hAfter missing the original 2001 game, I pulled up to the misty outskirts of Silent Hill town practically honking my car horn in glee. Here, finally, was my chance to experience a lauded horror classic that I was too young for at the time. As protagonist James Sunderland, I was ready to search this creepy ’90s American town for signs of my presumed dead wife. You see, James received a letter from said presumed-dead wife, telling him to meet her in Silent Hill, and hope springs eternal.
Before even reaching the town, James encounters a woman in a cemetery. Success! Successful wife! But alas, no: this is Angela, also called to Silent Hill to search for a missing person or some kind of closure, and to unnecessarily close doors in our protagonist’s face to extend the length of the game.
This is where, rather than under my skin, Silent Hill 2 starts to bother me. A sad little group of supporting actors wander dazedly in and out of James’ trip around town, but never say or do anything useful or interesting because they are defined solely by the numinous “bad thing” euphemistically referred to by the that are here. to atone. I don’t have time to worry about Angela or her missing mother. It’s already taking all my combined energies just to worry about James and his possible one-dimensional ghost wife.
It is a fatal problem, in a game as long and laborious as this one, that a group of one-dimensional characters does not add up to a three-dimensional story. James murmurs sadly. Explore the city sadly. He hits a monster that looks like a fishing boat’s catch rolled in glue, and for a moment you can tell he’s no longer sad, because of all the screaming and growling. But then he’s back to moping around town, coming across closed doors equivalent to a Wickes showroom.
The city is very foggy (the kind of fog you could lose your wife in even if she weren’t dead) and clues, keys, and puzzle pieces can be found in the most unlikely places. It may not be obvious to you why James is taking time out on a quest to repair a jukebox at the town bar using two pieces of a broken LP, some glue, and a button he found by rummaging around. shoulders in a scary hole at the top. of an apartment building, but this game first came out in 2001. That’s how people fixed things before YouTube.
Meanwhile, the sexualized monstrosities roaming the streets suggest that James is a man living a life with incognito browsing set by default. The not-quite-zombies start out as giggling, acid-spewing bags of giblets in thongs and platform heels, then putridly evolve through different archetypes of female sensuality until pairs of stockinged thighs chase James across the ceiling and howl. like howler monkeys.
Silent Hill 2 isn’t a graphically pretty game (to the developers’ credit, it now looks 10 years old, instead of 20), but the monsters get a special mention for being as stuck in the past as James is. The models look rough and jagged when they’re not hidden in fog or darkness, and defeating them is almost always a case of bravely running away until they’re stuck on the stage, or simply forgetting about you and returning to where they were. appeared for the first time. When you’re the one chasing the monsters, something definitely goes wrong.
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Silent Hill 2 doesn’t feel fresh. It feels like what it is: a game from the early 2000s, with monsters and puzzles to match. Resident Evil still makes sense in a glorious remaster vision, but I imagine this slow-paced psychological horror would have felt more disturbing in the hard-hitting polygons of the PS2 era. I suspect that what happens in Silent Hill is supposed to unfold with twisted, nightmarish dream logic, but with new voice acting and improved visuals, it loses some of the pervasive weirdness.
For players of the original, this should lead to constant nostalgia. But coming to this series from scratch makes for an overlong, dated, and tedious experience.