Silent Hill 2 Remake review - an all-time horror great returns

Silent Hill 2 Remake is a bloody triumph.

I'll explain why shortly, I promise. But there's been so much noise around this remake, so much consternation and criticism, this needs to be upfront and centre from the outset. So, before we get into the nuts and bolts of it - before I break down why, exactly, Bloober Team has excelled this time - I need you to know that Silent Hill 2 Remake is not only the reboot its long-suffering fandom deserves but the one we've long dreamt of, too. Even in a world where Resident Evil 2 Remake has pushed the remake bar up exceptionally high, Silent Hill 2 Remake is sensational.

More than that, though, Silent Hill 2 Remake is so sympathetic to its source - yet confident enough to stamp its own identity on this long-spoiled, 23-year-old story - it is the perfect stepping stone for a whole new generation of fans who've never experienced the horror of Silent Hill before, too.

This is the part that impresses me most. Working alongside Konami and a couple of the game's original developers, Bloober has masterfully blended expectation with surprise to weave this devastatingly bleak story into a modern masterpiece that should be terrifyingly good fun for both old and new fans alike. In many places, the dialogue is a word-for-word enactment of its source - in some cases, even the intonation is the same - but Bloober has confidently crafted new cinematics, too, and carefully revised the well-trodden layouts of places like Blue Creek and Brookhaven in a way that makes these places feel familiar, but nonetheless keeps even well-versed fans on their toes.

And, look, I get it. Yes, I know I'm a slobbering Silent Hill fan. Yes, I know every single one of its games front and backwards, yes I am (insufferably) able to quote most cut-scenes word-for-word. I understand that that may not make me the most detached person in the room, but it does make me critical. It does make me wary. It also means I am hyper-aware of every change Remake has made, from map tweaks to puzzle revisions to entirely new areas and cut scenes.

Besides, Bloober and I? We've not always seen eye to eye. Yeah, I liked The Medium (despite its monumental misstep towards the end), but I did not enjoy my time with Blair Witch or Layers of Fear 2, which is why I was, admittedly, a tad anxious about Bloober's involvement. Fear not, though, my friend. Silent Hill 2 is given the care, consideration, and reverence it deserves. And whilst I can only speak of the PS5 version, it also runs well, too, side-stepping many of the technology issues that I've experienced in previous Bloober titles.

So. For those who may not know, Silent Hill 2 is the second entry in Konami's storied horror franchise, but unlike the connected Silent Hill 1 and 3, it essentially stands alone, which is potentially why Konami opted to reboot this ahead of the first game. Unlike 1 and 3, which focus on a cult in the town, in Silent Hill 2, you play as James Sunderland, a quiet, if broken, man still recovering from the death of his terminally ill wife three years prior. Out of the blue, he receives a letter - the name on the envelope says Mary, the name of his late wife - inviting him to find her in the lakeside retreat they once visited: Silent Hill.

Despite the football-field-sized red flags (dude, you just told us your wife is dead), Sunderland does as she asks and heads to Maine. Here, he discovers the sleepy town is not so much sleepy as it is dead, and the distant, humanoid shapes twisting in the fog are not human at all. To say even a little more will spoil things - even if you're familiar with the main story beats, there may be many twists and surprises along the way that you don't know or recall, if only because of the sheer amount of time it's been since the original. But over the next 20ish hours, you'll accompany him as he scours the town, frantically searching for a wife he already knows is dead.

And it won't take long for you to see another version of Silent Hill - this one broken, bloodied, and bleak - sitting at its core. For beneath the ordinary trappings of a small, if curiously abandoned, American town, out there is nothing restful or silent about this place at all.

That's always been the magic of Silent Hill for me. Everything looks fine - oddly quiet, sure, but fine. It's only as you delve deeper, uncovering the secrets of the man, the town, and its people, that you'll realise nothing is fine at all. At one point, the empty rooms and corridors of an abandoned apartment complex twist and snap, buckling under the weight of rust and ruin. A gorgeous lakeside hotel later succumbs to dank darkness, where only mould and inhuman things grow. A lazy stroll through the town's curiously empty historical society descends into a nineteenth-century prison, where its unfortunate inhabitants were subjected to cruel and unusual punishments.

Sunderland doesn't comment on this, though. He doesn't comment on anything. Barely pausing for breath, he doesn't marvel that he's throwing himself down hole after hole after hole, yet somehow remains on the same floor. He doesn't comment on the shapes that writhe just out of sight, or how the world around him keeps rippling and changing. To coin a phrase (if you know, you know), all he seems to care about is that dead wife of his.

The original game was both combat-light and a little short, and Bloober has addressed both these issues head-on. For the latter, the remake has opened up a slew of new landmarks for us to explore, so I devoted a lot of time picking through the streets of Silent Hill, revelling in the new-found freedom of being able to visit shops and buildings that had hitherto been out of bounds for us. This, coupled with longer levels and more places to visit, more than doubles the original eight-ish hour run-time.

It's possible it runs on a little too long, mind. It's an incredibly subjective position, of course, but for me, horror games are better when they're quick and punchy, throwing you somewhere new before you get acclimated to the old. Remake's elongated length means you'll stew in some areas longer than you wish to, and, coupled with some changes to boss fights - particularly towards the end - in moments this falls just on the wrong side of frustrating. I would've preferred to have had even more new places to explore than simply having some of the places I already knew artificially padded out.

As for combat? Well, be careful what you wish for, I guess. Silent Hill 2 was outrageously easy, even on its hardest difficulty, and Bloober's edition is not. The good news is Remake doesn't exactly make combat central to the experience (at least, not on standard difficulty). But it sure does make it harder to adopt the typical survival horror strat of run-away-run-away-run-away. Because of its claustrophobic tight spaces and nooks and crannies, it's incredibly difficult to retreat from a fight, and there is essentially no meaningful way to stealth around the place, either. On top of that, most boss battles - they are all here, as well as a surprise or two - will deplete your ammo reserves with ruthless efficiency. It's also often tough to finish off foes without taking damage yourself as a result, burning through your ever-dwindling medical supplies. (Yes, Lying Figures spewing toxic vomit in your death throes - I'm looking at you.)

Part of how Silent Hill 2 mitigates that is through its puzzles, which are great. Like the original, you can disaggregate difficulty by puzzle and combat, so if you're good at combat but suck at puzzles - or vice versa (hey, that's me!) - you can mix and match the difficulty to better suit your skills. For instance, in a single playthrough, you could play on an easier combat setting wherein you'll find more ammo and encounter fewer enemies, whilst still solving puzzles that have fewer clues, more steps, and considerably less hand-holding. And again, here Silent Hill 2 Remake expertly fuses familiar with fresh; all the puzzles I expected are present and correct, albeit often with subtle twists to make them less predictable. On standard difficulty, they're maybe a little bit too easy, but I'll admit there were one or two that stumped me, though never for long enough to be irritating.

And all the little clues and secrets uncovered over two-plus decades of fervent community analysis - newspapers, memos, photographs, whispers, pictures, props, collectibles - are still there. But there are new things, too, cementing - or bulldozing - long-held fan theories. I'm so grateful for this attention to detail. To me, it proves that the oft-recycled adage - "the developers are fans, too, you know!" - does ring true in this instance. Even the refreshed voice and motion-capture work and cinematic revisions mostly work in Silent Hill 2 Remake's favour, only once or twice coming off as inferior to the source material. (I'd tell you what these are, but that would inevitably ruin the surprise. Without spoiling things further, however, I can tell you to expect scenes that match word for word, others that deviate slightly from the original, and others that are entirely new to the story.)

Perhaps as you'd expect, it's how Silent Hill 2 Remake looks, sounds, and quietly tells its story that will make it one of the most deliciously dark experiences for horror fans in years. Avoiding cheap jumpscares and graphic gore, Silent Hill relies on its moody atmosphere to unsettle you instead. It mischievously inverts expectations, delivering silence when you may be expecting a broody score, or distracts you with things that look human from a distance but rarely are. Whilst both Resident Evil and Silent Hill are, without question, stand-out franchises in horror gaming, where Resident Evil is gloriously pulpy and bombastic, Silent Hill is understated and melancholic. There is no T-virus or capitalistic conglomerate here. Just pain. Darkness. Grief.

Silent Hill has never been for the faint-hearted, and Silent Hill 2, in particular, delivers a gut-wrenching story with some truly horrific subplots that reference bullying, harassment, and sexual violence. It's to Bloober Team's credit, then, that it has delivered this sensitive, distressing story in a way that rarely feels salacious or gratuitous, and without spoiling things, one of the game's most disturbing side stories has been thoughtfully reimagined to be much more sympathetic and carefully handled.

Akira Yamaoka's genre-defining sound design is as unsettling as ever, too; the perfect, and perfectly awful, pairing to Masahiro Ito's grotesque creatures that never fail to make me jump, even 20 hours in. The world's subtle (and not-so-subtle) symbolism equally dazzles and confuses. I never, ever tired of exploring it, poking into corners and smashing windows, collecting notes and clues and little tidbits that add a grim gloss to Silent Hill 2's mature storytelling, not even when I was terrified.

And I was terrified. Regularly. Almost constantly, quite frankly. Even knowing what was coming. Even knowing I'd only just saved my progress. Thank God Silent Hill 2 Remake doesn't employ the same lol-there's-no-pause mechanic as Dead Space, or I'd still be on a hospital stretcher somewhere, having my heart surgically removed from my throat.

I'll be honest: I wasn't sure I ever wanted a remake of one of my all-time favourite games. I didn't think it was necessary any more than I thought Bloober could take Silent Hill 2's themes and make them work in a modern game without somehow damaging its DNA or fumbling somewhere. Never have I been so pleased to be so wrong about something.

It doesn't matter if you've never played Silent Hill 2 before. It also doesn't matter if you have. Silent Hill 2 Remake's heady blend of old and new delivers the best horror I've played for years, and I suspect that will hold true even for those meeting James for the first time. A little light padding and some minor grumbling about the combat aside, there's nothing - not a single thing - I wish Bloober had done differently. How it looks, how it sounds, how it plays, how it iterates and modernises whilst honouring its cherished source material. Silent Hill 2 Remake is as close to perfect as I could have ever hoped. And my hopes were high, my friend.

A copy of Silent Hill 2 was provided for review by Konami.