I'm pretty much perpetually on the lookout for good triple-A horror titles so I had high expectations for the Silent Hill 2 remake. For reference, I haven't played the original and the only title I've played in the series is origins on the PSP (though I did beat it 4~5 times for the new game content). The premise of 2 is that you, James Sunderland, receive a letter from your supposedly dead wife saying she's waiting in Silent Hill and against all logic you go investigate.

Let's talk about how scary this thing is. I thought I was somewhat desensitized to horror games by this point but this game had me feel genuine fear and discomfort reminiscent of when I first experienced Resident Evil as a kid. Despite being able to shoot and defend yourself like Leon, I still felt afraid because the horror is less reliant on jump-scares and more akin to a slow burn of your psych. It's a carefully curated 15 hour experience during which I had to take bi-hourly breaks to recover my mental fortitude.

The oppressive atmosphere is created by an amazing art direction both in the ominous fog world and the derelict otherworld. The former is an uncanny abandoned town that's almost dreamlike whilst the latter is a grotesque nightmare. One factor that contributes to the creepiness is the level design. Aside from the abstract sequences, all the levels are set in realistic building layouts that I could definitely see existing in real life. The realistic exploration of a familiar setting (like the first level which is an apartment) is more immersive than say a old castle that most people haven't been in. The environment is backed up by amazing graphic fidelty at a level I expect in 2024. I played with DLSS (without RTX) and I'd say the fidelty is somewhere in between the recent Resident Evil titles and Alan Wake 2. It's good enough to allow subtle emotions to ooze through the character's faces.

The sound design is also great, the game delivers on all aspects from the static buzz of the radio to the disgusting gurgles of the creatures. The audio just makes it that much better to shatter windows and swing pipes into the bodies of downed enemies. All of these aspects culminate into a cohesive work of art that evokes a sense of dread that I haven't felt in a single player game in years. My only regret is that I didn't take it all in slower because I wanted to get the fuck out of the town as fast as possible.

The only saving grace from this unrelenting horror is the unintentional (?) hilarity of the psychopath that is our protagonist, slotted into PS2 era game design. After the first 10 minutes in the town, our mild-mannered husband acquires a nailed board and immediately turns into a professional hobo who ransacks every pane of glass that comes into view. He comes across a broken juke box with a missing button and somehow knows that repairing this is the key to finding his wife; Weird motivation but let's trust the process. After going down several blocks and finding a goopy hole in the wall in a completely different apartment he sticks his arm in and what do you know, it's the missing button. How could you have possibly know that James, I don't know, The Silent Hill works in mysterious ways. This is basically the investigation logic for the entire game, there's no rhyme or reason to the actual things you do to solve the puzzles and it's great.

In terms of the combat the gunning and melee perform very fluidly with nice feedback but a small nitpick is that the quick-dodge is absolutely busted with insane i-frames and spammability, meaning you can cheese your way out of situations that should honestly be deadly. This is compounded with the fact that the game throws an inordinate amount of enemies in the last quarter of the game which you mow through like a terminator. The earlier strategic placements of creatures raise the tension but the uncertainty is cheapened when you know a room is filled with four to five bodies to pump with lead whilst you phase around like your'e in a Soulsborne game.

One thing I have to objectively criticize is that the performance is really bad. For reference I'm playing with DLSS performance 1080p no RTX with everything on high except for shadows on low, on a 3060ti. When things are good I get around 70~80 fps which is more than enough but there is a metric ton of stuttering and general fps drops typical of games on Unreal Engine. According to Digital Foundry the issue is traversal stutter this time around so it can't even be remedied with shader compilation (as is the case for shader stutters) or good hardware (was observed even on a 4090). It's intermittently present throughout the entire play through and somehow accentuated indoors and during combat which makes aiming annoying. It's honestly disappointing that I could only experience this otherwise amazing game for the first time with such performance, with the alternative being waiting for a fix that has no guarantee of arriving.

After finishing, I watched a play through of the original and the remake seems to faithfully recreate it's merits. The overall sequence of progression is preserved but the individual layouts of areas are updated to accommodate the new puzzles and combat system. It also makes a tactful nod to notable events of the original. For example in the old save screen, James's static face is overlayed in the background, probably as a stylistic choice from the PS2 era. In the remake it's acknowledged that James is spacing out as he stares into the crimson paper.

A fun thing in Silent Hill Origins was that you unlocked new weapons and costumes in subsequent play throughs based off achievements and playstyles. Aside from one melee weapon you don't gain any other in-game equipment which vastly lowers the replay value for me. There are multiple new endings but grinding another 10 hours for what is essentially a single cutscene doesn't appeal to me that much. I wish there were more perks or weapons that offered alternative playstyles to accommodate pursuing the extra endings.

Verdict

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Silent Hill 2 Remake is the best raw horror experience of the year but it's bogged down by it's performance. An easy 5 out of 5 if this was somehow fixed completely.