James Sunderland, a 30-something office clerk, arrives at the outskirts of Silent Hill after receiving a mysterious letter from his late wife, Mary, who died three years earlier after a long struggle with an unspecified illness. Confused and searching for answers, James embarks into the town in search of Mary and their “special place”, where she claims to be waiting for him.

James quickly discovers that something is terribly wrong with Silent Hill. The buildings and homes are abandoned, the roads have caved in, and signs of danger abound. Determined to find Mary, he ventures deeper into the town and into a living, otherworldly nightmare. The ensuing story is one of the most iconic in video game history, containing themes which are often tragic, emotional, terrifying, or deeply disturbing.

Bloober Team wisely avoided significant deviations from the main plot, which is still a golden example of psychological horror more than 20 years later. The deviations which do exist typically impact the secondary characters whom James encounters throughout his journey, with results ranging from mostly positive to sometimes unnecessary or even questionable.

Overall, the characters have received some much-deserved polish, though there are specific cases where fans of the original Silent Hill 2 may find themselves scratching their heads. Without getting into spoilers, some of the story’s most impactful themes are tied to the behaviors, backgrounds, and decisions of specific characters. Some changes, which appear subtle on the surface, are sometimes enough affect the nuances of a character in ways that are less than desirable.

On the topic of undesirable changes, some of the more disturbing scenes and elements of the original have been watered down, altered, or removed. Unfortunately, this affects some of the most iconic scenes in the game, and at times fans will wonder whether or not Bloober Team understood the necessity of these scenes to convey some of the most impactful themes.

Like the original, the remake features multiple possible endings, including two additional endings which are brand-new. Giving credit where it’s due, Bloober Team did an excellent job in this category. My personal favorite ending, which I received after finishing the first playthrough, has been reworked in a way that is exceptionally powerful and emotionally satisfying. For me, it was the most obvious moment in which the remake outshined its predecessor.

Although there will be some disappointments for old fans, and plenty of objectionable changes for purists to complain about, the story and characters remain sufficiently faithful to the source material while offering a number of enhancements which help to make up the difference. At the end of the day, newcomers to Silent Hill 2 won’t miss out on what makes the story memorable.

Of all the things for which Silent Hill 2 is known, its environments and sound design stand in a class of their own. The sights and sounds of Silent Hill 2 contribute to a tense, oppressive, and sometimes overwhelming atmosphere throughout the experience. Each location is uniquely haunting if not outright terrifying, thanks in large part to the legendary work of Akira Yamaoka, who reprises his role for the remake.

The soundtrack has been modernized and occasionally altered, which some fans may find disappointing, but overall the tracks remain largely faithful to the originals, and the most notable changes do little to detract from the chilling and sometimes beautiful atmosphere.

Ambient noise is a crucial element of the horror in this game, which means it is best experienced with a pair of quality headphones. Disappointingly, players who rely on TV speakers might miss out on some of the vibes, as the ambience is often frustratingly quiet and drowned out by the squelches of monsters, radio static, and even footsteps. Fiddling with the audio settings was required for the best experience in our case, though results may vary.

Visually, each location is beautifully crafted and evokes much of the same dread for which Silent Hill 2 is famous. All areas have been expanded and reworked to suit modern gameplay while retaining much of their familiarity to veterans. Considering the scale of the remake compared to its predecessor, the results are impressive.

It’s difficult to explain without examples, and therefore spoilers, what makes the sounds and environments in this game so memorable. It is simply something which needs to be experienced firsthand to appreciate.

Despite all of this praise, there are some significant gripes - not always with the setting and sound design themselves, but with how they are treated. Sadly, there were many instances throughout the game where creative decisions by Bloober Team and even elements of gameplay interfered with our enjoyment of the settings. These are discussed in more detail in the following section.

Most disappointingly, some locations - particularly in the latter half of the game - have been altered to a degree which renders them unrecognizable and overlong. One can’t help but feel that sacrificing a few hours from the average playthrough would been helpful to maintain the tone and memorability of these areas. Without giving too much away, one late-game section has been expanded significantly, but as a result, it overstays its welcome and becomes a tedious, frustrating slog to clear.

The original Silent Hill 2, for all of its venerable qualities, is widely considered to be a janky and clumsy mess in terms of gameplay. A combination of tank controls, robotic combat, and fixed camera angles made the game a frustrating slog more often than fans are often willing to admit.

Ironically, despite the remake’s vastly improved movement, combat, and camera, its gameplay is still its worst quality - though not for the reasons you might expect. In fact, each of the elements mentioned above are perfectly serviceable. Combat is usually smooth and satisfying to pull off, albeit a bit clunky when multiple enemies are involved. The camera and movement are sometimes wily, but mostly tame and controllable thanks to the modernized over-the-shoulder perspective. At a glance, everything seems to be in order - but the devil, as they say, is in the details.

The first and most obvious gameplay defect is related to the number of enemies encountered throughout the game. It is difficult to exaggerate how many enemies one will encounter, and it is frustrating how often the psychological horror of Silent Hill 2 is overwhelmed and suffocated by result of this design. Instead of soaking in the atmospheric settings and first-class sound design, players are often forced into a tedious routine of sprinting through hallways, rushing through otherwise interesting rooms, or treating the game like Resident Evil 4 in order to clear the area and appreciate the environments.

Outside of its impact on atmosphere, the constant wave of enemies only serves to highlight the mediocre and sometimes humorous quality of the combat itself. Nothing made us question the faithfulness of Silent Hill 2’s remake quite as much as the moment when a mannequin - comprised entirely of two pairs of legs sewn together at the hips - managed to duck, dodge, and riposte a swing of our melee weapon.

In other cases, combat becomes a careful dance of attacks and dodges against enemies who employ three- or four-hit combos, which evokes unexpected and unwelcome memories of playing Dark Souls.

Sadly, combat is only one of several gameplay oddities which plague the remake, though some are directly related. Where there is a surplus of enemies, there is a necessity to scrounge and save resources. To that end, Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 introduces a couple of new features to help replenish supplies, such as the ability to break glass windows or search drawers and cabinets in order to retrieve much-needed items within.

In theory, this is an interesting concept which encourages exploration and promotes immersion, but its execution is often flawed and distracting. This is most apparent in the early sections of the game, during which drawers and pantries become the immediate object of attention in any given room. About half of these contain useful items which are inexplicably present, such as one round of boxed handgun ammunition in a dish cabinet, while the other half are empty and leave one to wonder why the option to interact with them was possible in the first place.

Regardless of the contents (or lack thereof) of any given kitchen drawer, car seat, or china cabinet, most of them serve as unwanted distractions from the meticulously-crafted environments, similar to how compass markers in Skyrim can distract the eye and cause players to overlook worthy details. This is especially annoying due to its necessity, which results from the onerous enemy encounters mentioned above.

Similarly, questionable creative decisions undertaken by Bloober Team have a tendency to detract from the atmosphere, such as the addition of unnecessary and sometimes cringe-inducing notes which feel more at home in a Blum House movie than in a Silent Hill game. Another example is their compulsion to spawn sudden waves of enemies while exploring the town proper, which force the player to beeline to an approved destination instead of allowing time to explore and enjoy the detailed environment.

With most of the dirty laundry aired, there are only a couple more bits and bobs to mention. The most obvious of these are the puzzles, all of which are either brand new or reimagined versions of puzzles from the original game. In terms of cleverness and difficulty they are somewhat subdued, typically relying on the player’s ability to simply observe immediate surroundings or to fetch specific items. The demands of Hard puzzle difficulty range from trivial math skills to divine revelation, with a rare head-scratcher or two somewhere in the middle.

Speaking of puzzles, many references exist to puzzles and settings from the original game in the form of so-called Glimpses of the Past, which are essentially easter eggs for old fans of Silent Hill 2. That is a generous description, however, because at times these easter eggs felt like a slap to the face, as if the developers were throwing a bone to us and saying, “Remember these iconic puzzles and locations from your favorite game? Too bad, they’re gone. We’re doing things our way this time.”

Finally, there’s the topic of James’ newfound ability to climb, crawl, and shimmy through various spaces, usually after smashing through a concrete wall with his melee weapon or dragging a conspicuous cart across the room to use as a step ladder. There’s not much to say about it, except that on rare occasions it is useful, while most of the time it feels like an idea from a brainstorm session which was deemed a “must have” and executed just for the sake of having another feature in the game. Regarding the smashing of walls, its frequency and inconsistent justification remind us of the Kool Aid man (“Oh yeah!”), which detracts from the horror experience rather comically.

In summary, gameplay was and remains the Achilles heel of Silent Hill 2, though in the case of Bloober Team’s remake, the reasons why are less likely to be overlooked by fans of the original title, who tend to place an extraordinarily high value on its atmospheric and genre-defining triumphs. Everyone else can expect painfully average 3rd-person action gameplay, with very few surprises.

Both the character models and environments in Silent Hill 2 are typical of assets built on Unreal Engine 5 - that is, extremely detailed and sometimes jaw-dropping with the right hardware. Put simply, this game looks sexy on an Nvidia RTX 4080, and after recent patches which smoothed over some early frame rate issues, it runs like a dream on the Epic quality preset at 1080p resolution.

The monster design is superb and mostly faithful to the original game, and some bosses have been reworked into multiple phases with never-before-seen appearances and behaviors. This turns out to be a boon, as they all look fantastic and lead to some unexpected surprises for returning veterans. The same can be said for the major characters, who have been tastefully and competently reimagined.

Despite its amazing looks, some minor animation issues pop up here and there. Character movements and collision detection can be funky, particularly when James reaches for items in high cabinets or when enemies occasionally enter a state of bouncy rag-dolling. Lighting also has some minor issues, particularly in dark areas where James’ flashlight casts less-than-natural shadows. Finally, on rare occasions, facial animations for specific characters can be off-putting and trigger something of an uncanny valley effect in the worst cases.

These are all nitpicks, though, and none of them detract significantly from what is an excellent-looking experience. The many examples of superb animation found throughout the game are overwhelming in comparison to these few gripes.

In short, Bloober Team has brought Silent Hill to life with fantastic fog, weather, and foliage effects, as well as high-fidelity interiors which look and feel like real locations. Character animations are generally excellent, and enemies move with all of the creep factor that one should expect. While it’s nothing revolutionary, the overall presentation of Silent Hill 2 is as good as it gets in 2024, and it’s well worth the praise of old fans and newcomers alike.

Following the success of Capcom’s excellent Resident Evil remakes, and considering the overwhelming affection fans of the series hold for the original experience, Bloober Team was faced with something of a catch-22 when developing the Silent Hill 2 remake.

On one hand, their efforts to modernize the game would inevitably receive blowback from fans of the original game, while on the other hand, maintaining the classic 2001 elements of fixed camera angles, minimalist combat, and suspenseful loading screens would almost certainly alienate new audiences. Likewise, any attempt to expand and polish the story would invariably run afoul of fans - but with the greatly expanded environments and much-needed character makeovers, creative license was impossible to avoid, and mistakes would likely be made.

Despite the daunting tightrope which lay before them, Bloober Team managed to avoid disaster and come out of this in one piece - a commendable result for what is one of the most stressful and anxiety-inducing projects one could imagine, if the cynicism leading up to Silent Hill 2’s release is of any indication.

Fans of the original game will often find themselves in a bittersweet mood. The story and characters are mostly faithful, the tone is somewhat intact, and the modernized look of Silent Hill is very welcome to behold - but the blasé 3rd-person action, bowdlerized sequences, and “Bloobery” lore additions will undoubtedly leave some bruises.

For a remake that accomplishes a great deal, it is hindered by Bloober Team’s sometimes-excessive creative license. Some fans will likely for their torches and pitchforks due to the disappointing, carrot-dangling Glimpses of the Past, which felt smug and unnecessary more often than not. The same can be said for the apparent retconning which they imply, which is that James Sunderland may be stuck in a time loop. These decisions are nothing short of mystifying, and admittedly they left a terrible impression on us.

All things considered, newcomers to Silent Hill 2 will not be put off as they experience the story for the first time, though enough of the magic has been lost that they may wonder what all the hype has been about for these past 23 years. Regardless, as long as they are able to tune out the loud grumbling of old fans on the sidelines, they might just have a great time exploring the foggy, bloody streets of Silent Hill.

Jared Elliott is a lifelong gamer, network engineer, and founder of Fan Fugue. He lives in the Great Plains region with his wife, Shayn, and his dog, Elvis.