I have something to admit, something I’m somewhat ashamed of and something that may affect how you look at me as a critic. I’ve never played Silent Hill 2, or at least, I hadn’t played Silent Hill 2 until now which is why I’m able to write a review for it. Yes, the self-proclaimed horror aficionado and hardcore gamer, how it is possible for me to have gone this long without playing Silent Hill 2? Especially considering I’ve played and loved other Silent Hill games, it is quite beyond even my understanding how I have managed to unintentionally avoid SH2 for so long. But considering Konami’s recent announcement of several new Silent Hill properties including a remake of Silent Hill 2, I felt now was the best possible time to break my SH2 virginity and understand why it is considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Whilst I’m sure I’ll say nothing in this review that hasn’t already been said about Silent Hill 2, what may be interesting is that this is a genuine first-time play, a kind of review that hasn’t been seen for this game in over twenty years. So, no analysis of themes, or regurgitation of fan theories here, just pure and simple first-time impressions.
James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife Mary to meet her at the town of Silent Hill, at their special place; the only problem is that Mary has been dead for three years. With a thick fog cast over the town, horrific creatures roaming the streets, and the few living people all contending with their own mysterious traumas, James enters a world of nightmares as he confronts his darkest demons.
James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife Mary to meet her at the town of Silent Hill, at their special place; the only problem is that Mary has been dead for three years. With a thick fog cast over the town, horrific creatures roaming the streets, and the few living people all contending with their own mysterious traumas, James enters a world of nightmares as he confronts his darkest demons.
Where the original Silent Hill was a significant step forward for mature narratives in gaming, and for the psychological horror genre, everything about it pales in comparison to Silent Hill 2. The first game concerned itself with a missing child and matters of the occult, Silent Hill 2 meanwhile is about the human condition, about confronting the darkest parts of your soul, and ultimately about what we are prepared to do for love. The first game was, for its time, ahead of the curve in videogame storytelling, but Silent Hill 2 delivers one of the most compelling stories of the sixth console generation and is more comparable to modern videogame storytelling than anything from the time of its release.
James is confused and damaged, and as he peels back the layers of why Silent Hill is in its current state you learn so much more about him. Where the original game used Alessa Gillespie’s demonic manifestations for Harry Mason’s foes, Silent Hill 2 uses darkly twisted and disturbing projections of James’ own psyche to torment him.
Secondary characters see Silent Hill in their own unique ways. They’ve all been brought here for their own reasons, and they must confront their own personal demons just as James must confront his. Because of this they often seem aimless, confused, and even untrustworthy. As you learn more about each character, it ultimately feeds into James’ own personal nightmare in interesting ways.
The dialogue does come off a little clunky at times. This is a problem that also plagued the original game so I’m unsure if it comes down to translation problems, or whether Team Silent have intentionally made the dialogue feel uncomfortable and awkward in order to amplify the eerie atmosphere. But aside from the occasional peculiar response and somewhat lengthy delay between different lines of dialogue, Silent Hill 2’s story is communicated with a great deal of skill. It never reveals its hand too soon, and the revelations that unfold in the game’s final act for all characters are not only disturbing (as expected from a horror title) but handled with a surprising amount of sensitivity for a video game. Despite how dark Silent Hill 2 is prepared to go, it never becomes gratuitous, and it never loses sight of how real some of these horrors can be for people outside of the game.
James is confused and damaged, and as he peels back the layers of why Silent Hill is in its current state you learn so much more about him. Where the original game used Alessa Gillespie’s demonic manifestations for Harry Mason’s foes, Silent Hill 2 uses darkly twisted and disturbing projections of James’ own psyche to torment him.
Secondary characters see Silent Hill in their own unique ways. They’ve all been brought here for their own reasons, and they must confront their own personal demons just as James must confront his. Because of this they often seem aimless, confused, and even untrustworthy. As you learn more about each character, it ultimately feeds into James’ own personal nightmare in interesting ways.
The dialogue does come off a little clunky at times. This is a problem that also plagued the original game so I’m unsure if it comes down to translation problems, or whether Team Silent have intentionally made the dialogue feel uncomfortable and awkward in order to amplify the eerie atmosphere. But aside from the occasional peculiar response and somewhat lengthy delay between different lines of dialogue, Silent Hill 2’s story is communicated with a great deal of skill. It never reveals its hand too soon, and the revelations that unfold in the game’s final act for all characters are not only disturbing (as expected from a horror title) but handled with a surprising amount of sensitivity for a video game. Despite how dark Silent Hill 2 is prepared to go, it never becomes gratuitous, and it never loses sight of how real some of these horrors can be for people outside of the game.
Gameplay is practically identical to the first game, for better or worse. James is just as cumbersome to move around the environment as Harry was, and the combat remains clunky and often unwieldy. But thankfully there isn’t actually as much combat in Silent Hill 2 as there is in the first game. Monsters are few and far between for the most part, and that’s what makes them so fearsome. You’ll be wandering the streets of Silent Hill and have been pleasantly minding your own business for several minutes only for your radio to suddenly start crackling as you see some mangled horror shuffling out of the fog towards you. They more often than not catch you off guard, and just because you’ve knocked them down doesn’t mean they’re dead either.
Putting combat on the back burner is the best thing Silent Hill 2 could possibly have done because it makes each encounter meaningful. It also makes boss battles more stressful because you haven’t had as much of an opportunity to hone your combat skills. Boss battles themselves are somewhat disappointing in Silent Hill 2, even in comparison to the first game. Thematically they carry a lot of weight in the story, but every single one of them just requires you shoot the thing until it dies and keep out of arms reach. The arenas themselves aren’t even particularly memorable, with the vast majority of them taking place in otherwise normal rooms.
The majority of the time with Silent Hill 2 you’ll be exploring the now significantly expanded eponymous town, collecting strange items, and working out how to piece them together to progress. There are moments where Silent Hill 2 leans into adventure game absurdity with its puzzles, requiring you to combine some extremely obscure items in peculiar places to progress. Despite this, Silent Hill is perhaps even more mysterious and alluring than it was the first time around. New areas of the town are accessible and seeing some returning locations given a makeover for the more powerful PS2 hardware is certainly a sight to behold. But this Silent Hill feels more sinister, lonelier, and considerably more unsettling because of James’ story and his personal connection to the town. You’ll even find corpses of other people drawn to the town, often accompanied by their own notes similar to that of James’ letter, a small addition that makes you feel even more on-edge knowing that countless others have come to the town seeking answers to a personal tragedy, only to meet a grisly fate.
The presentation of Silent Hill 2 really is the star of the show though. To think that the gap between the first and second games is only two years is kind of incredible when you see how much of a technological leap SH2 is over the first game. First up is the full motion video cutscenes, where the original game only had short FMV clips with no dialogue due to the PS1’s CD size constraints, the PS2’s DVD’s allow for fully voiced cutscenes that are gorgeously animated. The way characters move and emote during these sequences is above and beyond what most games were achieving at the time.
Beyond this then, and looking at the game in motion, environments are considerably more detailed and often larger than those of the first game. Every single room is painstakingly detailed, giving it real purpose and life within the context of Silent Hill as a once functioning and normal town. This includes rooms with nothing of interest in them, it makes exploring a real joy as each room feels important in its own right. The fog remains present, a feature that was implemented in the original game to skirt around the PS1’s technological restraints, and whilst that is likely the case here with SH2, you get the feeling that Team Silent kept it around because it helped set the mood so well in the first game.
The sound design of SH2 is nothing short of incredible. Whether it be the radio crackle to alert you of nearby enemies, or the ominous soundtrack playing in the background, every single sound is designed to put you on edge. It’s the way that Silent Hill 2 looks and sounds that's the scary part, the monsters are superfluous really, sure the designs are grotesque, but they don’t pose much of a real threat. There’s so much attention put into small creepy details and making them look and sound as unsettling as possible. Many of them might be missed due to the nature of the game’s design, but if anything, that just makes replaying SH2 so much more worthwhile because you’re bound to find new things that catch you off guard on subsequent playthroughs.
My one criticism of the game’s visual design is that of the Otherworld. The nightmarish Otherworld was so visually distinct in SH1, rust and blood covered every surface, and it transformed the town from a creepy ghost town into a true hellish landscape. SH2 meanwhile tones down the rust and instead presents a slightly more worn version of the normal town. You might find some skin for a wall, or a bloody hallway every now and again, but for the most part the normal town and the Otherworld are visually indistinct from each other.
Putting combat on the back burner is the best thing Silent Hill 2 could possibly have done because it makes each encounter meaningful. It also makes boss battles more stressful because you haven’t had as much of an opportunity to hone your combat skills. Boss battles themselves are somewhat disappointing in Silent Hill 2, even in comparison to the first game. Thematically they carry a lot of weight in the story, but every single one of them just requires you shoot the thing until it dies and keep out of arms reach. The arenas themselves aren’t even particularly memorable, with the vast majority of them taking place in otherwise normal rooms.
The majority of the time with Silent Hill 2 you’ll be exploring the now significantly expanded eponymous town, collecting strange items, and working out how to piece them together to progress. There are moments where Silent Hill 2 leans into adventure game absurdity with its puzzles, requiring you to combine some extremely obscure items in peculiar places to progress. Despite this, Silent Hill is perhaps even more mysterious and alluring than it was the first time around. New areas of the town are accessible and seeing some returning locations given a makeover for the more powerful PS2 hardware is certainly a sight to behold. But this Silent Hill feels more sinister, lonelier, and considerably more unsettling because of James’ story and his personal connection to the town. You’ll even find corpses of other people drawn to the town, often accompanied by their own notes similar to that of James’ letter, a small addition that makes you feel even more on-edge knowing that countless others have come to the town seeking answers to a personal tragedy, only to meet a grisly fate.
The presentation of Silent Hill 2 really is the star of the show though. To think that the gap between the first and second games is only two years is kind of incredible when you see how much of a technological leap SH2 is over the first game. First up is the full motion video cutscenes, where the original game only had short FMV clips with no dialogue due to the PS1’s CD size constraints, the PS2’s DVD’s allow for fully voiced cutscenes that are gorgeously animated. The way characters move and emote during these sequences is above and beyond what most games were achieving at the time.
Beyond this then, and looking at the game in motion, environments are considerably more detailed and often larger than those of the first game. Every single room is painstakingly detailed, giving it real purpose and life within the context of Silent Hill as a once functioning and normal town. This includes rooms with nothing of interest in them, it makes exploring a real joy as each room feels important in its own right. The fog remains present, a feature that was implemented in the original game to skirt around the PS1’s technological restraints, and whilst that is likely the case here with SH2, you get the feeling that Team Silent kept it around because it helped set the mood so well in the first game.
The sound design of SH2 is nothing short of incredible. Whether it be the radio crackle to alert you of nearby enemies, or the ominous soundtrack playing in the background, every single sound is designed to put you on edge. It’s the way that Silent Hill 2 looks and sounds that's the scary part, the monsters are superfluous really, sure the designs are grotesque, but they don’t pose much of a real threat. There’s so much attention put into small creepy details and making them look and sound as unsettling as possible. Many of them might be missed due to the nature of the game’s design, but if anything, that just makes replaying SH2 so much more worthwhile because you’re bound to find new things that catch you off guard on subsequent playthroughs.
My one criticism of the game’s visual design is that of the Otherworld. The nightmarish Otherworld was so visually distinct in SH1, rust and blood covered every surface, and it transformed the town from a creepy ghost town into a true hellish landscape. SH2 meanwhile tones down the rust and instead presents a slightly more worn version of the normal town. You might find some skin for a wall, or a bloody hallway every now and again, but for the most part the normal town and the Otherworld are visually indistinct from each other.
It's worth mentioning that playing Silent Hill 2 isn't just as simple as picking up any copy of the game and playing as each version of the game has quite significant differences. Many will argue that playing the game on a PS2 using the original disc is the best way to experience the game as it was released the way Team Silent always envisioned it. The original Xbox version may run slightly smoother and have slightly better image quality, but the sound isn't quite as good as in the PS2 version. The PC version will give you the best image, but you'll likely struggle with sound and performance issues, as well as the problem of needing to alter the games files to get it to run on modern hardware.
But obviously most modern gamers wont want to track down old hardware to play the game on, or fiddle with countless fan mods on PC just to get the game to run. You could then try the Silent Hill HD Collection for PS3 and Xbox 360, however this is potentially the worst way to play the game. Built on unfinished versions of the game, you'll suffer from game-breaking performance issues, as well as significant audio visual alterations to account for the HD format. As well as this the fog has been significantly scaled back, showcasing some awfully low resolution assets before they properly load in where James' field of vision used to be when the fog was there. Whichever version you choose to play is up to you, but I would say the PS2 or original Xbox versions are best, at least until Bloober Team's PS5 remake...but that in itself will be a totally different version of the game and so it could present its own unique interpretation of Silent Hill 2.
I feel like Silent Hill 2 is a game that will struggle to live up to its legacy for many who have never played it before, and that’s not to say the game is bad. I think the game really is a shining example of the horror genre, and ahead of its time for 2001. But any player going into Silent Hill 2 for the first time in 2022 will have expectations going in, I mean this is one of the most widely celebrated games of all time so certain elements of the story (such as the monsters being James’ own tortured psyche) is actually information that is withheld from the player until late in the game. But it’s become such a normalised talking point of Silent Hill 2 that having that knowledge going into the game fundamentally changes how you look at it and how the story’s reveals play out.
The less you know about Silent Hill 2 the better, and if you’ve read this review without having played the game then you already know too much (sorry). That being said, Silent Hill 2 is a must play for horror fans, there’s simply nothing else like it, not even within its own franchise.
I feel like Konami has been chasing their own tail ever since SH2 released, trying to replicate the success they had with it. That’s likely why the monsters and locations from SH2 have become franchise staples, despite not really working outside of the context of James’ story. I mean why would anyone else see Pyramid Head? It only makes sense for James and those around him to see that monster. Whilst SH2 could potentially be the best game in the franchise, it’s also the entry that arguably killed it. Whilst the franchise would enjoy success after SH2, it often feels like the peak of Team Silent’s narrative achievements with the series, and it wouldn’t take long for the series to start alienating its own fanbase because of SH2’s popularity.
So, if you’ve never played it, then do. But with the remake of Silent Hill 2 coming in the near future, I can only hope that Bloober Team treat the material with the same kind of reverence that Team Silent did so that an entirely new generation of players can enjoy James Sunderland’s tragic story for the first time and get the same feeling that gamers did back in 2001.
But obviously most modern gamers wont want to track down old hardware to play the game on, or fiddle with countless fan mods on PC just to get the game to run. You could then try the Silent Hill HD Collection for PS3 and Xbox 360, however this is potentially the worst way to play the game. Built on unfinished versions of the game, you'll suffer from game-breaking performance issues, as well as significant audio visual alterations to account for the HD format. As well as this the fog has been significantly scaled back, showcasing some awfully low resolution assets before they properly load in where James' field of vision used to be when the fog was there. Whichever version you choose to play is up to you, but I would say the PS2 or original Xbox versions are best, at least until Bloober Team's PS5 remake...but that in itself will be a totally different version of the game and so it could present its own unique interpretation of Silent Hill 2.
I feel like Silent Hill 2 is a game that will struggle to live up to its legacy for many who have never played it before, and that’s not to say the game is bad. I think the game really is a shining example of the horror genre, and ahead of its time for 2001. But any player going into Silent Hill 2 for the first time in 2022 will have expectations going in, I mean this is one of the most widely celebrated games of all time so certain elements of the story (such as the monsters being James’ own tortured psyche) is actually information that is withheld from the player until late in the game. But it’s become such a normalised talking point of Silent Hill 2 that having that knowledge going into the game fundamentally changes how you look at it and how the story’s reveals play out.
The less you know about Silent Hill 2 the better, and if you’ve read this review without having played the game then you already know too much (sorry). That being said, Silent Hill 2 is a must play for horror fans, there’s simply nothing else like it, not even within its own franchise.
I feel like Konami has been chasing their own tail ever since SH2 released, trying to replicate the success they had with it. That’s likely why the monsters and locations from SH2 have become franchise staples, despite not really working outside of the context of James’ story. I mean why would anyone else see Pyramid Head? It only makes sense for James and those around him to see that monster. Whilst SH2 could potentially be the best game in the franchise, it’s also the entry that arguably killed it. Whilst the franchise would enjoy success after SH2, it often feels like the peak of Team Silent’s narrative achievements with the series, and it wouldn’t take long for the series to start alienating its own fanbase because of SH2’s popularity.
So, if you’ve never played it, then do. But with the remake of Silent Hill 2 coming in the near future, I can only hope that Bloober Team treat the material with the same kind of reverence that Team Silent did so that an entirely new generation of players can enjoy James Sunderland’s tragic story for the first time and get the same feeling that gamers did back in 2001.