Games

Afraid and Alone #7: Silent Hill 2 Remake (2024)

One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.

Fresh off the success of the first Silent Hill in 1999, Konami’s Team Silent almost immediately began work on a sequel. This one would take a different tack story-wise from the original. The cult that had taken root in the small town of Silent Hill and served as the antagonists of the first game (and eventually the later Team Silent games) would be nowhere to be seen. Instead the town itself would be an antagonist of sorts, forcing the visitors it summons to work through their traumas in horrifying ways. (Interestingly, it seems that there was a not-insignificant chunk of fans of the first game who at launch were vocally critical of the decision to not make SH2 a direct sequel and didn’t consider it a ‘true’ Silent Hill game – criticisms that were also lobbed at Silent Hill f twenty-four years later. Team Silent actually significantly reworked Silent Hill 3 in part due to this response and slow initial sales of SH2.1) To create the game’s unique, creepy atmosphere and complex story, Team Silent drew on a wide range of inspirations including Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Jacob’s Ladder, the films of David Lynch and David Cronenberg, painter Francis Bacon, a Madonna music video (supposedly designer Masahiro Ito said this in a Tweet but it seems to have disappeared), the classic survival horror game Alone in the Dark, and the manga of horror master Junji Ito.2,3 The game released in September 2001 and sold over a million copies (roughly half of what the first game sold, but more than what many of the subsequent games managed).4 Over time it gathered highly positive critical acclaim and is often included on lists of the best games ever made.

Characters Angela and James in Silent Hill 2 (2001). Image courtesy of Screen Rant.

In mid-2021, a couple years after Capcom commenced its own remake project with the launch of Resident Evil 2 Remake, Polish horror game development studio Bloober Team announced a partnership with Konami.5 Given the studio’s genre roots and their previous collaboration with Silent Hill composer and sound designer Akira Yamaoka for their game The Medium, rumors quickly began to fly that this partnership would be centered on a remake of one of the early Silent Hill games – something that was only further bolstered by a number of leaks a year later that pointed to a Silent Hill 2 remake.6 During a presentation in October 2022, Konami announced a number of new Silent Hill projects that were in the works (including Silent Hill f) and officially confirmed that Bloober was developing a remake of the second game.7 Despite the return of Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito (art director of the original Silent Hill 2), the announcement caused much angst within the Silent Hill fanbase.8 Bloober’s prior games typically looked good from a visual standpoint, but the general consensus was that they tended to fall flat when it came to the thematic and story elements. Given how important the themes and story are to Silent Hill 2, especially in comparison to other survival horror games of the time, it’s not a huge surprise that this was a cause for concern.

As the release date approached, though, it seemed more and more likely that Bloober had managed to prove the naysayers wrong. Critic reviews were highly positive, indicating that the original game’s themes and atmosphere had largely made the jump unscathed.9 Most importantly for the series’ future, the remake sold very well (especially in comparison to all the games in the series after the original SH2). It sold more than a million copies in just the first four days and a few months ago passed the 2.5 million mark, making it perhaps the best-selling game in the franchise.10 This success is credited with helping to revive broad interest in the series as a whole, especially following the franchise’s decade-long dormancy and the poorly received Silent Hill: Ascension (2023) and Silent Hill: Short Message (2024).

Silent Hill 2 follows James Sunderland, a man who has just arrived on the outskirts of Silent Hill, Maine, after receiving a letter from his wife asking him to meet her there. The problem? His wife, Mary, has been dead for three years, killed by an unnamed illness. There’s no way she could have sent him that letter…or is there? Clearly haunted by the circumstances surrounding Mary’s decline and passing, James enters the town to find its fog-ridden streets abandoned – abandoned, that is, except for the horrifying monsters lurking in every corner. Despite the ever-growing danger, James forges ahead into the twisted realm of Silent Hill, desperate to finally find some answers.

Image courtesy of Polygon.

Having played through Silent Hill f not too long ago for this column series, it wasn’t a surprise that Silent Hill 2 Remake (SH2R) has a much stronger focus on story and especially psychological horror when compared to the likes of Resident Evil. In RE, most of the creep factor and tension comes down to the zombies, the villains’ complete lack of concern for any innocents who get in their way, and the tight resource management aspects. For many of the protagonists there is a personal element to the events, such as a desire for revenge, but it’s nowhere near as deeply, unsettlingly personal as what happens in Silent Hill 2. It feels like the entire town itself is invested in tormenting its visitors, burrowing deep into their psyche and doing everything it can to expose their darkest secrets. One approach isn’t necessarily better than the other, as they are just fundamentally different types of horror. But I will say that there is an almost constant, intense surreality to the world of SH2R that really speaks to me more in some ways than a lot of the RE games.

Even the enemy designs are fully steeped in the game’s psychological aspects. Every single enemy is representative of elements of James’s damaged psyche, including his repressed desire for intimacy and his intense feelings of guilt (both for his lack of attentiveness during Mary’s illness and for other…spoiler-y reasons). They are already among the most grotesque and disturbing enemies I have encountered in a survival horror game so far (alongside Silent Hill f’s roster), but the level of symbolism present in their designs makes them more personal – and by extension even more horrific. 

James fighting a ‘Lying Figure’, the most common enemy in the game. Image courtesy of Konami.

James isn’t the only person being tormented by Silent Hill. There’re a few other characters that are repeatedly encountered over the course of the game, two of the most notable being Angela and Eddie. As we learn pretty quickly, both of these fellow visitors have their own significant traumas they are working through in very different ways. There are some very sensitive topics at play with these two characters and I would like to note that while I feel like the game ultimately handles them well and in a meaningful manner, knowing when to be subtle and when to be more explicit, I do not have direct experience with these sorts of traumas and people who do may see things differently. Anyway, like much of this game’s story it’s hard to go into too much detail about their plot lines without delving deep into spoiler territory, but it is fascinating to compare and contrast their reactions to what they are experiencing with James’s own actions. Another interesting layer to the situation is that everyone perceives the town differently based on their psychological state, so while we get glimpses of Angela’s and Eddie’s versions of Silent Hill most of what we see of those incarnations is filtered through James’s eyes. There is also a strange awkwardness to their interactions and dialogue with James that feels very Silent Hill (at least if my experience with SHf is anything to go by). Everyone is stuck in their own worlds and are frequently only speaking past each other in a way that adds to the game’s unsettling atmosphere.

Eddie and Angela. Images courtesy of Screen Rant and GamesRadar.

Speaking of atmosphere, this game is just oozing with it. I can honestly say that this one of the most genuinely terrifying games I have ever played. For most of the game each area you encounter manages to be scarier than the one before it. The visuals are stunning, with the combination of the hauntingly beautiful (the foggy streets, the overgrown parks, the view down to the lake from the rest stop, the way the setting sun lights up the early rooms of the hospital and apartments) and the grotesque (the rusty and deteriorating environments of the Otherworld) combining to create an unusually unnerving experience. The use of lighting and darkness, particularly in places such as the hospital and the prison, is exceptional and frequently disorienting. There are so many great pieces of sound design that leave the player constantly on edge – the burst of radio static when an enemy is near, for example, or the sudden and unexplained thumping and clanking when exploring the Otherworld segments. And then there’s the way the developers frequently obscure your line of sight through the aforementioned fog or the clutter of debris, making it hard to tell where enemies or obstacles are until they are practically on top of you. This was especially noticeable with the Mannequin enemies, which frequently ambush James to great effect due to how well the developers hide them among the clutter. (Although I do agree with the people who complain that they went to this well a little too often by the end.)

Opening section of the Brookhaven Hospital. Image courtesy of TheGamer.

Before moving on to the gameplay, I need to talk about the soundtrack. Up until the early 2010s, the music of virtually every piece of Silent Hill media (even the movies) was composed by the legendary Akira Yamaoka. That includes, of course, the original SH2, which has long been noted for how its excellent soundtrack contributes to the game’s iconic atmosphere. Yamaoka was fortunately brought back on board for the remake (and, later, SHf) and did an unsurprisingly fantastic job. The soundtrack for SH2R is a mix of both new arrangements of tracks from the original game and all-new compositions (necessary due to the remake’s much longer runtime), and the breadth on display is very impressive. From the beautiful synth-y track of the opening cutscene to the overwhelming industrial sounds of the boss themes and the disturbing drone that plays at times while exploring the foggy town, this game has my favorite soundtrack out of any I’ve encountered in this genre so far. (Only Signalis and SHf come close.)

Even this quiet, haunting theme that plays in only one room in the early-game apartments took me aback when I first encountered it:

From a gameplay perspective, this is a pretty standard survival horror game. There are plenty of puzzles to solve, and I found them to generally have a good balance between being too simple and too obtuse. Each location typically has one central puzzle that requires solving several smaller puzzles scattered throughout the area. This formula could get old eventually, but there was enough variety in those big central puzzles that I didn’t find this to be a problem. Combat is a mix of both melee and firearm-based mechanics (something that, I understand, was common in the series up until the melee-only Silent Hill f). Melee is clunky but serviceable, as could be expected from Silent Hill, and the gunplay is pretty standard, but the ability to smoothly switch between the two really elevated both gameplay styles in my eyes. The game also does a good job of encouraging the use of both kinds of combat, with certain enemies being difficult to deal with using melee weapons but ammo being scarce enough that you can’t just resort to guns all the time. James has a dodge ability as well which, while not quite as powerful as Hinako’s in Silent Hill f, still frequently proves very useful (and even downright vital at times).

Continuing on the combat theme, I really liked the bosses both from a visual design perspective and the battles themselves. This is one of the areas where I have consistently seen other Silent Hill fans say the remake is a clear improvement over the original. Having watched videos of the original game’s boss fights, I can’t argue with that. Rather than cramped rectangular rooms where James and the bosses take turns trading hits, the boss arenas in the remake are more extensive and are heavily tailored to maximize the intensity of the fights. The two bosses that are associated with Angela’s and Eddie’s plotlines are particular standouts, combining disorienting environments, strong emotional stakes, and powerful sound design to create an experience that feels almost overwhelming in the moment. I’d like to talk about them in much more detail, but in the interest of avoiding major spoilers I will just say that those two are definitely among my favorite boss fights of the survival horror genre so far. And while his first fight is probably among the weakest of the remake’s offerings, Pyramid Head serves as a very effective recurring antagonist complete with an instantly recognizable visual design and deeply unsettling movements. There’s a reason he’s long been the most iconic monster of the franchise.

Pyramid Head. Named as such for obvious reasons. Image courtesy of Den of Geek.

If I had one criticism to give Silent Hill 2 Remake, it would be the game’s length. In most other genres, I wouldn’t really say that there is an ideal length for a game to aim for. With survival horror, though, so much is dependent on the game’s ability to maintain tension, and it becomes harder to consistently do so the longer a game goes on. I’ve generally, from my admittedly limited experience, found the sweet spot for survival horror to be between eight and twelve hours. This game took me closer to sixteen hours. This might not seem like much of a difference, but I could really feel it by the end. From what I’ve gathered, the remake is roughly two to three times as long as the original game. (Something that is borne out by How Long to Beat.11) There are the same number of main locations in the remake as in the original, which means in turn that, on average, each area is around two to three times as long. This expansion is definitely noticeable; while each location feels well designed throughout, almost all of them felt like they were starting to drag by the end – especially given that most areas were followed by an Otherworld version. Even just a slight tightening up of each main location would have done wonders for the game’s pacing. On a related note, there were a few areas – particularly the prison – where enemy encounters seemed a tad bit too frequent, to the point where the amount of combat started to detract from the atmosphere.

I’m going to wrap things up in a second, but before that I wanted to discuss how SH2R relates to one of my major goals for this project. Jumping into survival horror almost completely blind, I relished the opportunity to see firsthand how games across the genre took and continue to take inspiration from each other. The Silent Hill series is one of the foundational survival horror franchises, and while Silent Hill 2 Remake is among the newest of its entries it is, from how I understand it, quite faithful to the original SH2 in terms of story, visual cues, and themes. With that in mind, after playing SH2R I can readily see how some of the other games I’ve played up to this point have been inspired by elements of SH2. Signalis is an especially fascinating case for me. While it is clear that Signalis took a lot of elements of RE when it comes to gameplay – particularly the very limited inventory and the reviving enemies – in almost every other respect it leans much more in the Silent Hill direction. The constant psychological torment of the characters, the heavy use of symbolism and allusion, the complex and deeply surreal plot, the multiple endings, the presence of strange ‘Otherworld’-esque areas filled with rust and flesh, save points that are essentially red squares – in many ways Signalis is ‘Silent Hill in space’. The puzzles frequently have that weird and vaguely occult quality to them that feels more SH than RE. There’s even a cutscene early on where the main protagonist stares into a mirror (akin to the opening scene of SH2) and a boss fight that is obviously an homage to the boss in SH2’s hospital area. This marriage of RE gameplay elements (particularly those of REmake) with SH2’s thematic and story depth probably goes far toward explaining why REmake, Signalis, and now SH2R make up my top three survival horror games so far.

Bathroom mirror scene in Signalis, reminiscent of opening moment of Silent Hill 2. Image courtesy of Blip.

In the end, I was blown away by Silent Hill 2 Remake. Given the strong reviews the game received upon release and the iconic status of the original, I had little doubt that I would like the remake. The extent to which it impacted me, though, took me by surprise. With haunting and surreal visuals, strangely grotesque monsters, intriguing characters, and an intricate story dripping with symbolism, there was so much for me to love. The pacing did drag at points, something that I feel could have been rectified by cutting even just half an hour of the added content, but this ultimately did not detract too much from my enjoyment of the game. I’m very impressed by what Bloober Team managed to accomplish here, and I cannot wait for the chance to play their announced remake of the first game.

Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (in no particular order) – Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil: Village, Silent Hill 4: The Room, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: Rebirth, Amnesia: The Bunker, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space (2008), Alone in the Dark 1, Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, SOMA, Empty Shell, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Clock Tower: Rewind, White Day: A Labyrinth Called School, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Sorry We’re Closed, Fragile Reflection, Bioshock 1, Bioshock 2, You Will Die Here Tonight

My Current Survival Horror Ranking:

  1. Resident Evil (HD Remaster) (9.5/10)
  2. Silent Hill 2 Remake (9.5/10)
  3. Signalis (9/10)
  4. Resident Evil 2 Remake (9/10)
  5. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (8.5/10)
  6. Crow Country (8.5/10)
  7. Silent Hill f (8/10)
  8. Resident Evil 4 (7/10)

Up Next: Silent Hill 4: The Room

Header image courtesy of Shack News.

  1. https://www.resetera.com/threads/reminder-that-fans-initially-hated-silent-hill-2-and-that%E2%80%99s-the-reason-for-the-direction-silent-hill-3-took.160221/ ↩︎
  2. https://www.ign.com/articles/2001/08/17/interview-with-silent-hill-2s-artist-takayoshi-sato ↩︎
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20110512030040/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2382/silence_is_golden_takayoshi_.php ↩︎
  4. https://web.archive.org/web/20070524184403/http://uk.ps2.ign.com/articles/099/099550p1.html ↩︎
  5. https://ir.blooberteam.com/2021/06/30/the-strategic-partnership-of-konami-digital-entertainment-and-bloober-team/ ↩︎
  6. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/bloober-team-hints-it-could-be-working-on-silent-hill-but-its-not-the-only-one/ ↩︎
  7. https://blog.playstation.com/2022/10/19/silent-hill-2-remake-revealed-first-gameplay-details-and-design-changes-announced/ ↩︎
  8. https://www.vg247.com/bloober-team-says-silent-hill-2-fans-dont-need-to-worry-about-it-missing-the-point ↩︎
  9. https://www.metacritic.com/game/silent-hill-2/ ↩︎
  10. https://www.gematsu.com/2025/10/silent-hill-2-remake-shipments-and-digital-sales-top-2-5-million ↩︎
  11. https://howlongtobeat.com/?q=silent%2520hill%25202 ↩︎