Looking for a comprehensive Silent Hill 2 (2024) Review? We’ve got you covered! Return to the world of fog where monsters terrorise in the limited visibility, and a town lies dormant. Here is our Silent Hill 2 (2024) Review.
Developed by Blooper Team and published by Konami, this reimagining of the classic PS2 game is a chilling adventure full of mystery and danger. Dare you resurface in Silent Hill as James Sunderland, now reimagined for PlayStation 5?
STORY
The game takes place in the town of Silent Hill, following the journey of James Sunderland and his adventure, sent to him in a letter from his deceased wife.
The game starts up on the outskirts of Silenet Hill, where James has taken a pit stop to help locate the town. Overlooking a small wooded area which leads into a church and graveyard, James’s adventure into the world of madness is soon to begin. Strangely, this surreal world, which opens the game, feels almost like a simulation where your goal is to walk around and learn of the disappearance and history of the Town of Silent Hill, much like The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter or Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture. Learning from a strange girl in the graveyard that he is near the town, James ventures on and enters the town despite a warning that it’s dangerous.
In the town, James encounters monsters, creatures from Nightmare on his quest, finding people in the town who both help and guide James to his goal, but also provide a distraction from the monsters who walk the streets of an abandoned rural town lost in the fog.
One of the most terrifying of these creatures is the infamous Pyramid Head. A Mountain of a character with what can only be described as an Iron Maiden on their head. Honestly, you don’t need to look very far to know where Tango Gameworks got the inspiration for the Executioners for The Evil Within from. Out of all the monsters in Silent Hill, Pyramid Head is the one character you don’t want to meet in a dark alley… Scratch that, you don’t want to meet him in a well-lit alley.
As James fights his way through the horrors of Silent Hill and encounters other people, one in particular, Maria, who reminds him of his dead wife, Mary, James starts to lose his hold on sanity, getting pulled deeper into the madness. Of course, this would depend on what ending you obtain; some endings have James die, while others have him leave Silent Hill with one of the other people.
Mechanics, Graphics, & Technical things
Mechanically, the game plays as a third-person action game for most of it. This might be the anticipation that it’s a horror, and it’s designed to be scary, but I just wasn’t feeling it a lot of the time. Some of the more interesting mechanics are the radio, navigation, and, strangely, the unsettling aspects where you anticipate horror.
The Radio acts as a practical item, like a radio would, but also as a mechanism to indicate when an enemy is nearby. While this seems like an Overpowered ability, this was only tried in Easy Difficulty, so it might be different in other difficulties.
Navigation is another mechanical component which is interesting. This is because there are parkour sections and traversal systems, which make the game fun to just explore at times. Things like vaulting over items, crawling under items, passing through squeeze points, and even breaking glass to find paths or items.
Graphically, the game is amazing, considering it’s a hard remake of a PS2 game. It’s hard to see that it was originally from over 20 years ago, and yet it feels like it is something modern and new. It’s not only in looks, it’s also in how well the game feels when working your way through the world.
One of the things which I really need to draw attention to was touched on in our The Last Of Us Part 1 Review. This was the Lack Of Detail, which was in The Last Of Us. While it was still very good, there was a distinct lack of detail when it came to seeing Joel’s hands, like when you would pick up a tool or other such item. For Silent Hill 2 and James Sunderland, Blooper Team has addressed this by making the hands look incredible, and while it is only when you see them close up, it is a really nice detail.
CONCLUSION
Overall, the game is great, although I have trouble believing it is a Horror game, maybe with 2 or 3 more runs of the game. That’s not to say the game isn’t scary at times, or the jump scares are insufficient, or anything like that. This is just my personal experience. Before we go on, the game is more spooky or unsettling for 80% and 20% is scary.
Realistically, the game is something outstanding, and although this is a late review, I would prefer to play Silent Hill F. Taking Silent Hill F out of the equation, Silent Hill 2 (2024) is the best Silent Hill to date.
One of the more interesting parts of the game is how James handles firearms. Now, most games won’t have you think twice about how the character holds a gun, but Silent Hill 2, however, puts James’s lack of knowledge of firearms on full display. This little detail shows that Mr Sunderland hasn’t used a gun before. Most people will instinctively know that your finger is to be kept off the trigger until you are ready to fire, but this isn’t the case with James Sunderland. While he has the gun equipped, he will keep his finger on the trigger, as if he is waiting for something to jump out at him. This not only shows how inexperienced he is with the gun, but also how dangerous it is not just for him but for anyone he happens to meet.
Although the game is incredible, there are some problems, like being able to pass through solid objects, for example, or floating objects. These are always going to be in a simulated world; it does make you wonder how the Matrix worked without so many glitches, though. The point is, there are some parts of the game which are either without proper collision or placed incorrectly, or even traced wrongly. While they are really rare and you would probably need to spend time running around to try to find all instances, and kill enemies in selected ways in different positions and locations, it was hard to replicate and even find a lot of these; the tree isn’t included in this.
Looking for more reviews to read? Be sure to visit this page and discover a wide range of informative and insightful reviews. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions.
