Silent Hill 2 (2024) [Review]

I've never played any silent hill game before this game and thought I knew what to expect.
I was wrong.

Silent Hill 2 is an expansive, hard, surreal and unexpectedly personal game, with a tight and mysterious narrative that unfolds as the game gets creepier and more complex.

A survival horror through and through, the puzzles and exploration are one of the best in the genre. Although it relies on a bit too much in searching for passwords, the flow and pacing of the game is almost perfect. Clocking at around 25 hours, the length of the game was good not only to know what Silent Hill is, but to understand and feel a bit more of the protagonist.

In the beginning, I wasn't too keen on the extremely mundane character designs or the somewhat stilted dialogue, even with great voice acting. Even those things that I wasn't enjoying started to fit in, and by the end, I was indeed impacted with the melodramatic and sometimes nonsensical conversations and monologues that I had to hear.

Another thing that got me by surprise is how pretty the game is. Be the dynamic fog or the very good illumination and texture work, everything that's organic feels organic, and the setting is greatly enhanced by how life like some facial expressions and cutscenes are. This is sometimes at odds with the actual character movement, that is a bit janky and the game unfortunately has some strange clipping, camera issues and spotty environment interaction.

There isn't too much of an enemy and boss variety as well, and at about halfway point I've stopped seeing new types of monsters and that is a missed opportunity. Having that said, the combat is hard enough and left me engaged, I felt that I had to clear some areas to have more peace of mind and to the puzzles, and that made me constantly be with low life and low ammo. The bosses are somewhat easier than the regular situations that the player is put with monsters, though.

As a horror game, Silent Hill 2 does not rely on many jump scares to be scary, and an eerie and dynamic soundtrack and surrounding sounds is what creates an ambiance of fear. The surrealism gets increasingly over the top as the game progresses, and then the game tried everything to make me scared, and it succeeded many times. Some deliveries are good and work, others are cheap and rely on one note spooky scenarios, like putting the main character hand in nasty places. Those, unfortunately, haven't worked for me.

It is amazing that how you play the game gives you a specific ending, and it is rewarding to feel that you made choices just by playing in a specific style. Again, unexpected, and super well executed, at least in the 3 endings that you can achieve in the base game. I haven't done them all, though, but watched the ones I didn't get to piece everything together.

I thought, before playing any Silent Hill, that it was just another Resident Evil clone, but spookier. As I said in the beginning of the text, I was wrong. The best part of Silent Hill is how unique it is, hands down.

Very nice game, but not spotless. Either way, it introduced me to the franchise and excites me for what's to come next.

8/10