared to the original. Then the game came out, and it all went downhill from there.
Silent Hill HD Collection is one of the most broken and disappointing releases in gaming history that not only completely disrespects both the legacy of Silent Hill 2 and 3, but also the people who worked their collective asses off creating them to make them the absolute best they can be.
I actually made an in-depth review about both Silent Hill 2 and 3 HD if you are interested. I will post a link. I go in-depth about all of the bugs, glitches, graphical errors, the awful tweaks done to the voice acting and script in Silent Hill 3, and then I go into how this collection came to be and who is responsible. It's actually become my most Hearted review on this site.
https://www.backloggd.com/u/Katiopeia/review/106209/
The reason why I am bringing all of this up is because we are in the year 2021, and the HD Collection is still the most accessible way to get your hands on Silent Hill 2 and 3, but to this day, the HD versions are buggy, broken, and unoptimized.
To this day Konami has completely abandoned the IP for many years in favor of their Silent Hill, Metal Gear, and Castlevania Pachinko machines, which are basically their Japanese slot machines. They're basically the fuckin' EA of Japan. Greed is more important than the well-being of your most beloved franchises it seems.
Many people call Silent Hill 2 the best game in the franchise, and I was desperate as shit to play it. At the time of making that HD Collection review it was literally impossible for me to get the game because I didn't have a PC, and if I wanted an original PS2 copy, I'd have to trade an arm and a leg for one.
I refused to play the HD Collection. I saw the screenshots, I read articles online, and I watched reviews and gameplay footage on YouTube but without spoiling myself from story details. I did not want my first experience to be through the HD Collection.
But, I eventually did save up money and I just decided to buy my own gaming PC this generation for reasons such as exclusives and emulation.
So after this inflated intro, after finally playing through Silent Hill 2 for the first time, when I watched those credits roll, I felt very emotional, the likes of which I hadn't felt in a long time from playing games.
I sat there at my desk in total silence, in complete amazement. I felt terrible inside that I missed out on a game like this all those years ago, and at the same time I felt a serious anger because of the fact that there are people out there who first experienced these games through the HD Collection, and to this day, Konami has never fixed this gap because of their greedy anti-consumer business practices that still persist to this very day.
I imagine the people who played HD Collection for the first time wondered what in the hell all the fuss was about all those years ago and just thought of people like me as like a bunch of idiots, and this is something that Masahiro Ito expressed on Twitter to his disappointment.
So with that being said, I will do the standard critique of the story, gameplay, presentation, etc. I won't spoil anything major if you haven't played it yet. Though I would like to talk about how insane the narrative structure to this game is.
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Instead of Harry Mason from the first game, the protagonist of this game is James Sunderland, who arrives in Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his missing wife Mary that she is alive, waiting for him at their "special place."
Three years before this she passed away from a fatal disease, so James wonders how in the hell she could still be alive. He knows the journey is insane but goes through with it anyway, seeking answers.
At a first glance he doesn't really stand out as a very charismatic character, in fact he is very stilted, especially when compared to other video game protagonists at the time.
However, from the way that he awkwardly conversates with others, his mannerisms, his disregard for his own personal safety, even the way that he's dressed, are all signs of a damaged man that has lost pretty much everything he cared about, a person who never really came to terms with his grief and hasn't moved on.
But deep down there is a glimmer of hope, that Mary is still alive, and that alone is enough to keep James pushing on. So I as a player not only relate to James' inner struggle, but I get invested because I not only want to see the truth as well, but I want to see James succeed.
Because James is actually quite a likeable character. He is not your typical one note passive aggressive douchebag like you see with other video game characters, but his mental state does come into question.
Because at first it's difficult to tell whether or not everything that James is seeing is real; the horrifying monsters, the empty fog covered town, the characters that he meets who are just as confused and lost as he is, and memos found in the world containing very questionable descriptions.
The reason that I say this is because at one point in the game James meets a little girl named Laura, and she doesn't seem to physically see any of the monsters that he does.
And at another point he meets Maria who strikingly has the same face as Mary. The difference being that Maria has a different style of clothing, and her personality is not the same. Despite this, James actually sees his wife inside of Maria.
It's even made more apparent due to the fact that Maria shows indications that she knows more about James and Mary's relationship than what she should, and this makes her a very intriguing character.
And this brings James into question as to how sane he really is.
Which made me come to the conclusion that Silent Hill is the physical embodiment of a person's mental state. What the characters see in Silent Hill is representative of what they feel in their minds.
It's similar to the first game with Alessa, in which the Silent Hill that Mason travels through is the culmination of the everyday pain and trauma of a poor girl who has been used by an evil cult to create a god to take over the world.
Silent Hill 2 expands upon this, and I believe it's absolutely fuckin' brilliant.
Every character in this game is reflective of James in one way or another, but each of them have their own inner demons, thus they all see their own fucked up versions of Silent Hill. All of them are on their own journeys through Silent Hill. And this is what makes the characters more memorable and relatable.
This is exacerbated by the voice acting. It is very schlocky, hell it's a bit terrible in some areas. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of awkward line deliveries. This game's voice acting just reeks of a game that came out in the early 2000s or 1990s.
But, the voice acting is intentional, and that's the key word right there. Everyone speaks in a lost, terrified, or even confused manner, but that's the point.
Everyone in this game is either sad, lost, or broken in their own ways. Everyone has a depressing backstory behind them, they're just complete strangers to each other, and most of them don't even know why they're here in Silent Hill to begin with, unlike James.
This is what makes James stand out above the rest. He knows why he is in Silent Hill, it's just the question of why he sees what he does. He keeps the details about his relationship to himself. But he keeps going forward even though he knows that he could end his life.
And he does still have humanity inside of him, because you can see that he wants to help all of these hurt people.
So with all of this being said, it brings into question what the true nature of Silent Hill really is. And this is an ingenious philosophical concept from a narrative standpoint, because it makes the town itself feel like an actual character, exacerbated by the horrific atmosphere, like it has a self aware twisted consciousness, like it's alive.
And that's a scary thing to think about. Because like I said earlier, and this is what my beliefs are, is that whatever trauma or mental strain the characters have felt is what they see in Silent Hill.
When you think about it, when you take a step back and think about the when, the why, and the how, it becomes so much more grandiose than just a story about stopping an evil cult from summoning a world destroying god, or a story about finding your missing wife.
These are simple setups. But they go much farther than that, and that's what I love about these games. You play through this game and you ask yourself at least once "What in the hell is going on?"
And that's the magic question that pretty much describes this whole franchise. The intrigue, the mystery, the character development, the tragic backstories of these characters, it all comes together like that perfectly written novel by someone like Stephen King, John Saul, or Dean Koontz.
This is a story that was designed to be questioned, to be discussed, to provoke the player's mindset. It's a game meant to challenge you, and I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet. This is how you make a game's narrative interesting, stand out, and make it the center of discussion for a long time.
Because everything that I have stated so far are just my own personal opinions. This narrative is subjective among the players. You may have a completely different opinion from me about the characters and the town and the sequence of events.
You could write a book dissecting the human nature behind this game's themes, but there will always be someone who will say "yes, but what about this, this, and this?"
But that's why I like this story so much. This is why it's still talked about to this very day. It is masterfully put together.
I started off questioning the world, but as I played and I unraveled these mysteries, by the end, it was insanely satisfying, and it made me want even more context.
And the multiple endings only just add the cherry on the top of the sundae.
The story alone makes this game one of the best games ever made. This storytelling is what sets these games apart from the competition, Silent Hill 2 just stands above the rest, it just blows the Resident Evil games out of the water in that aspect.
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The gameplay on the other hand, while the game plays fine, the mechanics do work for what they are, they are very clunky, but that is to be expected from a 2001 survival horror game.
This is a third person survival shooter with fixed camera angles, although the camera does move around with the player like in Code Veronica. The game has tank controls, however you are able to turn the camera around to face James' back by just holding down the L2 button, if you want to see what's in front of you.
Also with the push of either L1 or R1, you can strafe left and right. I don't really use this because it can be awkward using this because of the tank controls and claustrophobic areas. You can't strafe shoot in this game either.
But, pushing L1 and R1 at the same time makes you do an instant 180 degree turn like in Resident Evil. Now this was very useful. I'm very glad this mechanic is also in these games.
It works perfectly for a game like this. Pushing up makes you go forward no matter which direction you are facing. Pushing down makes you go backwards, pushing left or right makes you rotate left or right. Which means that every time the camera angle changes, you don't have to reorient your movement on the control pad or thumbstick.
There are games that have this issue where the camera changes perspective but there are no tank controls, meaning now you are pushing the direction the opposite way, and it can get disorienting. You have to reconfigure your movement with each camera change. But you don't have to worry about that in any of the old Resident Evil or Silent Hill games.
Since this is a Survival Horror game, the goal is about making it out alive rather than fighting everything head on, because ammo and healing items are limited. Once you run out of resources, you're screwed. This is where the survival part comes in.
This means that every enemy encounter means that your brain has to make quick decision making. Do you waste ammo and shoot the enemy down so that you don't have to worry about them anymore? Or do you risk taking damage and running past them so you can save your ammo? But if you take too much damage you need to use healing items which are also limited.
This is a central theme in Resident Evil. However unlike in RE, Silent Hill has a much bigger emphasis on melee combat. Melee is actually a viable strategy in this game if you want to save ammo. But you should be careful since using melee is more risky than using guns. Or you could just do what I do and just run past enemies.
Avoiding enemies actually isn't that difficult in this game though don't get too comfortable cause there will be times where you have to fight to avoid taking damage, especially in the hospital with those goddamn nurses.
Speaking of enemies, man, the enemy variety in this game is goddamn astounding. They not only look terrifying but the sounds that they make actually gave me some shivers.
The acid spitting enemies are the basic enemy type but that acid does hurt. Most of the time I run past them to save ammo
I hate those goddamn cockroaches since the sounds they make just make me seriously uncomfortable
The nurses can be threatening since some of them can wield guns, fucking guns
But the best enemy in the game is the Pyramid Head. He is basically the Nemesis of Silent Hill 2 though he doesn't appear as often. Still, he stalks and attacks you throughout the whole game in some parts. He wields a gigantic axe and it doesn't have a face besides his head being a weird pyramid shape.
This guy is fucking amazing. He not only looks threatening, but the fact that he is prevalent throughout the whole game just shows how much of a great force it is.
There are a handful of different melee weapons. You first start off with a wooden plank, then you can obtain a steel pipe, a great knife, and when you beat the game you can obtain a chainsaw and a can of infinite aerosol spray in a second playthrough.
Basically, the more damage the weapon does, the more awkward it is to use. It takes James a while to swing melee weapons, you have to wait for a slight wind up animation before he swings, but it's even worse than using heavier weaponry.
The damage for the melee weapons is categorized from weakest to strongest
Wooden Plank > Steel Pipe > Great Knife > Chainsaw
So about the weapons, you only get three of them: a pistol, a shotgun, and a hunting rifle.
They all feel great to use. The sound design of the weapons is just deliciously good. The pistol is good for weaker enemies and the shotgun as you would expect is a powerhouse at close range.
The hunting rifle also has high damage and can be used at longer ranges.
Also, I find the aerosol spray to be pointless because while it can immobilize enemies for a brief amount of time, it can damage James if you use it too much.
When you use the shotgun or the rifle, you have to wait for the animation of James pulling the loading mechanism before you can move around again. This creates a gameplay strategy where you have to time your shots and get into a good position so that you don't risk yourself taking damage while you're in the middle of loading your gun.
Because unlike in other games where you seem to play as a super soldier who is deadeye accurate and reloads a gun like if they had a Call of Duty Sleight of Hand perk, Silent Hill games aren't like that.
James is not a soldier, not a police officer, or even a gun nut. James is just a regular civilian who has never had any combat experience. He has never been in a situation where he has to use a firearm or a goddamn chainsaw to defend himself.
Yes, James can miss shots, he moves around sluggishly while using a firearm, he takes a while to reload a gun. But this is all intentional.
The movement and combat mechanics are awkward and clunky.. because it's supposed to be.
That just fits James' character more.
Not to mention, James is a bit frail. It can be easy to lose a good chunk of your health in a short time if you're not careful.
For example, those basic enemies that spit acid at you, I think it only takes 2 or 3 hits from that to go from Green to Red health.
Also, the flashlight is a central mechanic since the majority of the game is set in the dark.
Although there's pretty insane attention to detail where if you have the flashlight off, James will miss even more shots, however it will be harder for enemies to see you.
I don't see why you would play with the flashlight off other than for a challenge run, but I love that this detail is in the game.
Some of the areas that you will be exploring are tight hallways in which avoiding enemy attacks can be tricky. I like to read enemy patterns and I just run as much as I can. I only fight and use up ammo if I really, really have to.
In Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3, you get infinite inventory space. You are able to pick up as many healing items, bullets, and other key items as much as you want. You may think this may break the challenge of a survival horror game, but it doesn't because there is a perfect balance of item drops, so that it doesn't feel like you can just carry 1000 rounds of ammo and 50 healing items.
This also reduces the amount of backtracking you would have to do if you had limited inventory space, so this keeps the pace of the game going.
Although there is a setting in the options menu where you can multiply the amount of ammo you can obtain, why would you do that other than for power trips?
Yeah, power trips can be fun, but I like to actually be challenged when I play a survival horror game. I mean, it's in the name, survival.
When you don't have that setting on, ammo is rare. Healing items are a bit more plentiful, but since James can take a lot of damage even on Normal difficulty, you still have to use your items wisely and conserve what you can.
So now about the difficulty, there are actually two different types of difficulty: combat and puzzle difficulty.
Puzzle difficulty is one of the greatest things to ever have graced gaming. See, I like puzzles in some games, although there can be times where a specific puzzle can be such a ball breaker that I get forced to look up guides on the internet.
And I try to look up guides as least as I can. I can't stand difficult puzzles. It's actually why I have had a hard time getting into the old Tomb Raider games, the Uncharted games, Resident Evil 1, and even Silent Hill 1. The puzzles in SH1 are legendarily difficult, requiring you to know fuckin' Shakespeare and all that nonsense in order to solve them.
And that game didn't have puzzle difficulty. Silent Hill 2 introduces this. You can select Easy, Normal, or Hard puzzles, so you can make them as easy or as hard as you want, either because you hate difficult puzzles like I do, or you're a glutton for masochism.
This is an ingenious system. More games need to have this.
In fact the customization in general is just excellent. You can choose both combat and puzzle difficulty, you can tweak how much ammo you obtain, and with the flashlight mechanic, you can basically make the game as easy or as hard as you want.
If you play any of the later editions of Silent Hill 2 you can play the Maria side story. But it's recommended that you beat James' story first as the Maria scenario contains spoilers.
Maria's story is shorter than James' however it gives more context and backstory into her character and the events that follow James' journey, which means that like I said earlier, she is an important character, with depth and weight to her personality. The fact that she gets her own scenario just shows how much the developers wanted to flesh out this character.
Maria's arsenal only consists of a powerful snub nose revolver and a butcher knife. Also, she doesn't ever get a flashlight. You would think this would be a pain in the ass because of the game being 80-90% dark, but the game does a good job at making everything bright enough that you can actually see where you're going.
Although fighting enemies without a flashlight can either make the encounter more intense or more of a pain to deal with depending on how you look at it.
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This game reeks of an early 2000s game. Graphics wise, it has aged alright. The character models look good for 2001, though the lip syncing leaves much to be desired. And the voice acting as I mentioned earlier, it can range from pretty good to just plain terrible, but like I said, I think that was the point.
The FMV cutscenes however look really damn good, beautiful if I may say. All of the locations are just horrifying.
If I was to give a video game award for best horror atmosphere it would be these games. All the story elements that I talked about earlier really elevate the dread in these locations. Exploring some of these areas can be soul crushing because of the amazing sound design, horrific enemy design, and the darkness.
But the best part about this presentation has to be the soundtrack. Holy mother of shit, this game has one of the greatest soundtracks I have ever heard in a video game. The music evelates both the narrative and the gameplay so goddamn much.
The intro music, the cutscenes, the road to Silent Hill music, the Angela theme, the Maria theme, the bowling alley music, the hospital music, Silent Hill itself, the ending music, I love ALL of the tracks in this game.
This is Final Fantasy VI levels of goddamn brilliant in terms of music. This is one of the only times where I want to buy the official soundtrack for a game and put it up on a shelf as a collector's item, it's that good.
Akira Yamaoka, you're a damn genius composing this OST. The graphics, the voice acting, and the character models may have aged like milk stains, but this soundtrack never did.
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Like I have said a handful of times throughout this review, avoid the HD Collection like the Black Death, that is the absolute worst way to play the game.
The only way you can play this game is to either spend $65-150 on a physical PS2 copy, emulate it on PC with a PS2 emulator, or download the PC version online.
You can safely download the PC version from this link if you're interested.
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/silent-hill-2-restless-dreams-bgd
However, the PC port of Silent Hill 2 is really buggy and unoptimized similarly to the HD Collection. Some examples would be a stretched out aspect ratio, weak fog effects, crashing issues, the FMV cutscenes being broken, the music getting stuck in a quarter second loop, and the key bindings are BEYOND appalling.
And that is where the Enhanced Edition mod comes in. Over the past 3 years or so a team of coders have created fan mods for Silent Hill 2 that both fixes and enhances the game in order to make it the definitive way to play the game. And to this day it's still being updated.
Enhances such as HD textures and backgrounds, a maximum resolution of 1440p, a fixed frame rate, modern PC key binding support, Xbox controller support, etc. These people are basically doing what Konami don't.
If you want to install this mod then here is a link.
http://www.enhanced.townofsilenthill.com/SH2/install.htm
Installing the mod is simple enough. You just download and unzip each file and then drag them into your Silent Hill 2 main folder, replacing any files in the process. Each file is displayed in order so you can keep track.
But if need be, you can check out this comprehensive guide I found on YouTube. It gets straight to the point and doesn't waste time, it even highlights just how bad the original PC port of Silent Hill 2 is.
https://youtu.be/PF1D6_shKIQ
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Playing this game felt like an epiphany, that gaming is just nothing like what it was back then, and it made me miss this generation of gaming. But, with the rise of indie developers, there have been games being released that attempt to replicate these old games.
Some of them good, some of them bad, but you know it's bad when the community has to step up and create something because AAA developer studios like Konami are unwilling to either because they know they're gonna fuck it up or they just don't care.
To this day the HD Collection still haunts the company, I still consider it the worst thing they have ever done, which is further elevated once you actually play these games and you realize why so many people fell in love with them back then.
Because this game should be experienced at least a couple times. This game is a masterpiece, it was far ahead of its time. If I enjoyed Silent Hill 3 so much I wasn't expecting any less from this game, but damn, this game blows Silent Hill 3 out of the water in some aspects.
Maybe, just maybe, we will get a Steam version of Silent Hill 2 and 3, since Silent Hill 4 was added to GOG. Or maybe just a better console port of these games.
But to be honest, I am not holding my breath, because I am not convinced in the slightest that Konami is capable of doing that. Think about when the HD Collection came out. It's been 10 years now and the HD Collection is still being paraded around on digital stores like a corpse, just begging to be buried in peace in a proper coffin, and then reincarnated as a newfounded being.
It's even worse when you consider that now we have emulation and fan mods for both Silent Hill 2 and 3 like Enhanced Edition, made by people who put in the legwork that Konami have neglected for so many years now, and for free might I add.
I give this game 10 Pyramid Heads out of 10.
Silent Hill 3 is approaching that ripe ol' age as well. I plan on writing a review for that game too since I did get a physical PS2 copy as a Christmas gift a couple years ago. After beating it a couple times and finding every secret and all the content the game has to offer, I consider it one of the greatest survival horror games I have ever played.
I played Silent Hill 1 many years ago and I enjoyed that game a lot as well.
In 2011, Konami announced to the public's excitement that Silent Hill 2 and 3 would be returning in an HD Collection for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
However the first red flag was how the collection was missing Silent Hill 1 and 4 entirely, due to the fact that Tom Hullett, the guy in charge of the franchise at the time, said Silent Hill 1 wasn't included in the collection because it's a PS1 game, and that porting PS1 games to current generation hardware was "difficult."
But then he would go on and say that Silent Hill 4 wasn't included because of "how polarizing it was to the fanbase."
Right off the bat something was wrong here. Then screenshots were leaked of Silent Hill 2 HD on Twitter, around one month before the collection came out, in which Masahiro Ito, the level and monster designer of the first three Silent Hill games, responded in complete shock.
The game looked like total shit compared to the original. Then the game came out, and it all went downhill from there.
Silent Hill HD Collection is one of the most broken and disappointing releases in gaming history that not only completely disrespects both the legacy of Silent Hill 2 and 3, but also the people who worked their collective asses off creating them to make them the absolute best they can be.
I actually made an in-depth review about both Silent Hill 2 and 3 HD if you are interested. I will post a link. I go in-depth about all of the bugs, glitches, graphical errors, the awful tweaks done to the voice acting and script in Silent Hill 3, and then I go into how this collection came to be and who is responsible. It's actually become my most Hearted review on this site.
https://www.backloggd.com/u/Katiopeia/review/106209/
The reason why I am bringing all of this up is because we are in the year 2021, and the HD Collection is still the most accessible way to get your hands on Silent Hill 2 and 3, but to this day, the HD versions are buggy, broken, and unoptimized.
To this day Konami has completely abandoned the IP for many years in favor of their Silent Hill, Metal Gear, and Castlevania Pachinko machines, which are basically their Japanese slot machines. They're basically the fuckin' EA of Japan. Greed is more important than the well-being of your most beloved franchises it seems.
Many people call Silent Hill 2 the best game in the franchise, and I was desperate as shit to play it. At the time of making that HD Collection review it was literally impossible for me to get the game because I didn't have a PC, and if I wanted an original PS2 copy, I'd have to trade an arm and a leg for one.
I refused to play the HD Collection. I saw the screenshots, I read articles online, and I watched reviews and gameplay footage on YouTube but without spoiling myself from story details. I did not want my first experience to be through the HD Collection.
But, I eventually did save up money and I just decided to buy my own gaming PC this generation for reasons such as exclusives and emulation.
So after this inflated intro, after finally playing through Silent Hill 2 for the first time, when I watched those credits roll, I felt very emotional, the likes of which I hadn't felt in a long time from playing games.
I sat there at my desk in total silence, in complete amazement. I felt terrible inside that I missed out on a game like this all those years ago, and at the same time I felt a serious anger because of the fact that there are people out there who first experienced these games through the HD Collection, and to this day, Konami has never fixed this gap because of their greedy anti-consumer business practices that still persist to this very day.
I imagine the people who played HD Collection for the first time wondered what in the hell all the fuss was about all those years ago and just thought of people like me as like a bunch of idiots, and this is something that Masahiro Ito expressed on Twitter to his disappointment.
So with that being said, I will do the standard critique of the story, gameplay, presentation, etc. I won't spoil anything major if you haven't played it yet. Though I would like to talk about how insane the narrative structure to this game is.
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Instead of Harry Mason from the first game, the protagonist of this game is James Sunderland, who arrives in Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his missing wife Mary that she is alive, waiting for him at their "special place."
Three years before this she passed away from a fatal disease, so James wonders how in the hell she could still be alive. He knows the journey is insane but goes through with it anyway, seeking answers.
At a first glance he doesn't really stand out as a very charismatic character, in fact he is very stilted, especially when compared to other video game protagonists at the time.
However, from the way that he awkwardly conversates with others, his mannerisms, his disregard for his own personal safety, even the way that he's dressed, are all signs of a damaged man that has lost pretty much everything he cared about, a person who never really came to terms with his grief and hasn't moved on.
But deep down there is a glimmer of hope, that Mary is still alive, and that alone is enough to keep James pushing on. So I as a player not only relate to James' inner struggle, but I get invested because I not only want to see the truth as well, but I want to see James succeed.
Because James is actually quite a likeable character. He is not your typical one note passive aggressive douchebag like you see with other video game characters, but his mental state does come into question.
Because at first it's difficult to tell whether or not everything that James is seeing is real; the horrifying monsters, the empty fog covered town, the characters that he meets who are just as confused and lost as he is, and memos found in the world containing very questionable descriptions.
The reason that I say this is because at one point in the game James meets a little girl named Laura, and she doesn't seem to physically see any of the monsters that he does.
And at another point he meets Maria who strikingly has the same face as Mary. The difference being that Maria has a different style of clothing, and her personality is not the same. Despite this, James actually sees his wife inside of Maria.
It's even made more apparent due to the fact that Maria shows indications that she knows more about James and Mary's relationship than what she should, and this makes her a very intriguing character.
And this brings James into question as to how sane he really is.
Which made me come to the conclusion that Silent Hill is the physical embodiment of a person's mental state. What the characters see in Silent Hill is representative of what they feel in their minds.
It's similar to the first game with Alessa, in which the Silent Hill that Mason travels through is the culmination of the everyday pain and trauma of a poor girl who has been used by an evil cult to create a god to take over the world.
Silent Hill 2 expands upon this, and I believe it's absolutely fuckin' brilliant.
Every character in this game is reflective of James in one way or another, but each of them have their own inner demons, thus they all see their own fucked up versions of Silent Hill. All of them are on their own journeys through Silent Hill. And this is what makes the characters more memorable and relatable.
This is exacerbated by the voice acting. It is very schlocky, hell it's a bit terrible in some areas. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of awkward line deliveries. This game's voice acting just reeks of a game that came out in the early 2000s or 1990s.
But, the voice acting is intentional, and that's the key word right there. Everyone speaks in a lost, terrified, or even confused manner, but that's the point.
Everyone in this game is either sad, lost, or broken in their own ways. Everyone has a depressing backstory behind them, they're just complete strangers to each other, and most of them don't even know why they're here in Silent Hill to begin with, unlike James.
This is what makes James stand out above the rest. He knows why he is in Silent Hill, it's just the question of why he sees what he does. He keeps the details about his relationship to himself. But he keeps going forward even though he knows that he could end his life.
And he does still have humanity inside of him, because you can see that he wants to help all of these hurt people.
So with all of this being said, it brings into question what the true nature of Silent Hill really is. And this is an ingenious philosophical concept from a narrative standpoint, because it makes the town itself feel like an actual character, exacerbated by the horrific atmosphere, like it has a self aware twisted consciousness, like it's alive.
And that's a scary thing to think about. Because like I said earlier, and this is what my beliefs are, is that whatever trauma or mental strain the characters have felt is what they see in Silent Hill.
When you think about it, when you take a step back and think about the when, the why, and the how, it becomes so much more grandiose than just a story about stopping an evil cult from summoning a world destroying god, or a story about finding your missing wife.
These are simple setups. But they go much farther than that, and that's what I love about these games. You play through this game and you ask yourself at least once "What in the hell is going on?"
And that's the magic question that pretty much describes this whole franchise. The intrigue, the mystery, the character development, the tragic backstories of these characters, it all comes together like that perfectly written novel by someone like Stephen King, John Saul, or Dean Koontz.
This is a story that was designed to be questioned, to be discussed, to provoke the player's mindset. It's a game meant to challenge you, and I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet. This is how you make a game's narrative interesting, stand out, and make it the center of discussion for a long time.
Because everything that I have stated so far are just my own personal opinions. This narrative is subjective among the players. You may have a completely different opinion from me about the characters and the town and the sequence of events.
You could write a book dissecting the human nature behind this game's themes, but there will always be someone who will say "yes, but what about this, this, and this?"
But that's why I like this story so much. This is why it's still talked about to this very day. It is masterfully put together.
I started off questioning the world, but as I played and I unraveled these mysteries, by the end, it was insanely satisfying, and it made me want even more context.
And the multiple endings only just add the cherry on the top of the sundae.
The story alone makes this game one of the best games ever made. This storytelling is what sets these games apart from the competition, Silent Hill 2 just stands above the rest, it just blows the Resident Evil games out of the water in that aspect.
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The gameplay on the other hand, while the game plays fine, the mechanics do work for what they are, they are very clunky, but that is to be expected from a 2001 survival horror game.
This is a third person survival shooter with fixed camera angles, although the camera does move around with the player like in Code Veronica. The game has tank controls, however you are able to turn the camera around to face James' back by just holding down the L2 button, if you want to see what's in front of you.
Also with the push of either L1 or R1, you can strafe left and right. I don't really use this because it can be awkward using this because of the tank controls and claustrophobic areas. You can't strafe shoot in this game either.
But, pushing L1 and R1 at the same time makes you do an instant 180 degree turn like in Resident Evil. Now this was very useful. I'm very glad this mechanic is also in these games.
It works perfectly for a game like this. Pushing up makes you go forward no matter which direction you are facing. Pushing down makes you go backwards, pushing left or right makes you rotate left or right. Which means that every time the camera angle changes, you don't have to reorient your movement on the control pad or thumbstick.
There are games that have this issue where the camera changes perspective but there are no tank controls, meaning now you are pushing the direction the opposite way, and it can get disorienting. You have to reconfigure your movement with each camera change. But you don't have to worry about that in any of the old Resident Evil or Silent Hill games.
Since this is a Survival Horror game, the goal is about making it out alive rather than fighting everything head on, because ammo and healing items are limited. Once you run out of resources, you're screwed. This is where the survival part comes in.
This means that every enemy encounter means that your brain has to make quick decision making. Do you waste ammo and shoot the enemy down so that you don't have to worry about them anymore? Or do you risk taking damage and running past them so you can save your ammo? But if you take too much damage you need to use healing items which are also limited.
This is a central theme in Resident Evil. However unlike in RE, Silent Hill has a much bigger emphasis on melee combat. Melee is actually a viable strategy in this game if you want to save ammo. But you should be careful since using melee is more risky than using guns. Or you could just do what I do and just run past enemies.
Avoiding enemies actually isn't that difficult in this game though don't get too comfortable cause there will be times where you have to fight to avoid taking damage, especially in the hospital with those goddamn nurses.
Speaking of enemies, man, the enemy variety in this game is goddamn astounding. They not only look terrifying but the sounds that they make actually gave me some shivers.
The acid spitting enemies are the basic enemy type but that acid does hurt. Most of the time I run past them to save ammo
I hate those goddamn cockroaches since the sounds they make just make me seriously uncomfortable
The nurses can be threatening since some of them can wield guns, fucking guns
But the best enemy in the game is the Pyramid Head. He is basically the Nemesis of Silent Hill 2 though he doesn't appear as often. Still, he stalks and attacks you throughout the whole game in some parts. He wields a gigantic axe and it doesn't have a face besides his head being a weird pyramid shape.
This guy is fucking amazing. He not only looks threatening, but the fact that he is prevalent throughout the whole game just shows how much of a great force it is.
There are a handful of different melee weapons. You first start off with a wooden plank, then you can obtain a steel pipe, a great knife, and when you beat the game you can obtain a chainsaw and a can of infinite aerosol spray in a second playthrough.
Basically, the more damage the weapon does, the more awkward it is to use. It takes James a while to swing melee weapons, you have to wait for a slight wind up animation before he swings, but it's even worse than using heavier weaponry.
The damage for the melee weapons is categorized from weakest to strongest
Wooden Plank > Steel Pipe > Great Knife > Chainsaw
So about the weapons, you only get three of them: a pistol, a shotgun, and a hunting rifle.
They all feel great to use. The sound design of the weapons is just deliciously good. The pistol is good for weaker enemies and the shotgun as you would expect is a powerhouse at close range.
The hunting rifle also has high damage and can be used at longer ranges.
Also, I find the aerosol spray to be pointless because while it can immobilize enemies for a brief amount of time, it can damage James if you use it too much.
When you use the shotgun or the rifle, you have to wait for the animation of James pulling the loading mechanism before you can move around again. This creates a gameplay strategy where you have to time your shots and get into a good position so that you don't risk yourself taking damage while you're in the middle of loading your gun.
Because unlike in other games where you seem to play as a super soldier who is deadeye accurate and reloads a gun like if they had a Call of Duty Sleight of Hand perk, Silent Hill games aren't like that.
James is not a soldier, not a police officer, or even a gun nut. James is just a regular civilian who has never had any combat experience. He has never been in a situation where he has to use a firearm or a goddamn chainsaw to defend himself.
Yes, James can miss shots, he moves around sluggishly while using a firearm, he takes a while to reload a gun. But this is all intentional.
The movement and combat mechanics are awkward and clunky.. because it's supposed to be.
That just fits James' character more.
Not to mention, James is a bit frail. It can be easy to lose a good chunk of your health in a short time if you're not careful.
For example, those basic enemies that spit acid at you, I think it only takes 2 or 3 hits from that to go from Green to Red health.
Also, the flashlight is a central mechanic since the majority of the game is set in the dark.
Although there's pretty insane attention to detail where if you have the flashlight off, James will miss even more shots, however it will be harder for enemies to see you.
I don't see why you would play with the flashlight off other than for a challenge run, but I love that this detail is in the game.
Some of the areas that you will be exploring are tight hallways in which avoiding enemy attacks can be tricky. I like to read enemy patterns and I just run as much as I can. I only fight and use up ammo if I really, really have to.
In Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3, you get infinite inventory space. You are able to pick up as many healing items, bullets, and other key items as much as you want. You may think this may break the challenge of a survival horror game, but it doesn't because there is a perfect balance of item drops, so that it doesn't feel like you can just carry 1000 rounds of ammo and 50 healing items.
This also reduces the amount of backtracking you would have to do if you had limited inventory space, so this keeps the pace of the game going.
Although there is a setting in the options menu where you can multiply the amount of ammo you can obtain, why would you do that other than for power trips?
Yeah, power trips can be fun, but I like to actually be challenged when I play a survival horror game. I mean, it's in the name, survival.
When you don't have that setting on, ammo is rare. Healing items are a bit more plentiful, but since James can take a lot of damage even on Normal difficulty, you still have to use your items wisely and conserve what you can.
So now about the difficulty, there are actually two different types of difficulty: combat and puzzle difficulty.
Puzzle difficulty is one of the greatest things to ever have graced gaming. See, I like puzzles in some games, although there can be times where a specific puzzle can be such a ball breaker that I get forced to look up guides on the internet.
And I try to look up guides as least as I can. I can't stand difficult puzzles. It's actually why I have had a hard time getting into the old Tomb Raider games, the Uncharted games, Resident Evil 1, and even Silent Hill 1. The puzzles in SH1 are legendarily difficult, requiring you to know fuckin' Shakespeare and all that nonsense in order to solve them.
And that game didn't have puzzle difficulty. Silent Hill 2 introduces this. You can select Easy, Normal, or Hard puzzles, so you can make them as easy or as hard as you want, either because you hate difficult puzzles like I do, or you're a glutton for masochism.
This is an ingenious system. More games need to have this.
In fact the customization in general is just excellent. You can choose both combat and puzzle difficulty, you can tweak how much ammo you obtain, and with the flashlight mechanic, you can basically make the game as easy or as hard as you want.
If you play any of the later editions of Silent Hill 2 you can play the Maria side story. But it's recommended that you beat James' story first as the Maria scenario contains spoilers.
Maria's story is shorter than James' however it gives more context and backstory into her character and the events that follow James' journey, which means that like I said earlier, she is an important character, with depth and weight to her personality. The fact that she gets her own scenario just shows how much the developers wanted to flesh out this character.
Maria's arsenal only consists of a powerful snub nose revolver and a butcher knife. Also, she doesn't ever get a flashlight. You would think this would be a pain in the ass because of the game being 80-90% dark, but the game does a good job at making everything bright enough that you can actually see where you're going.
Although fighting enemies without a flashlight can either make the encounter more intense or more of a pain to deal with depending on how you look at it.
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This game reeks of an early 2000s game. Graphics wise, it has aged alright. The character models look good for 2001, though the lip syncing leaves much to be desired. And the voice acting as I mentioned earlier, it can range from pretty good to just plain terrible, but like I said, I think that was the point.
The FMV cutscenes however look really damn good, beautiful if I may say. All of the locations are just horrifying.
If I was to give a video game award for best horror atmosphere it would be these games. All the story elements that I talked about earlier really elevate the dread in these locations. Exploring some of these areas can be soul crushing because of the amazing sound design, horrific enemy design, and the darkness.
But the best part about this presentation has to be the soundtrack. Holy mother of shit, this game has one of the greatest soundtracks I have ever heard in a video game. The music evelates both the narrative and the gameplay so goddamn much.
The intro music, the cutscenes, the road to Silent Hill music, the Angela theme, the Maria theme, the bowling alley music, the hospital music, Silent Hill itself, the ending music, I love ALL of the tracks in this game.
This is Final Fantasy VI levels of goddamn brilliant in terms of music. This is one of the only times where I want to buy the official soundtrack for a game and put it up on a shelf as a collector's item, it's that good.
Akira Yamaoka, you're a damn genius composing this OST. The graphics, the voice acting, and the character models may have aged like milk stains, but this soundtrack never did.
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Like I have said a handful of times throughout this review, avoid the HD Collection like the Black Death, that is the absolute worst way to play the game.
The only way you can play this game is to either spend $65-150 on a physical PS2 copy, emulate it on PC with a PS2 emulator, or download the PC version online.
You can safely download the PC version from this link if you're interested.
https://www.myabandonware.com/game/silent-hill-2-restless-dreams-bgd
However, the PC port of Silent Hill 2 is really buggy and unoptimized similarly to the HD Collection. Some examples would be a stretched out aspect ratio, weak fog effects, crashing issues, the FMV cutscenes being broken, the music getting stuck in a quarter second loop, and the key bindings are BEYOND appalling.
And that is where the Enhanced Edition mod comes in. Over the past 3 years or so a team of coders have created fan mods for Silent Hill 2 that both fixes and enhances the game in order to make it the definitive way to play the game. And to this day it's still being updated.
Enhances such as HD textures and backgrounds, a maximum resolution of 1440p, a fixed frame rate, modern PC key binding support, Xbox controller support, etc. These people are basically doing what Konami don't.
If you want to install this mod then here is a link.
http://www.enhanced.townofsilenthill.com/SH2/install.htm
Installing the mod is simple enough. You just download and unzip each file and then drag them into your Silent Hill 2 main folder, replacing any files in the process. Each file is displayed in order so you can keep track.
But if need be, you can check out this comprehensive guide I found on YouTube. It gets straight to the point and doesn't waste time, it even highlights just how bad the original PC port of Silent Hill 2 is.
https://youtu.be/PF1D6_shKIQ
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Playing this game felt like an epiphany, that gaming is just nothing like what it was back then, and it made me miss this generation of gaming. But, with the rise of indie developers, there have been games being released that attempt to replicate these old games.
Some of them good, some of them bad, but you know it's bad when the community has to step up and create something because AAA developer studios like Konami are unwilling to either because they know they're gonna fuck it up or they just don't care.
To this day the HD Collection still haunts the company, I still consider it the worst thing they have ever done, which is further elevated once you actually play these games and you realize why so many people fell in love with them back then.
Because this game should be experienced at least a couple times. This game is a masterpiece, it was far ahead of its time. If I enjoyed Silent Hill 3 so much I wasn't expecting any less from this game, but damn, this game blows Silent Hill 3 out of the water in some aspects.
Maybe, just maybe, we will get a Steam version of Silent Hill 2 and 3, since Silent Hill 4 was added to GOG. Or maybe just a better console port of these games.
But to be honest, I am not holding my breath, because I am not convinced in the slightest that Konami is capable of doing that. Think about when the HD Collection came out. It's been 10 years now and the HD Collection is still being paraded around on digital stores like a corpse, just begging to be buried in peace in a proper coffin, and then reincarnated as a newfounded being.
It's even worse when you consider that now we have emulation and fan mods for both Silent Hill 2 and 3 like Enhanced Edition, made by people who put in the legwork that Konami have neglected for so many years now, and for free might I add.
I give this game 10 Pyramid Heads out of 10.