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081: Revisited, Remade, Reborn, or SoraRabbit Plays Silent Hill 2 AGAIN

081: Revisited, Remade, Reborn, or SoraRabbit Plays Silent Hill 2 AGAIN

There is everything wrong with the town. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

While The Short Message was a fun and deep game, it wasn’t enough for our usual Silent Hill fix. My original plan for the year was to finally play and talk about Silent Hill: Origins, the game released for PSP. I was all set to start that one when I found out that the Silent Hill 2 Remake was coming out this year. I briefly considered waiting to get it until it dropped in price, but I lost that battle. Partly because the original Silent Hill 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and also because I want to support this game in the hopes that we can get more remakes. So I quickly pivoted to play this one instead, waiting long enough to binge play Silent Hill: The Short Message to act as an appetizer of sorts.

James makes a new friend! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

I’ve gone over my history with Silent Hill in previous posts, but I do like to reiterate a bit since these posts do gather new readers around the spooky season. When I was younger I came across Silent Hill 2 by chance and fell in love immediately. Along with most of the other games in the series (aside from the portable games and Downpour) I have played Silent Hill 2 multiple times. While this is my first time through the remake, I have played Part 2, I believe, seven times including this run. (I’m on run number 8 as I write this, more on that later.) So, yeah, clearly I love this game. I have played the regular Silent Hill 2 and the Greatest Hits version on PS2. I’ve played through the Remastered version on the PS3. And now I have the remake on PS5. I have yet to tire of this game… it’s seriously one of my top five favorite games ever.

This game is sooo cool. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

While I had my doubts about filling a whole new post with Silent Hill 2, I knew I wanted to talk about the remake. First I was considering adding in sections for Ascension, the movies, and the IDW comic books. (I instead briefly touched on those in the Short Message post.) I figured I would need some padding to make this a full length post. But it turned out I had nothing to worry about.

Also, while I’ll always love my love my original Silent Hill 2 post— it’s what started this annual tradition after all— it was among my first posts. I admit it was a bit rough… I was still finding my voice and figuring out the format and style for the SoraRabbit Hole. And I wasn’t exactly good at screenshots yet. So, despite that post having its own earnest charm, it’s not my best work. And now, thanks to the remake, I have a second crack at it! A… remake, you could say.

Title card. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Silent Hill 2 (2024)— known to fans as the Silent Hill 2 Remake— was released in 2024 for the PlayStation 5 by Konami and developed by Bloober Team. The game was announced two years prior to much anticipation and excitement. In the decades since the original game’s 2001 release, Silent Hill 2 has become a fan favorite, and is widely considered the best installment in the franchise as well as one of the best horror video games ever made.

As you can expect, fans had mixed reactions to the news that this classic game would be remade. However, I’ll go ahead and spoil this for you right at the top— the game turned out amazing and I have yet to see negative reviews for it. Fans love this, and I did as well. (Not that I’ve looked very hard. Reviews annoy me.) Bloober Team worked closely with Konami and clearly were fans of the original source material. They strived to make something new and updated for current gamers and yet still maintain the feel and spirit of the original. I think they succeeded at that, but I’ll cover more on my feelings as we go.

Also, and I couldn’t think of a better place to put this fact, but as of this game we officially know Silent Hill’s location. It’s in Maine! We never knew that before. Now we do!

Trigger warnings. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

As always with my Silent Hill posts, here are the trigger warnings. This post, while glossing over much of the finer points of the story, will make reference to violence, death, murder, suicide, sexual assault, child abuse, and psychological issues. Use discretion when deciding whether or not to read on.

Also, many spoilers for the story and for two of the endings follow.

I love that they’re penguin brand bullets. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

I won’t get into too many of the particulars of the game’s mechanics aside from differences between the original and the remake. I’ll assume you know the basics of Silent Hill. (I mean, I’ve only been talking about it for five years!)

The inventory is unlimited, as is the norm for Silent Hill (aside from Part 4). It’s now separated into the different class of items, which is handy. Weapons in one category, healing items in another, and so on. The memos are further sorted by the area you find them in.

Mmm, I could go for a Health Drink or three about now. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

You’ll be happy to know our favorite healing item, Health Drink, makes a return appearance. The label says “Nutritional Supplement”, which is what they were called in Part 4. One odd choice is that the First Aid Kits and Ampoules have been combined. They’re called Syringes now and they fully heal you. They don’t bother telling you what’s in these mysterious unlabeled injections, but I find it very concerning that James continually shoots himself up with strange needles he finds lying around in the grime and dirt.

The health gauge in this game is much easier to see. In the original game you would have to pause and look at the picture of James to see what color it was. As it grows to a red hue, you’re near death. There’s still no actual gauge (if I recall there is one Homecoming) but you can quickly tell how damaged you are by the red tinge to the edges of the screen. As you become more damaged, the tinge encroaches more on your vision. James also becomes bloody and looks physically pained. He holds his side and walks with a kind of stagger. He makes little moans and gasps like he’s having trouble getting by.

One enhancement I really like is that you no longer have to go into your menu to use healing items. The triangle button now automatically makes James down a Health Drink. And you can see him do it! Holding the button makes James inject himself with a Syringe. (This is probably the thinking behind eliminating First Aid Kits, to allow it to be mapped to a single button. And besides, what would the animation for that be?) Thankfully, if you’re at full health you do not consume an item. I was afraid that I would accidentally hit that since it was the map button previously.

I still love the map system. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

As always in Silent Hill, you find various maps (and even make your own in the Labyrinth) to help guide you. James will mark off doors and paths that are impassible, circle objectives, and make helpful notes on them.

Oooh, it’s one of those analog digital photos. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

There are new items to find as well. Strange Photos are hidden in various places (usually guarded by monsters) and hint to untold backstory in James’s and Mary’s past. I suspect collecting all these give you a trophy, but I didn’t find them all in my first playthrough so I never found out.

There are also strange things called Glimpses of the Past. These are little things you can look at that make James stop for a moment. They blur around the edges and make a resounding little noise when you find them. I found a few of them before I realized they were actually unused puzzles and elements from the original game. For instance, the old location for a music box figurine in the hotel, the restraints in the hospital, things like that. These are cool little nods to the original game that didn’t make the cut in the remake but still get little shout outs. I assume there’s a trophy for finding all of these, but I haven’t checked.

Stupid monsters. Thought they could mess with me. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Combat has been fully redesigned in this game and they’ve included dodging as a vital strategy. There is a dedicated dodge button, the O button, which lets you move to one side or the other, back and even forward depending on the direction you hit when you dodge. Dodging is the key to melee fighting in this game and it works very well once you get the hang of it. It took me several battles before I got the timing right and I had to relearn with each new monster. There’s a lot more strategy to fighting… you can’t just whack the monsters. You have to watch their moves, react, dodge, and counter-attack.

For melee fighting, you no longer have to press two buttons, just the attack button. For ranged fighting you do have to press two buttons and also aim, making it a little trickier. Monsters can grab you, forcing you to spam the X button to get away. Some of the Lying Ones (the pukers) explode after you kill them. (They seem to mainly do this in Otherworld and only when they’re facing upwards, but I have had them roll on me after they fall.) As before, you can stomp monsters after they fall to make sure they’re dead.

Once a melee item is equipped, the R2 button attacks. The L2 button pulls out your equipped gun and R2 shoots. You can switch ranged weapons with the Left, right, and down directional button. (Up is the map.) And reloading is as easy as hitting the square button. I really like that you rarely have to go into your menu to mess with your weapons. (Only if you want to check your stock of bullets or switch to the chainsaw.)

The quick switch between melee and ranged without using the menu is one of the coolest enhancements of this game. It makes it so much nicer to be able to shoot a monster and then whip out your beat stick to finish it off. Also, when not in use, James stows his weapon automatically so you’re not just carrying around a board or pipe for the entire game. When the static goes off on the radio, he pulls his weapon out, ready for trouble.

One nice thing is the elimination of the stamina mechanic. If you ran for too long in the original game, after you stopped James would have to catch his breath and would stoop over, panting. Here he still breathes heavily, but it doesn’t disrupt you anymore.

Yay, puzzles. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

And, of course, Silent Hill is not all about walking around exploring, stockpiling items, and fighting monsters. There’s also puzzles! Many of the puzzles from the original have been redesigned, expanded, and put in new places. Some have been entirely eliminated and there are several new puzzles as well. Some require finding missing pieces before you can complete them and many puzzles have multiple steps to complete.

For an example, the coin puzzle is way more complex than it was originally. In the original you had to get three coins and put them in slots based on a poem. You still do that here, but each coin has two sides, each side with a different picture. The man coin has a sword side. The woman coin also has a grave. And the snake coin’s other side is a flower. There are four poems to complete. The first three give you clues to which order to put them in and which pictures should be showing on the coins. Get one correct and the next poem appears. And then the fourth poem has you choose which of the coins was at fault for the story you just reenacted. There is no “wrong” answer here, it’s personal opinion, but it does affect in your ending in a small way. (The three basic endings still work on a hidden percentage scale.)

It’s like Angela is talking straight to the fans here. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

I’ll go through some of the other enhancements as I get to them in my summary walkthrough, but I figured I’d mention some of the interesting ones here. First off, as should be obvious with the screenshots, the characters were all fully redesigned while retaining their original feel. They’re all motion captured and voiced by new actors. It didn’t take me long to get used to the new appearances and voices… I think they’re all great. James was the one I had the most trouble with… but before too much of the game passed, I was used to him. I really like that they made Mary and Maria much more distinct in this one. Unless you look closely, you can’t pick out their similarities as easily as with the original. In the original, Maria was basically Mary with different clothes and dyed hair.

James marks his map. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

As seen in the screenshot above, when adding notes to the map, James actually takes out a red marker and draws on the map. It’s a small detail, but I really like it. It adds a touch of realism to things, and also clues you in that something vital has been added to your map to aid in progression. It’s not for every jammed or locked door or impassable area… just for the key areas, like the puzzles or next objective.

It’s also much easier to find pickups in this game. In the original you had to really be looking, or notice James turn his head to look at something. While he still does that here, the pickups, drawers you can open, and openable doors are marked with a white circle.

Hey, I know this girl. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

There is a lot of added detail in the game. As James is damaged, he becomes bloody and visibly tired and worn down. (This is removed after using healing items.) After particularly heated battles, the monsters and your weapon can become bloody. (The blood wears off on the weapon after a time.) It actually helps, as you can tell how close the monsters— nurses especially— are to dying by how visibly damaged they are.

Anyway, like I said, I’ll cover more of the changes and enhancements as we go along.

James, your opening line needs work. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Now for the walkthrough summary. I’m not going turn by turn and breaking down the entire plot… I covered the plot and lots of the major game twists in the first post. The story is largely the same. Mainly here I’ll be touching on my feelings and experiences while playing, talking about the changes, and whatever else I feel like talking about. It turns out, I had a lot to talk about! I figured this would be a quick post, but I love this game so much that it turns out there was a full second post’s worth of content to be found. So, with that said, here we go!

New James. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The game starts as it did before, with James having a quiet moment in a rest stop bathroom and then his dead wife Mary’s letter is narrated as he looks out over Silent Hill.

Welcome to Silent Hill. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Exiting the grimy bathroom and seeing the countryside for the first time I was a little overwhelmed with how damn good it looked. The graphics are incredible. Everything has been upgraded and fine-tuned. The fog, the leaves blowing in the street, the puddles on the ground. It’s breath-taking.

A huge change in this game is that they did away with the fixed camera the original had and replaced it with a third-person camera system. (Meaning the camera is always looking over James’s shoulder.) You can rotate the view as needed with the right stick.

I hope this thing isn’t giving James a brain tumor. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The long trek into Silent Hill remains, but there’s a lot more scenery to look at. There’s evidence of logging, a farm house, a big silo, the ranch. Not much to explore, as most of it is a straight-forward path, but the extra buildings and landmarks make it all feel so much more real. The world is fuller. They kept the save spot as a mysterious glowing red square, which I was glad to see.

James isn’t afraid to ask for directions. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

In the cemetery you meet the first of four troubled fellow visitors to Silent Hill, Angela. As with the other characters, Angela has been redesigned. During their exchange— which was kept pretty much the same as the original— I was struck by how much more detailed they were able to get with the character models. They have actual expressions, individual fingers, natural-looking movements. It’s far above what they were able to do with PlayStation 2 technology.

The long trek is over! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After more walking, you come across a building you can enter. This continues the tutorial aspect of this opening, since you can only proceed by fetching a key from inside a garage. This teaches you to climb in a window— which is a cool new mechanic— open a drawer, and unlock a door from the inside. All skills that will be used throughout the game. This is a small detail, but when you reach a locked or impassable door, James presses against it and makes a little annoyed sound.

Even the garbage looks amazing in this game. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Once you reach the actual town (the Eastern South Vale area) the world really opens up. You can enter a flower shop where all the plants have died and there’s a creepy blood trail on the floor. There’s some odd memo that I still haven’t figured out the point of about a stranger who ordered flowers in unlucky colors. I suspect some of the memos are just flavor and don’t actually mean anything.

As you explore you come across one of the staples of Silent Hill… impassable barriers. There are blockades, giant spooky drop cloths, chasms that lead to pits you cannot see the bottom of. I always thought this was a great way to form the barriers of your exploration that added to the otherworldly feel of Silent Hill.

You also hit a cutscene where you see your first monster in the distance and start chasing after it. This time around you don’t follow it into a tunnel. You cross several backyards, crawl into a garage— another new mechanic— and enter a house where you come across your trusty radio. The static plays as usual, but now it plays through the controller, which is a cool feature I’ve seen on a few PS5 games.

After picking up the radio, the monster— a Lying One— bursts in on you and James gets his handy-dandy wooden plank from the boarded up window behind him.

James finally catches up with his friend. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The first battle was fun but didn’t go well for me. I didn’t die but I didn’t come out unscathed either. As you can tell in the screenshot above, before I figured out how to properly attack, I was puked on. A new detail that you could miss if you’re better at dodging than I was… as you can see above, when you’re hit by the Lying One’s puke, it coats the camera for a time, obscuring your vision.

Fighting is certainly more complex and less clunky than in the original. It’s pretty satisfying to dodge and counterattack the monsters. One of the big issues I had for my first couple of battles was trying to hit the same buttons from the original, and battle just doesn’t work that way in this one. It felt more natural with practice.

Glug glug. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After the battle, I had to down my first Health Drink. James developed quite the drinking problem as I proceeded in the game. As I mentioned earlier, it took me quite some time to get the hang of the new combat system.

To exit the house, you break the window with your plank and hop out. The new mechanics are fun. I love that you can break stuff (car windows, cabinets, TVs) to get items. I broke every window I came to, just because I could. I even got a trophy for it pretty early in the game.

You can hop over some counters, crawl into passageways, break walls, squeeze through vertical gaps, move things to climb on them and reach other areas. (Anything you can interact with is adorned with tattered white cloth to set it apart.) This all gives you a lot more options for moving around. Note that the monsters can crawl through windows too… I found that out the hard way by getting attacked from behind when I thought I was safe. They can also use doors, so they’re way smarter than they used to be.

That’s a weird bluray. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

There’s a lot of added stuff in this area of town. There’s a record store, a barbershop, and a few restaurants you can explore. In Neely’s Bar there’s a new puzzle with the jukebox where you have to locate two pieces of a record, glue, a coin, and a missing button to play a song in order to advance the plot. This part was fun, acting as a scavenger hunt and excuse to explore more of the town. It also gets you into trouble… the diner where you get the coin and the record store are traps where you get ambushed by Lying Ones.

That’s right James, get all the way in there. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Another new area here is the Saul Apartments, which serves as the “dungeon” tutorial. This area teaches you to navigate around an enclosed area and get past obstacles to find your objectives. This is also where the second monsters of the game show up, the Creepers. These are little black and gold roach-things. They’re annoying since they skitter around and can be hard to see. But they can hurt you pretty bad and they set the radio blaring static like they’re full-sized monsters.

In this little apartment area, you find the first hole you need to reach into. (If you read my first SH2 post you know that this game has a weird obsession with holes.) This is where the jukebox key was stashed. After playing the song in Neely’s Bar and getting the Apartment Key, another cool enhancement comes up— weather! A storm is whipping up, the fog is thicker and rolling around, leaves and trash fly past your head, and the monsters struggle to stay upright in the heavy wind. I loved this… it amped up the tension and anticipation factor. Later in the game there are times when it will rain and this sends little vibrations through the controller as the rain drops hit you.

The redesigned coin puzzle. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Next up, Wood Side Apartments and the first big explorable area of the game. As with many areas of the game, the apartment building is heavily redesigned and expanded. Things are in different places, and the puzzles are revamped. You still meet Eddie and Laura here, and their scenes are largely the same.

James is making friends everywhere he goes. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The apartment is where you meet one of the staple monsters of the game, the Mannequins. They’re harder to fight than the Lying Ones and take more hits. But there’s a certain rhythm to fighting them. The key is waiting for them to swing or lunge. Then you can dodge and counterattack a couple of times before dodging and attacking again. It took me several fights to get it, but after that the Mannequins were easy.

The big problem with them is their tendency to ambush you. See, they can lie in wait and stand inertly until you get close. While inert, they don’t set off your radio, so it’s easy for them to get the drop on you. I lost so many healing items to surprise Mannequins.

Aww, it’s a party. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The apartment is also full of Lying Ones and a few Creepers. This is where you finally get the handgun, a helpful ranged weapon.

The pool area was the scariest part of the game up to this point. In order to get one of the coins you need for the coin puzzle, you have to maneuver to the pool, battle five Lying Ones (three in the pool itself) and grab the coin. I was still conserving my ammo at this point, so it took me a few tries to get through without wasting more than one Health Drink. The part that made it more difficult is that the monsters can actually climb out of the pool now. This can work in your favor though, as if you get the attention of one of them at a time, you can pick them off without getting swarmed.

Eddie! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Eddie also got a huge makeover. He’s still puking and claiming he didn’t kill the guy in the apartment. No, his psychotic break happens later. You know, I never really thought of it before, but I can see evidence both ways. Maybe he did wander in and find the body like he said. Or this could have his first kill and it hit him hard, which triggered his gastric issues. The killing became easier as he went on. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

No one cleans out their fridges in Silent Hill. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

And who was Eddie talking about? This gentlemen right here in the fridge. Have you ever noticed how the fridges in Silent Hill are always horrible and gross? And occasionally have dead people in them? The one in Part 4 ended up getting haunted. The one in The Short Message was actually plot-related. There’s something up with the fridges.

Wait, James, I don’t think this one wants to be your friend. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The first meeting with Pyramid Head plays out pretty much the same. In the original game you meet him right after picking up the gun, hide in the closet, and fire off a few rounds before he leaves. Many say (and I even joked about it in my first post) that he’s doing adult stuff with the Mannequins in the kitchen. I admit it does look questionable, but I’ve always seen it as him ripping them apart. Throughout the game, especially when you come close to an encounter with your sharply-angled pal, you find dead monsters lying around. Since he’s essentially a spirit of judgement or punishment, he’s going around killing these manifestations of James’s guilt. Like a supernatural house-cleaner for the town. And when he sees James he decides to just eliminate the source.

The design of Pyramid Head is the same, but of course he’s more detailed now. They also amped up the weird spasming movements he makes, making him creepier.

Pyramid Head will never stop being cool. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The huge difference in the remake’s first encounter is that you get the gun long before running into him. This time the trigger is picking up Mary’s handkerchief. And James holds the gun up but doesn’t fire it. I always thought it was a little weird that he would fire a few bullets into PH and he’d just walk away. The way the scene plays out here implies that either Pyramid Head didn’t notice James in the closet or he decided it wasn’t time to face him yet. You’d think that getting shot at probably would have made him attack regardless, so I like this way better.

And now that that tense moment is over, a little interlude with a toilet. In its glorious entirety.

James found the prize! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Yeah, he really got in there. And, as Cocoashade helpfully pointed out while watching this part, he doesn’t wash his hands even though the sink is right there. Our hero, everyone.

So this scene takes place in the Blue Creek Apartment, the next-door building. This is also where Otherworld starts up. One of the things I liked about Parts 1 and 3 is that the shift to Otherworld is visibly shown and gradual. In Silent Hill 2 you’re just suddenly there or wake up there. Both ways of transitioning are valid, but I think I like the gradual shift more. (They did this very well in the movies.) Otherworld is well-done in the remake. While the real world of Silent Hill is run-down and empty-feeling, Otherworld is more corroded and rotted out. It feels like the world is degrading more and more as you proceed.

The first of many jumpin’ holes. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This apartment is a huge change. See, in the original you had to go over to this side to find your last coin before you could even solve the coin puzzle. Here, the coin puzzle is already done and the objective is a brand new expanded clock puzzle. (The clock puzzle was also located in the first apartment building originally and was really brief and to the point.) This puzzle was pretty expansive. There is a grandfather clock and you have to wander throughout the huge building to find the three hands for it, putting them into the correct spot on the clock face based off a riddle. Each area locks you in with no save points until you find the hand and get back to the clock. After putting a hand in the correct spot, the door to the next hand opens and you continue this way until all three are in place and you get the exit key.

One thing that makes this area more difficult is the fact that now the Lying Ones will occasionally explode when you kill them. If you’re too close, there is a slight damage over time effect as their corrosive vomit or blood or whatever wears off.

Nah, I got a board with nails in it. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This is also where you meet up with Angela again and hold onto her knife for her so she won’t get into trouble with it. She’s showing herself to be very troubled and erratic through her dialog and actions.

In Otherworld there are areas where you can use your melee weapon to break down the wall and squeeze into the gap. The places you can do this look rotted out and have the tell-tale cloth strips around them.

The difficulty of the game really increased around this point. I was having trouble holding onto my Health Drinks and when I was close to a save point there were times I would reload after a fight had gone poorly to try again. (In a very creepy scene, your flashlight flickers off just in time for a Mannequin to attack before it comes back on. I screwed up a few times here.) This slowed my progress down a bit and I was starting to get worried that I wouldn’t finish the game with enough time left to write this post before Halloween. And I even started playing the day after release! I had a few marathon play sessions to try and get through it in time and I’m sure that made me a bit sloppy too. Because I was trying to conserve my Health Drinks, it took me way longer than it should have to get through the first part of the clock puzzle. The rest of the puzzle went a bit faster, but I lost so many healing items and bullets.

He actually looks more grossed out than he did with the toilet. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

A really cool detail is that once you reach the first floor, I’m pretty sure you hear Pyramid Head passing overhead. The floor vibrates and there’s the squealing noise that I associate with him dragging his Great Knife along the floor.

There was a new puzzle here involving moths. It was a bit tricky and very clever. I won’t spoil it, but it took me a bit of thinking. Once I got it, it clicked and was obvious. Those are the best sort of puzzles. There were a couple more like that in the game, like the noose puzzle in the prison and the book puzzle in the hotel.

BOSS BATTLE! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The first boss battle with Pyramid Head played out the same, but in a much larger room with crates to hide behind. As he attacks the crates, they’re destroyed, leaving you less cover. He goes faster as the fight goes on and near the end it starts raining. In the original game you’re in a small area and there’s much less room to maneuver.

He’ll be back. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

While you can fight him, it’s a serious waste of health and bullets. Not fighting him does take longer, though. Avoiding him for a few minutes causes the air raid siren to go off, which makes Otherworld recede and he leaves for unspecified reasons.

Maria arrives. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The area of town after leaving the apartment is small and leads to Rosewater Park, where you meet Maria. It’s all the same except that instead of just standing at the railing, she’s in a gazebo at the end of one of the piers. Escorting Maria is much less annoying than in the original. She keeps up much better. I didn’t have her complain once about me going too fast… although I naturally go a bit slower when she’s around due to her complaining so much in the original. In this game, you can’t accidentally damage her. Besides, with James stowing his weapon while not in use, there isn’t the risk of turning too suddenly and poking her with the board nails. (I did that so much in the original. Never on purpose, mind you.)

One thing I found funny was her reactions to things. I broke the glass on an ice cream truck and she said, “Whoa, why’d you do that?“ I broke the window of a police car and she gave a little gasp. “You startled me!“

That is NOT sanitary. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

And yet, when I fished a Health Drink out of the ladies room toilet and drank it, she watched and said nothing. Come on Maria, that would be the time to intervene.

Ya think? (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Later, as I kept breaking things, she said “I think I’m getting used to you destroying things.“ My favorite reaction was in the parking lot of the motel where I used a save square for the first time with her. Over the save menu Maria says, “James? Are you okay?“ And then after exiting the menu she says, “It’s like you blanked out there for a second.“ I love that they had her acknowledge it.

James gets a weird feeling in Room 106 and Maria tells him to loosen up. Returning here later in the game gives you a trophy. Also, I didn’t notice this at the time, but according to the internet there is an Easter Egg for Silent Hill 3 here. Hanging on one of the chairs is Douglas Cartland’s hat. He’s the private eye that brought Heather back to town. They briefly stayed in Room 106 of this motel in Part 3. No one’s sure if this is just a callback to that game, or if it has some deeper meaning like hinting that Part 2 takes place after Part 3. Some say this is a hint that we’ll eventually get a Silent Hill 3 remake, but we’ll see.

Another little Easter Egg in the motel is where Maria looks through a closet in one of the rooms and finds her outfit from the original Silent Hill 2. She holds it up and asks James if he thought it’d look good on her.

Speaking of Easter Eggs, after this you come across Baldwin Manor. You can’t go inside, but Maria freezes at the gate, refusing to come closer. She says it gives her the creeps and she doesn’t know why. It’s like it’s a bad memory. See, in the Greatest Hits version of the original SH2, there is a short scenario called Born From a Wish where you play as Maria. It shows her time leading up to meeting James in Rosewater Park and mainly takes place inside Baldwin Manor, where she helps put a restless ghost to rest.

Since they refer to it as a “bad memory” that kind of shoots down my hope for Born From a Wish to be DLC in the remake. Regardless, I think it’s great that they included this little nod to that brief game here. There wasn’t much to it, but I did enjoy the scenario and being able to play as Maria. And her revolver was boss.

Maria is in her element. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

While looking over an abyss and wondering where to go next, a crowd of Lying Ones come up behind them and they have to run, barring a gate with James’s wooden plank. Luckily right there he finds his steel pipe, the weapon he carries for the rest of the game. The pipe is superior, doing more damage and having a slightly longer reach. It’s no Katana, like Harry and Heather got, but it’ll do.

This was a very tense part of the game, where the music went nuts and Maria started panicking, running back and forth and looking around with darting glances. I know I missed some stuff here, since I rushed to get out. I wasn’t as good at combat yet and didn’t want Maria to be damaged. I was also trying to conserve healing items, but I did end up burning a few here due to surprise monster attacks. I assumed I’d be able to backtrack later after Maria was gone, but this part of town ends up being barred off in late game. Oh well. I’ll take my time here next time.

After rushing through several backyards and alleyways and evading or fighting monsters, we finally get to Heaven’s Night, the strip club where Maria worked. There’s a bit more to explore here and the bar is in much greater detail. It was pretty cramped in the original, most of it taken up by scattered tables and chairs. If you walk up on stage at Heaven’s Night Maria says she’d pay to see that. Hehe.

There is some new dialogue here where James sits at the bar and Maria is in the pose of a bartender. He asks if he’s crazy and she says he’s hopeful. She pours him a drink and urges him to share a drink with her but he refuses. I liked this expanded scene. I think it humanized the characters much more. Also James gives the drink a long, lingering, needy look. I found this quite interesting… seems our James is in recovery. Hmm… this may shed some more light onto his backstory. He did seem very uncomfortable being in the strip club and when Maria suggests they can always come back and use it as a safe place to hide, he says that’s not a good idea.

So a picture is starting to form. I assume this all means that after Mary got sick, James spent a lot of time in clubs like this, ogling the women (and nurses when he was in the hospital) and drinking himself into oblivion. Avoiding the reality of his wife’s sickness and not being there when she needed him. This was all fan theory before anyway, but this gives us some real confirmation.

And, hey, there could be a secret Party ending where James says fuck it and gets drunk with Maria in the strip club and forgets all about his quest. Montage of dancing and drinking, maybe even some Mannequins up on stage with them. Roll the end credits! This would be the ultimate joke ending. Missed opportunity, but it would have made the “Faster Than Fog” trophy meaningless. (This is the one you get for winning in under ten hours.)

One of the new areas in the remake. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After Heaven’s Night, there’s another new scene. Maria takes James to a special place where young lovers meet. It’s a much smaller park called Moonlight Grove where the centerpiece is a large statue of a woman. Maria tells a folk tale about a woman who was sentenced to death on an island and the man who loved her. He would visit her, using the light of a candle she held as guidance. One night the candle went out and he got lost, his boat sinking. She never stopped watching for him, though. It was a nice story, but James’s only reaction is “I don’t remember this place.“ Which, one, rude! You shouldn’t be that dismissive of the poor lady, James! And two, nice nod to the fact that this is new for the remake. (It’s like the part where Angela says “I guess things never really stay the same.“)

After this scene, James climbs into the window of the Reverie Theater. Maria stays behind. Inside is our friend Eddie, chowing down on popcorn and watching a blank movie screen. This replaces the part in the original where you meet up with Eddie and Laura in the bowling alley. (You can still visit the bowling alley later and there’s a a trophy for finding Eddie’s pizza.) The sound of Eddie eating is disgusting and greasy-sounding and his hands are filthy. Eww.

After inadvertently making fun of Eddie’s eating habits and irritating him (more on this later) James runs off to find Laura, who’s wandering around the projection booths. She runs from James and outside, Maria says she ran down the street.

I don’t need the hospital. I have a bunch of health drinks and syringes. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

And now we’ve arrived at the next big area of the game… Brookhaven Hospital. The hospital, as with the other areas, has been redesigned, the layout changed around. There is an interesting puzzle to figure out the safe combination in the reception office. Later on there’s also a cool X-Ray puzzle to find a different combination. They did eliminate the keypad puzzle to get into the other wing, but no great loss there. I remember not liking that puzzle much.

This is also where you get your next handy weapon, the shotgun. Maria comments that she doesn’t know what’s worse, that a hospital needs a shotgun, or that the gun case is empty. Point, Maria.

Well, if you say so. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Laura is loose in the hospital and has locked us out of the second floor, so there’s a side quest into the basement to get the elevator running. After this, Maria gets sick and needs to take a nap on a stained mattress, so James goes off on his own to prowl for nurses.

Hello nurse. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Yes, as expected, the hospital brings the next monster type… Nurses. The Nurses are rough. They’re fast, aggressive, and take a ton of hits to put down. They come in two varieties… scalpel and steel pipe. Since they wield the steel pipe with one hand, their reach is much greater than your pipe. The scalpel Nurses are fond of lunging and slashing repeatedly at you. They can go straight from one attack to the next with no real cool-down. Since their moves are so erratic, they’re harder to dodge than the Mannequins. The Nurses are the reason I conserved my handgun bullets as much as I did up to this point. I knew I’d need bullets to keep them from getting too close. With the handgun they still take a lot of hits, but if you can stay away from them, it helps.

One cool upgrade is that the Nurses get progressively more bloody as you damage them. Visually they look awesome. In-game, they’re terrifying, especially when they pair up with another one.

This wall is looking at me funny. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

I had lots of trouble with the hospital, but it was a really fun area. There was a particularly difficult bit where two Nurses invaded the lobby. After using up a couple of Health Drinks and too many bullets and dying, I had an unfortunate run where I tried unsuccessfully to take them out with the shotgun. I reloaded that save since at this point shotgun shells are precious and I knew there was a boss battle coming up. After that I had a truly blessed run where I managed to sneak up behind one of the Nurses and knocked her flat with one swing of my pipe. When she was down I stomped her into oblivion. I right away repeated this with the second Nurse, then turned and took out a Lying One without taking damage. That was amazing, but I never did manage to knock down another Nurse for the rest of my playthrough. It was a fluke, I guess, but I was grateful for it.

Remember the box with all the locks in it from the original game? The one where you had to get two keys and find two combinations? Yeah, that was ridiculous and hilarious. They moved that box to later and removed one of the key locks. Where the box used to be was an Glimpse of the Past showing the old puzzle. If you recall, in that box was a single strand of hair, which you use with a bent needle to fish the elevator key out of a drain. Well, instead you use medical tubing and there’s a really neat extra area where you run through the outside garden, into a pool and through a shower room. But this was actually to get a bracelet.

See, there’s a big puzzle in the Director’s office where you have to wander around getting three medical bracelets. You put them on a dummy hand on his desk and arrange them to give you numbers. This also releases the key to his safe. The safe has a button in it. In the Director’s closet is a big puzzle where you have to fit the button and spell out the code from the bracelets using symbols. It was a little tricky, but Cocoa was watching for this part and helped me figure it out. All of this was to get the rooftop key. The Director is a strange guy, I guess. I keep my keys on a hook near the door and never had the urge to hide them behind a multi-tiered puzzle. But to each their own.

Told you he’d be back. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Key in hand, it’s time to face the rooftop. Just as before, you find Walter Sullivan’s suicide diary. (Remember him? The serial killer big boss of Part 4? There’s so much more to his backstory than you can imagine from this game.) In the original you’re met by Pyramid Head as you search for a way off the roof. Here he grabs you by the throat as soon as you try to leave the little room with the diary. It was a total jump scare and took me by surprise even though I knew he was coming.

Laura’s a pain. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Finally James has found Laura. Interestingly enough, she hasn’t been slaughtered by monsters. She doesn’t even seem to realize that she’s in peril. The consensus among fans is that it’s because she’s actually not in any danger. Laura, bratty as she may be, is actually so innocent that none of the monsters of Silent Hill appear to her and she possibly sees the world as a normal quiet town. I fully agree with this because it explains how she is able to wander around drawing on walls and not being killed. James tries to get her to come with him but she instead locks him in a room with a boss battle. Innocent or not, what a little jerk.

Stupid kid, lured me into a boss battle. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This monster is called Flesh Lips, which is such a weird name. It’s still a disfigured creature in a rusty cage which descends from the ceiling and rocks back and forth to hit you. But this is where the battle differs from the original. In that one you have to fight three of the monsters. In the remake it’s only one, but you have to shoot the cage off of it. It eventually falls and walks around on the sharp remnants of the cage, skittering like a spider and spinning to hit you with its pokey bits.

Haha eww. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This battle took me two tries and used up most of my shotgun shells, but it was fun. After defeating it, a second one knocks James out and drags him through the hospital. When he wakes up, he’s in Otherworld and has to explore the hospital all over again.

There are more obstacles this time and the map has a cool effect where he shades out the pits and impassable areas. The rooms you’ve explored are darker on the map, making it easy to see where you still have to go.

Ooooh, I bet there’s something awesome in there. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This is where we have to solve the locked box puzzle. You follow the chains coming off the box to explore further and solve a couple of puzzles. In the process you find the two combinations and get the one key. Inside the box is… nothing. Yeah, absolutely nothing. Not even a strand of hair. But the curtain on the wall behind James falls down showing the Lady of the Door, a statue with an elevator button in her mouth and protruding hands.

Working my way through the hospital. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

During the elevator ride you get the bizarre radio quiz show thing like in the original and it’s not explained here either. But solving it gives you some shotgun shells and Syringes in the pharmacy later.

Yeah, that’s like, James’s whole personality. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

In the process of finding the two rings you need for the door lady, you reunite with Maria, who’s getting pissed that all James can talk about is that dead wife of his.

Yes, walk through the creepy door to darkness. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After getting the rings and putting them on the statue, you can continue into a dark and creepy hallway. Maria does not want to go, but James reassures her it’ll be fine.

Geez, this guy is everywhere. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

It’s not fine.

Oh no! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Running from Pyramid Head here is tense, but I had no real problem with it. He’s much faster since he’s ditched his huge knife for a spear, but I had no problem keeping away from him, even though Maria is painfully slow. At one point you have to jump over an obstacle and things do break in the hallways as you go, but I had no issues.

Maria, however, gets impaled. Oops.

After this you finally exit the hospital and start chasing Laura again. During this part it’s night and raining and it’s honestly pretty beautiful and chilling. After dealing with the Nurses, I wasn’t nearly as scared of the other monsters, but still had a few run-ins. Creepers can really mess you up if you don’t swat them in time. And of course there’s the usual Mannequin ambushes. Also, the Nurses are not isolated to the hospital, so they’re wandering the streets too.

There is a lengthy sequence where you follow Laura, work around obstacles, and head to East South Vale. You make your way to a payphone, answer a weird call, get a wrench to open a gate, meet up with Angela in Rosewater Park and dig up the key to the Silent Hill Historical Society.

High art. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After this, most of the monsters go away, so you can take your time. While you can explore much (but not all) of West South Vale now and get a couple more trophies and lots of items, I’ll gloss over that for time. We’ll just skip right to the Historical Society. This place is much bigger than in the original, filled with paintings and display cases you can break. Some old books and stuff, too. It’s all very educational. It was a nice place to take in some culture and mentally prepare myself for the hellish prison I knew I was about to head into.

In here is some more world-building for Silent Hill as a town. There’s also a book telling the story, as Maria did, of the Lady of Light and her lover using the light of her candle to guide him to her side. This seems to be a parallel to James and the boat ride he’ll soon take on Toluca Lake in search of his own love, using the light of the hotel as his guide.

James and his mysterious holes, I swear. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This is where you get the super long scary staircase, a minor sewer-type area, an annoying puzzle where you have to guess a keypad combination while being attacked by endless waves of Creepers, and then jump down several holes. At this point, you would think James has to be a couple of miles underground. But he’s actually in Toluca Prison.

And even though this post is already going super long, I can’t resist adding this exchange with Eddie.

Suuuure Eddie. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Hilarious.

The framing on this is great. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

I didn’t get any screenshots of the prison, but I’ll talk about it here. The prison is greatly expanded, with multiple floors and wings to explore. In the original the prison was a strangely vacant place with several different puzzles. Instead of finding tablets like before, the goal in the remake is to find various sizes of weights. You put them on a scale in the yard and the correct combination of weights unlocks one of four doors. Each door leads to the next weight. After getting them all you have to arrange the weights so the scales are even to unlock the noose puzzle on the gallows. (Quite a prison… they get a small yard to exercise in, but most of it is taken up with a stage to hang prisoners. I guess to remind them of their eventual fate?)

The prison is home to a somewhat new monster… a variation on the Mannequin that crawls on the walls and ceiling on four legs and drops down on you. These are the Spider Mannequins and they’re a real pain in the ass.

I loved the prison since there was so much to explore and solve, but the difficulty really ramped up here. There was a real ordeal on the second floor where you walk into the huge shower area and after you dig around in a bug-filled hole for a weight, all the dead monsters you passed on the way in come back to life and surround you. There was no way I was going to fight them all … I was running low on healing items at this point. It took several tries before I was able to evade them all and escape back to the first floor. But I managed to do it and conserved my ammo and Syringes for the upcoming boss battles. Oh, and I also got the final weapon of the game here, the rifle! I did not use it until the final boss battle because I knew I’d need it for that.

After getting all the weights, you are given an execution lever, which unlocks the noose puzzle. You have to match up the start of a poem with its second verse and then pull the noose of the prisoner who you feel is innocent. (This is an expanded version of a puzzle that was in the Labyrinth in the original.)

After the noose puzzle, jumping down a couple more holes, and riding a very slow elevator you find yourself in a lengthy area called the Labyrinth.

I have a bad feeling about this… (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The first part of the Labyrinth resembles a house with multiple hallways and doors. Wandering through these you run across Angela. This was a surprise to me, because in the original this boss battle is near the end of the Labyrinth, not at the start. I guess they decided it was better to space the boss encounters out a bit, and I agree with that decision. Angela is freaking out worse than ever and soon you meet her abusive father.

Nice to meet you, Angela’s Dad. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The Abstract Daddy fight was TOUGH. I was expecting it to be, and this was actually what I was saving my shotgun shells for, but I had no idea it would be this rough. In the original, you fight him in a small room and you can actually run past him, attack from across the room, dodge past him, and repeat. Here the strategy was different since he bursts out at you in a narrow hallway and grabs you if you let him get too close. He’s hard to dodge and it takes a lot of damage to make him go away.

This battle plays out in several stages where he will disappear and you have to follow Angela and break a TV playing a recording of him talking while he was still alive. This summons him and changes the layout of the maze. After fighting him this way a few times you end up in a big room that appears to have human skin as wallpaper for the final showdown. There’s more room to move here, but I still took a lot of damage. By the end I finally got the hang of dodging him and counterattacking, but the tricky part was not getting hit while reloading. Thankfully James can reload while running, but the shotgun and rifle are slow to load. I finally put him down after dying a couple of times, using up almost all my shotgun shells and a staggering 12 Syringes. He was no joke.

After he dies, Angela kicks him a few times and then misinterprets James’s concern for her as sexual attraction. Yeah… Angela has been through some shit. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Hey, Maria’s back. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The dialog with Maria in her prison in the Labyrinth was exactly the same as the original. The Labyrinth itself was greatly expanded and the rotating room puzzle which was a minor part of the original was the centerpiece of the area in the remake. As you rotate the cube, the wall moves, granting you access to the three big areas of the Labyrinth.

In the Rotten Area, you have to run across steel grates underneath which are Mandarins, bizarre creatures that hang mostly out of sight. They appeared briefly when navigating the town after the hospital. They can scream which stuns James and then slash him with their whip-like tongues. The point of the Rotten Area is to explore a maze-like area and put together a lighter to burn through a rope and drop a cage which creates a new hole for James to jump into.

Nyah nyah, you can’t get me. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

In the Desolate Area, you reunite with Pyramid Head. Yikes. Just like in the original, he paces around a circular hallway and you have to sneak into his inner sanctum. Sadly, his Great Knife is not lying here waiting for you to pick it up. That was a horribly impractical weapon in the original, but it was a fun novelty. Anyway, you have to get wire cutters to cut through a fence and a key to unlock handcuffs that bar your way. This area involves a lot of backtracking and climbing ladders to different levels.

And she’s dead again. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The Ruined Area is a little smaller, but it’s still brutal. This one consists of long hallways and rooms you get locked into with monsters. To survive you have to defeat the monsters. In one room is a Mandarin, and those cannot be defeated, only smacked or shot to make them temporarily go away. You have to avoid it until the door timer goes off and you can escape. After each room you run down a long hallway that gets progressively more destroyed as you go. At the end of all this your path is blocked by a strange wall that seems to be made up of Mannequin limbs. If you go the other direction you run smack into Pyramid Head. Luckily the wall is afraid of him so if you can avoid his spear, the wall will gradually recede to allow you to pass through the hallway. I did this part without getting hurt, but I was dodging the entire time.

After this you finally make it to Maria’s cell, but she’s dead again. This lady just cannot stay alive! After leaving her cell, you find the rotating cube has been destroyed by none other than the Great Knife. You pick it up and drag it across the hallway to another of those strange walls. As long as you’re holding the Knife, the wall recedes. This part sucked because James maneuvers very poorly while dragging the Knife and walks super slowly dragging it behind him. Also, to turn around, you have to plant the Knife and rearrange it slowly into the right position. Once you finally get past the strange wall, you can drop the Kife and move on. You don’t get to keep it, but no great loss due to its awkwardness.

This game just keeps impressing me. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After this there is a brief visit to a creepy indoor cemetery where there are fresh burial plots for Eddie and Angela. There is also an open grave for James which he decides to jump into because that’s the sane choice to make when you come across your own grave.

And now we have come to the next part I had been dreading for the entire game. The boss battle against Eddie. I had a feeling with all the revamps and changes that Eddie would be much more difficult. He actually turned out to be worse than I expected.

Oh, uh, hi Eddie. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Eddie has completely lost it and openly brandishes his gun at James, threatening him. My plan going into this was to hold onto my shotgun shells and avoid using the rifle. I wanted to see if I could beat him with only the handgun in case I needed the bigger guns for later. This didn’t go so well.

Man, this was an annoying battle. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The room is much larger and darker than in the original fight. Just like there, it takes place in a meat locker with hanging slabs of some sort of meat all around. The meat can be used as cover, but are destroyed after a few shots. (3-4 I believe.) Eddie taunts you from the dark and when he sees you, he shoots. His gun does a lot of damage. You can only survive three hits from it without healing. He also whacks you with the butt of the gun if you get too close.

The fight takes place in three phases. After doing enough damage to him, Eddie shoots the pipe above him, releasing steam which obscures him even more. He runs up and hits you more often. On the third phase he starts the conveyer belt, moving the meat around. (That didn’t sound right.) He’s slower here and a much worse shot, hitting the meat more often than not. (That also sounded questionable.)

I died ridiculously fast the first time. He’s quick and sneaky. It takes him a moment to fire, so I could sometimes get a shot off before him, which would stun him long enough for me to get away. I learned early on that this is a situation where it helps to turn off the flashlight. It’s hard to see him anyway, and so this puts you on equal footing.

After several deaths, I realized the handgun wasn’t going to work so I switched to the shotgun. However, even with all my restocking in the Labyrinth, after Abstract Daddy I was down to 19 shells, including the six in the chamber. I even tried the rifle when I got really desperate, but that didn’t help.

Eddie, we’re not friend anymore. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

It took me way too many deaths to get the hang of this fight. I would turn off the flashlight and hide in a dark corner, waiting for him to either sneak up on me or come into the circle of light in the middle of the room. Then I would fire off a shot and wait for him to show himself again. I kept running out of shells, so I eventually changed my strategy to use the handgun for the first phase, switching to the shotgun for the rest of it.

After learning the battle inside and out through experience and having a really lucky run, I finally got it. On my final blessed run, I managed to stay away from Eddie and got through phase one with the handgun. Then I realized that in phase 2 you can actually hear him rushing you. I waited until I heard his footsteps, dodged, and if I was pointing the right direction, hit him with the shotgun. In the third phase I managed somehow to pin him up against the wall with a full chamber and fired four shots into him before he could recover and get away. It was game over… for Eddie.

The fight against Eddie wasn’t fun in the original, but in the remake it was brutal! I got out of the fight minus a couple of syringes and health drinks and with five shotgun shells left. Not bad.

James goes for a nice, peaceful boat ride. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After the brutality and boss fights of the Labyrinth, I was ready for a nice, peaceful boat ride across scenic Toluca Lake. This played just like the original, so not much to say here, except I liked the rowing animation and sound effects.

Almost at the end now. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Finally, at long last, James has made it to the Lakeview Hotel. Just like everything with this game, the exterior of the hotel is way more detailed. There’s also a big garden area you can explore. There are some monsters in the garden you reach later. Even though it’s overcast, it’s daytime and it was so weird to see monsters out in the day. It was somehow creepier than having them lurking in the shadows.

Inside, the hotel has been redesigned a bit but has all the same major areas.

I want to know how this kid got here without my help. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Once reunited with Laura, the conversation plays out the same but due to the voice acting, James comes across as a bit more gentle and sympathetic. Laura reveals she was friends with Mary in the hospital, and she wanted to adopt Laura. The fact that Laura is so young means Mary didn’t die three years ago as James had convinced himself.

While exploring the hotel there are more bits of lore that I’m not entirely sure what they connect to— like a funeral invitation (Mary’s?), mysterious photos, stuff like that.

There is a mirror puzzle that was easy but confusing at the same time. You have to piece together a mirror and while it’s not evident at first, one piece is in the bedroom behind you. And after solving it, the mirror turns into a window that shows one of the music box figurines in the next room. This puzzle was a little unclear for my taste, but piecing the mirror together was simple.

There is a neat book-themed puzzle where you have to put books on a shelf to correspond with figures in a painting. This was an easy puzzle but the twist was that the books were inverted from the position of the figures. That took me a second to get, but it wasn’t bad.

There’s a part where you have to shoot a skylight from a balcony to make the can opener fall. I thought that was a nice touch… manipulating the environment to advance.

Freaky. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

You have to unlock a fireplace in the conference room to get the next figurine. James actually drops it, but it doesn’t break. What does break is the damned wall because here comes another mini boss! This one is a Mandarin, on a level with you so that you can actually fight it. I was shocked when I saw this… I’d only ever seen Mandarins from above and through metal grates. (There is a similar monster in Part 3, but it’s not exactly the same creature.)

The Mandarin was hanging from the ceiling and charged at me, kicking and whipping its tongue out. Luckily the conference room was big, so I could dodge pretty well. It took up a whole lot of handgun bullets and a syringe, but it wasn’t too tough. I was able to beat it without dying and probably could’ve taken it out with the pipe. Probably would have taken a lot longer, though. It had a ridiculous amount of health!

A side note, in the original you had to fight two weaker Abstract Daddies in the hotel. Those are gone now and actually I’m glad of that. Having them here made the boss Abstract Daddy less unique. Besides, it was nice to finally be able to kill a Mandarin. Those bastards are annoying.

At least these don’t come to life. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Next you have to gather a bunch of items. In various places are a bolt cutter, the can opener I mentioned earlier, a can of red paint, and a light bulb. In designing this puzzle/scavenger hunt, the devs eliminated one of the most inexplicable and bizarre moments of the original game. Now, instead of finding a sealed tin can full of light bulbs, you find it in a fish statue’s mouth. Still weird, but not can of bulbs weird.

All this is to paint a light bulb red to replace a broken light bulb on a vanity and get the code for a briefcase. This gives you the employee elevator key. And anyone who’s played the original game knows what happens next.

Hey, look, it’s bread. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

That’s right, we have to stash all our items so we’re not too heavy for the employee elevator. They made this part a bit less annoying by allowing you to stash each category one by one— health items, ammo, etc— instead of doing each item one by one like the original did. Such small improvements can make a huge difference.

This part is always tense because you have to wander through the monster-filled basement without weapons, healing items, your radio, or even your flashlight. Yikes. The original only had a couple of monsters to bother you, but this one has Mandarins patrolling each area. (And a Lying One.) You have to run around, sneak by them, and explore the area. Thankfully they do provide a few healing items and an employee map. The idea in this area is to gather three gemstones and solve a puzzle box with them to get the combination to the safe. I solved the puzzle accidentally, just by randomly placing the stones and then moving one. You’re supposed to use the painting across the room to make a symbol but I didn’t need it! Inside the safe is the videotape you need to finish the game. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see the save square in the bar after all that!

I didn’t get any screenshots of this section because this post was already pretty picture-heavy and super long as it is. But I had to include the bread trophy. This made me laugh so hard. As you’re running around in the basement with no way to defend yourself— a Lying One is actually right nearby— you can interact with the tray of bread and James just says “It’s bread.” This is a reference to a similar scene in Silent Hill 3 and some memes that were created because of it. I actually included that moment in my Silent Hill 3 post without any context.

We finally see Mary. Sorta. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After grabbing the final figurine and all your items, it’s time to solve the music box puzzle. As with all the other major puzzles, this one was fully redesigned. I recall the original solution being pretty complex. In this one you have to use the statues outside to figure out where to place the figurines. Then move the circular tracks around so the figurines can reach their doors. Then use poems to decide how many times to turn each key. Once each figurine is back in their doors, the Music Box theme plays and you get the last key you’re going to need to access the corridor for Room 312.

Inside you insert the tape and see Mary as she was before she got really sick. And we learn that James is the one who killed her, during her final visit home from the hospital. He smothered her with a pillow to put her out of her misery… and his.

James needs a moment. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

James admits to Laura what he did and she reacts as any kid would, she demands he give Mary back to her. She runs off and when James stands up, the hotel has gone dark.

Interestingly enough, when you first go into the hotel, the PS5 menu and the save menu calls it “Hotel Otherworld”. This part is just labelled “Hotel”. A mistake or a sign that the borders are getting unclear?

“Hello? This is the final boss battle calling!” (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Mary calls out to James on the radio and he’s off to explore the darker, more corrupted version of the Lakeview Hotel. Regardless of what the menus say, this is absolutely Otherworld. The hotel is now badly deteriorated and there was a lot of care put into making this area look worse than the other locations you visited… or perhaps it just seems worse because you saw it moments before in a slightly better state?

This part is pretty linear and mostly consists of working your way around the debris. In one part you have to push a cart onto a rotted floor to fall through and reach the lower level. This part is made creepier by the absence of monsters. I expected a fight, but most of the monsters seem to be dead. Not having anything to fight makes this part of James’s journey even more tense and foreboding.

The hotel is in a state. Plaster crumbles and falls from the walls, the basement is flooded and you have to wade through. In many places the structure has collapsed in on itself.

This is fine. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Angela’s finale is even more visually stunning than before, and her new voicework makes it even better, I think. The flame effects are incredible.

Somehow they made this scene better. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

James: “It’s hot as hell in here.”

Angela: “You see it too? For me, it’s always like this.“

I always loved that line. Angela is a really tragic character. The fact that you’re able to see what Silent Hill looks like for her shows how far James has come, and that he is able to empathize with her.

Should I save nine times? Why isn’t that a trophy? (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

On the first floor there are a couple of monsters, but they’re sluggish, dying. They’re no longer a danger to James. You can avoid or kill them. The final save space of the game has nine squares on the wall.

What’s going on here? (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Soon enough you come face to face with a (once again) resurrected Maria and her captor, two Pyramid Heads. I don’t know why there are two… I’ve never been able to figure that out.

This is a great shot. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

James now sees why he’s been tormenting himself and he’s done with it. He’s made his decision on what comes next. We won’t know what that decision is until we see which ending our gameplay gave us. (Note that this battle and the final showdown are skipped by several of the optional New Game+ endings.)

He brought his twin! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The battle against the Super Pyramid Brothers is basically the same as the original but made very different by the ability to dodge and the new combat mechanics. It still took me a few tries. I had gathered some more shotgun shells, so I decided to use that on them. The big problem was in waiting for the shotgun to reload. Also getting the timing down for dodging and healing without getting hit was a trial.

That was surprisingly easy. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

In this battle, the Pyramid Heads both wield spears with a super long reach. They can stab you, swing the spears, or fling them at you. The funny thing is, I managed to beat them with my last shotgun shell.

Once you defeat them, they move to the center of the room and impale themselves on their spears. Then you can harvest their eggs.

See? I wasn’t kidding. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After the fight you get an egg from each Pyramid Head. You put them into the doors exiting the room. I believe the door you exit through effects your ending but I tried to not look up much for this.

How many times is she going to die? (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Once the battle is over, there’s a long hallway with Mary talking. Listening to this whole monologue or running through before it ends effects what ending you get. After climbing up some stairs you arrive in the final room. In the original, depending on the ending you’ve earned, Mary/Maria could be standing by the window or lying in the hospital bed. I’m not sure if that’s the case here, but for me she was by the window.

Although this looks like Mary, it’s actually Maria pretending to be her, trying to get through to James one last time. When he rebukes her and refuses her advances, she transforms into a dark and twisted form.

I finally get to use my rifle. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

This is the battle I was saving all my rifle rounds for. This battle worked a lot like in the original game, but this time went through three distinct phases. They were also very generous about leaving healing items and ammo around the arena in each area. Maria is hanging upside down in a cage, floating around the room. She whips at you with a tail-like protrusion and can sometimes turn into a swarm of moths to move around.

In the second phase you fall underground in a looping hallway area. Maria descends from the ceiling to attack you and you have to dodge and counterattack.

Phase three. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

In the third phase you’re back in a big room. Her cage splits open to form spider-like legs and she runs around on the ground after you. The rifle did well against her but it still took a lot of hits and the rifle is the slowest-loading weapon.

Maria? You okay? (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After damaging her enough, she falls on her back, legs splayed out like a dying spider. You have to deliver one last shot to her to end it.

Thankfully I used my rifle to finish her off, instead of switching to the pipe. This triggered a trophy for killing monsters with each weapon.

One thing I’m really proud of is that I didn’t die once fighting Maria. I used a lot of healing items and most of my rifle shells, but I got it in one.

Hey, look, I got the happy ending! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

After the boss battle ends, James sees Mary (or is it Maria?) in her hospital bed and says goodbye to her. He’s then shown walking through the graveyard (likely heading back to his car at the rest stop) along with Laura, who looks up at him curiously. This is the Leave ending, which shows James has chosen life and has forgiven himself for what he’s done. And he’s taking Laura wth him, which is what Mary would have wanted.

My stats. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Here are my stats for this run. As you can see, I favored the melee weapons quite a bit. My playing time was so high because I took my time exploring and kept pausing to take notes and get footage for screenshots. You can also see the embarrassing amount of times I died and evidence of my shameful Health Drink addiction.

This game did away with one of the staples of the Silent Hill series… the star rankings. In the previous games, depending on how you play, you’re granted big and small stars that can reach a total of ten big stars. (Ten small stars add up to one big star.) To get this you have to play a “perfect” game, never miss a shot, don’t save often or die, take little to no damage, get all the collectibles and memos, stuff like that. I am actually happy to see the star rankings didn’t survive to the remake. I never really liked those. I felt they were a dated thing… making you feel like you have to strive for perfection. I know there are people out there who can play the “perfect” Silent Hill run. I’m absolutely not one of those. Never will be. I was never ashamed of my stars (as evidenced by my previous posts where I freely shared my rankings.) My attitude is: This is the game I played and the way I played it and I’m proud of it.

So in this run I got 27 trophies out of a total of 44. I got 19 out of 26 Strange Photos. (Somehow I missed 7. Not sure where. Except for that one area I ran through with Maria, I tried to examine every nook and cranny.) I’m not sure how many Glimpses of the Past I found since the game doesn’t tally these for you, but at least a dozen. Obviously I also missed a memo or two since there’s a trophy for that which didn’t pop.

I like shiny things. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Although I really didn’t feel like I had the time, I did cave and started a second playthrough. My plan for this one was to rush through to get the UFO ending and a couple more trophies, like the one for finishing the game in less than 10 hours. I figured even though I may not have time to finish it before I had to get this post done in time for Halloween, I could at least see how far I could get.

Noooo Robbie! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Turns out I had the time! On my second run I absolutely soared through the game. I used a walkthrough since I’d already completed it fairly the first time and I was in a major time crunch. Turns out skipping the cut scenes and knowing all the combinations and answers for the puzzles lets you save a bunch of time. There were many places where putting in a combination from my notes skipped the 4-5 steps that it would have taken to get that combo regularly. The best example is the suitcase in the hotel. Knowing the combination saved me having to get the bolt cutters, the can opener, the paint can, and the light bulb. The biggest time save was the chainsaw.

Chainsaw Bunny. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

On New Game+ you gain access to arguably the best weapon in the game— the chainsaw. This thing rocks. It takes down most enemies in one hit. Bosses take 3-4. (I totally wailed on Eddie with it as revenge for how the fight went down the first time.) This is how I was able to coast through without worrying and even got the trophy for not killing any enemies with ranged weapons.

Plus, on occasion, James will hold the chainsaw over his head and roar like he’s in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is extra funny when he’s wearing the Robbie the Rabbit mask. I tried my best to get a good shot of that but failed, sadly.

Speaking of which, I’m sure you’ve noticed on the above screenshots that I decided to be stylish and wear my Robbie the Rabbit mask for this playthrough. It was awesome and kept making me laugh. (Especially when he reached into the holes and dug around in the toilet.) Pity I skipped the cutscenes. Those would have been even better with the bloody rabbit face staring all blank and cartoony at the other characters. I got the Robbie mask and the Mira the Dog mask as my preorder bonuses. There was a more expensive Deluxe Edition that also came with a Pyramid Head mask that James made from a pizza box and duct tape. Hilarious, but I didn’t spring for the Deluxe. I may be a huge fan of the franchise, but it still pains me to drop $70 on a game, so an extra $10 was out of the question.

About to be abducted. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Anyway, UFO ending. This is, as I’ve mentioned in previous Silent Hill posts, a tradition in the early games. In the first game, Harry was abducted by aliens. In the original SH2, James gets abducted and has to fight Harry. In the third game, James and Harry come down with their alien friends to join forces with Heather and lay waste to the town with the UFO’s lasers.

To get the UFO ending in this game, in New Game+ you have to break the window in the jewelry store and examine the blue gem in four specific places in the game. (I actually missed the first location on my first attempt and had to start over. Lucky thing is that my next try went way faster. I think I managed to shave a half hour off my run.) There is a memo in South Vale that gives you hints for the locations, but also when you enter each area there is a distinct humming sound from the unseen UFO hovering above.

After signaling the UFO four times, you play through normally until you reach Room 312. At that point, instead of watching the video tape, you examine the gem again and James walks out onto the balcony, which is inaccessible normally. Above him the lights of a UFO swirl and he’s abducted.

Two Jameses! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Here’s where the ending differs from the original. The picture turns to resemble an old black and white silent movie, complete with caption screens for the dialog. James finds himself in a cornfield face to face with… James? Yep, the original James Sunderland from the old PlayStation 2 version of the game.

New James is zapped. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Space James (as he’s called) reveals that the James you’ve been playing as is an alien clone and it’s time for him to go back to where he belongs. New James doesn’t take this news well and he’s zapped by an alien’s ray gun, which knocks him out.

This is poster-worthy. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

New James is dragged off to the UFO and Space James takes his place, returning to the hotel to look for Mary. Roll end credits.

I was surprised by the change to the ending, but I really liked it. It was as funny as the other UFO endings and the devs put their own spin to it, making a comment on how different the two versions of James are. It was definitely worth the trouble getting this ending.

Stats, take two.(Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

And here’s the stats. As you can see, I cleared the game in a little over five hours, which is almost half of the trophy’s ten hour requirement. I was proud of myself. On future playthroughs I wont use the walkthrough and I’ll just experience it normally with my full arsenal. Although I will still use the chainsaw on Eddie. The chainsaw made Eddie sooo much easier. It was ridiculous.

Incidentally, the one death I suffered was because I got cocky and decided to fight Pyramid Head during that first boss battle. He slaughtered me. The second time I dodged and used a couple of Health Drinks. It still took about four hits, but he backhanded me and walked off after that.

So this second playthrough didn’t eat up too much time, gave me a bit more enjoyment out of the game, and got me five more trophies. I forgot to turn off my radio, which was something I had planned to do for the run to get that trophy, but I forgot. Honestly, it’s fine, because that would have slowed me way down since I’d have to keep reloading after being ambushed by monsters.

Even without that trophy I got six more than I had before: the trophy for playing a New Game+, the one for winning in under ten hours, the one for not killing enemies with ranged weapons, the trophy for shooting all the balloons in the apartment, the one for getting the chainsaw, and the trophy for getting the UFO ending. So now I’m sitting at 33 out of 44 trophies. Not shabby!

Mmmm, treasure. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

So aside from the Leave ending and the UFO ending, I still have six endings to get. (And the rest of the trophies… I’m totally going to Platinum this one.) The other two basic endings are In Water and Maria. In Water is the ending where James can’t let go of his guilt and offs himself. (This is the ending I got on my very first playthrough back in the day.) The Maria ending signifies James deciding to continue to live with his delusions. Maria is revived and he leaves the town with her. And, of course, the Leave ending is the happy ending where James comes to terms with the fucked up things he did, lets go of his guilt and the past, and leaves Silent Hill with Laura in tow, presumably becoming her guardian and through protecting her finding some peace and a way to atone.

The other endings are received on New Game+. There’s the Rebirth ending where James completely loses his grasp on reality and is corrupted by the town enough to attempt to bring Mary back to life with the dark arts. The Dog ending is my favorite in the entire series and I look forward to getting that on a future playthrough. I still won’t spoil it, but if you’re curious there are videos out there.

The other two endings are called Stillness and Bliss. These are brand new to the Remake and I know nothing about them, not how to get them or what they are. I was careful to not have them spoiled for me. I don’t even know how to get them. That will be tasks for the future playthroughs. I’m excited to see them, though.

It’s not Silent Hill without mysterious chasms to the void. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Okay, so I’ve talked long enough. Time to wrap this up with some final thoughts. I say “wrap up” but you know I’m going to go on for awhile. Oh well, you’ve read this far.

This was a very expansive and well-produced game. The new puzzles and areas to explore gave the game a fresh feel. I love new content in my old game! I went through the entire thing not knowing exactly what to expect. Even though it all felt familiar and hit all the major story beats, there were so many unexpected changes that kept me guessing and looking forward to what was coming.

I love all the new features, like dedicated buttons for melee and ranged, quick switch weapons, healing and reloading without using the menu. This game improved on things I didn’t even know needed improvement! I love that they added weather and more ways to interact with the environment. The new combat system was a lot of fun after I got the hang of it.

The creepy sounds and ambiance that Silent Hill games are known for are amped way up in this game, increasing the tension and creepy factor.

One of my favorite villains. And his brother. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

The details in the game extend to the characters themselves. James gets stressed out when he has to jump into or reach into holes. You have to keep coaxing him to do it and before jumping, his breathing gets shaky and panicked. After particularly hectic battles, James breaths heavily and sounds scared, like the adrenaline is wearing off and he’s realized how much danger he’s in. If you point the flashlight at Maria, she’ll cover her eyes. These are all small little things, but they make the characters seem more real.

The story, as I mentioned, is mostly the same, but they did change around some dialogue and add more context and hints to backstory. I left a lot of that out, but there is a newspaper article and creepy recordings elaborating on Angela’s dad. Some of the memos seem to relate to James and Mary, but it’s hard to be certain. And I’m sure the Strange Photos relate to their past. How they fit together I’m not sure, but maybe I’ll be able to piece it together when I find them all and look at them in order. While the story wasn’t expanded or changed in any significant way, they did tweak the characters quite a bit.

Why wasn’t the amusement park their special place? They got rides and everything. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Some notes about the improved characterization: They telegraph Eddie’s later personality shift a lot better in this game. In the theater while Eddie is wolfing down popcorn (I can still hear that gross greasy noise) James finds an empty pizza box and makes an offhand comment about Eddie getting his appetite back. (This is an attempt at a joke about him puking during their first meeting.) Eddie doesn’t respond, but he looks hurt and angry. When James suggests Eddie come with him, Eddie snaps at him, saying “Oh, now you want me to come with you?“ (In the apartment, James left Eddie alone in the bathroom.) I like these little moments because rather than coming out of left field, his later shift builds on stressors shown in these two scenes, which push him over the edge. James’s reaction to him in his next appearance is likely what seals it for Eddie. Eddie claims that he killed the guy in the prison, while brandishing his gun. James reacts in a normal sort of way to this, saying he can’t just go around killing people. Eddie claims he was joking and leaves. This appears to have been a test to see if he could spare James. If James understood him, accepted him, maybe the boss fight wouldn’t have happened.

Or maybe it still would have. Eddie was crazy, after all.

Going along with this line of thought, they did similar things with Angela and Maria. Angela seemed hazy and disconnected in the original. Deadpan and maybe a little child-like. Here she seems genuinely fragile and traumatized. The way she recoils when James touches her arm, the way she misinterprets his concern for sexual interest… These things were in her original portrayal, but they were delivered and timed better here.

Maria seems less blunt and more mysterious and flirty here. She seems like an actual romantic option for James… a way out of his torment and a viable third canon ending. The Maria ending didn’t seem very likely in the original, here it seems valid. In the original she says “You loved her. Or did you hate her?“ Here she says, “You loved her. Didn’t you James? Didn’t you?“ While this may seem small, it actually makes a huge difference and is more subtle. It hints more than tells that Maria knows more than she’s letting on. The choice to make her physical appearance more drastically distinct from Mary was also a good one. She looks and seems enough like Mary to attract him, but different enough that with time he could fall for her. If he gave himself the chance. She gives James every opportunity to choose her instead. Her dialog is more playful… joking about making James dance, trying to get him to drink with her, telling him the story in Moonlight Grove, when the windows break in the hospital and the rain gets in, she says it’s romantic. And yet, James keeps rebuking her, ignoring her feelings, and stays focused on his wife, leading to Maria’s last ditch attempt to actually become Mary and the boss battle that follows.

James also is more of a complex character in the remake. In the original his main character traits were: looking for his wife, impatient, and annoyed by kids. This is all still true here, but there seems to be a lot more going on in his head that we aren’t privy to. There are a lot more emotions on his face. He looks like he’s repressing things. At times he looks bewildered, lost. There are hints to past regrets and alcohol abuse. and much more doubt for his sanity and perceptions. His reaction to the drink and the strip club were very telling but the game lets you fill in the blanks yourself. While impatient to find Mary and not wanting to get distracted, he does seem more open to interacting with the other prisoners of Silent Hill. He seems gentler with Angela, wary of Eddie, less irritated by Laura.

There is a tendency in games for the hero to be blank… to serve as a proxy for the player. This is why Link doesn’t talk, same with Mario in most games. This is why you can name your characters in RPGs. People like to see themselves as the hero, it makes them more invested. That’s why a game like Silent Hill 2 works so well. After leading James through this quest, his search for Mary, a journey which culminates in Room 312, you are shown the fact, in no uncertain terms, that James is not who you thought he was. And if you saw yourself in him… what does that say about you?

I do like the voicework in the original, but it’s amazing here. Especially when coupled with the redesigned characters and more expressive faces. The remake gives the characters more depth and that only serves to improve the already incredible story.

Kudos to the developers. I have to say, this is how you do a remake. It enhanced and added to the original while retaining its spirit and feel. It stayed true to the story and still managed to expand it. It made James, the other characters, and Silent Hill itself feel more real and vital.

Yeah, probably a safe bet. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

So, clearly I loved the game. That brings us to two inevitable questions. One, what are the downsides? I know I tend to be more positive with things I love, and it’s something I try my best to separate myself from in this blog. In my five+ years of working on the SoraRabbit Hole, I’ve learned to be more objective and critical, seeing things from other’s perspectives, while still giving my opinion. But in this case, after the experiences I had playing through twice, and maybe because I love Silent Hill so much, I’m having trouble finding downsides to this game. If you don’t like survivor horror games or are triggered by any of the topics covered in the game, then it’s not for you. I can see that it may not appeal to everyone.

For me, though, I loved everything about this game. I can see it being a bit too challenging for some. Some of the memos and in-game text didn’t seem to fit with the story and is hard to put into context. There were three times early on where the game glitched and I got stuck on things. I had to reload to free myself. (I think they patched this, though… it didn’t happen after an update they pushed out. I think the last time I had this happen was in the prison.) The redesigned combat system does lose some of the original intention… in the old games, your character was not meant to be a fighter, so the combat was purposefully crude and stiff. Here, with the dodging mechanic, James is more graceful and formidable. (Granted, you have to practice to get to that point, so just like in real life brawls, it’s skill-based. Unless you have a chainsaw.)

Everything else, the gameplay, the improvements, the music and sound effects… I loved it all. So that brings us to the second inevitable question. Did I like it better than the original? Well, this may seem like a cop-out answer, but I don’t think that’s a valid question. This isn’t a competition. I’m not going to sit here and say one or the other is better. This question deserves a more nuanced approach. They’re both solid, incredible, fun games. I love them for different reasons, like any parent would say about their various children. (Even the ugly ones.)

I love the original Silent Hill 2 for coming into my life at a time when I needed it. I love the comfort of being able to revisit it every few years and experience it all over again, trying for a different ending. I love the crudity of the aging graphics and gameplay. I love the subtlety of the story and mysteries. I love the replayability with the multiple endings. I love that a dog was the cause for it all along. The original Silent Hill 2 from 2001 will always be in my heart, and it will always be one of my favorite games, a comfort, an old friend.

And the 2024 Silent Hill 2 remake is a glossy, revamped, and improved version. It keeps the spirit and feeling of the original and amplifies everything that made it a classic, much-loved game. The graphics are beautiful, the sound stunning, the gameplay smooth and refined. There’s more to explore, new puzzles to solve, new collectibles to find, new endings to earn. The game is full of Easter Eggs and references that diehard fans can get excited over. Rather than being a lazy way to rerelease the game and make money off fans, this was a gift to them, one of those rare games that I felt was worth paying full price for on release day.

If someone asks me my favorite game without thinking about it, I have to give them five answers: Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy IV, Yoshi’s Island, Pokémon Scarlet, and Silent Hill 2. Now, technically, I have six titles in my list of games I will never get tired of playing.

So, like it or not, my answer for which one is better is: they both are. I think a comment I found on Reddit put it perfectly… you don’t have to choose which one you like more because now you have both. You have two pieces of cake to enjoy.

Rude. I think they’re very fine bunnies. (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

So, yeah, as with everything, your experience and perception of the game may vary. You’re likely to have your own opinions and enjoy (or not enjoy) things differently than me. That’s fine! Individual tastes and experiences vary and that’s a great thing about life. My own individual experience with this game was altogether positive and I have even more happy memories about Silent Hill than I had before. I will always remember these first two playthroughs just as I’ll always remember hunkering down on my comfy couch in 2002 to experience the original Silent Hill 2 for the very first time. And I have this post to memorialize the experiences I had and was able to share them with you. (Which really is one of my favorite things to do. I love this blog so much.)

I’m hoping this isn’t the last foray into the Silent Hill universe for Bloober Team. They really did an exceptional job with this remake and many are clamoring for them to do an original entry into the series. That would be cool, but I would rather see them continue the remakes. Silent Hill 3 is a close second for me on my favorite titles in the franchise. But I think the one that needs the remake treatment the most is the first Silent Hill. Harry’s search for Cheryl has never been redone. It was not included in the HD remasters for the PS3. It remains as the original PS1 release in 1999 and the gameplay and graphics are terribly dated. I bought a digital copy for my PS3 and so that’s the last system I played it on, but I would love to see it updated and expanded for current generations to enjoy.

The Silent Hill 2 remake is our first real return to the town in twelve years. Twelve long, long years with little in the way of new Silent Hill to enjoy. Especially after the cancellation of the promising game Silent Hills. (We all honestly feared it was a dead franchise.) This game was made by fans, for fans. It will bring attention and new players to the franchise. It promises much, much more to come. And judging by the skill and care with which this game was executed, the future of Silent Hill is very bright, whether we get more remakes or more original anthology-style games to add to those already on the horizon. I am so pleased that this game exists and above all, that it turned out so well. Now I have two solid Silent Hill 2 games to enjoy and more visits to Silent Hill ahead of me, for many years to come. For those reasons, this game is a gift and I couldn’t be more grateful for it.

We made it to the end! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

Thank you so much for joining me on this extended visit to our favorite yearly vacation spot. I hope you liked having two trips to Silent Hill this year. Next time we’ll be back to one. (Likely Origins unless my plans change again. If Silent Hill f comes out, I’m dropping everything to play it.) With this, 2024’s Halloween coverage at the SoraRabbit Hole comes to its expected and obvious conclusion. I really overextended myself this year and will again for Christmas. Which, hey, it’s almost time to get going on my Christmas posts! Sigh. No rest for the weary.

Anyway, I thank you again for reading. I appreciate you all so much and was happy I got to share this game and my feelings and thoughts with you. Until next time, I leave you with some wisdom I’ve learned in my many times as James Sunderland.

Toilets are a good source for treasure. Locked boxes are not. Holes are fun— both the kind you reach into and the kind you jump blindly into. Pick up every scrap of paper you find, no matter how bloody it may be. Don’t trust strangers— they’re probably about to either lure you into a boss battle or become a boss battle. Oh, and always interact with bread. Why? It’s bread.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Until next time! (Credit: Konami, Bloober Team)

082: The SoraRabbit Update #4

082: The SoraRabbit Update #4

080: SoraRabbit Does a Halloween Special

080: SoraRabbit Does a Halloween Special