Gearing up to play the remake after playing and decidedly not liking PS2 version silent hill 2. Many reviewers and critics I respect really love this game, and I want some other takes on what I’m missing what I should focus on thematically or narratively in my remake playthrough. I want to give this one a decent second shot and I need some kind of grounding.
I have been rolling through survival horror games, having never played them as a very young kid for fear and religious parents but now I have fallen in love with the genre.
I recently finished resident evil 1 remake, the last I’ve played after playing every mainline re title and it’s become my absolute peak I think no other game has gotten into my head like it. Signalis is another favorite of mine which has a ton of silent hill dna in it and I could tell that playing though 2 (PS2 version).
But despite this I really really could not fuckin get into silent hill 2. Everything felt very “2000s edgy”. Is pyramid head supposed to be scary or just a foreboding metaphor? The nurses I kind of get and my first interaction with the crawling ones was the only legitimately frightening moment in my playthrough. I’m not all into survival horror just for scares, but I assume there will be something challenging or dangerous to contend with and pyramid head was the slowest least threatening “head boss” I’ve ever seen in a survival horror. All the serious metaphors and allusions to real domestic abuse clash with said “2000’s edgy-ness”. Gameplay was decent, I could have done without as much repetitive bat hitting but I elected to it to save resources so i can’t totally blame that on the devs. The hallways get insanely repetitive and the puzzles, one of my favorite parts of signalis and the re games are largely unsatisfying and in some cases deliberately confusing. I’ve heard some people say “this is the point, it’s supposed to be unsatisfying” but I think you really gotta stick the landing on using that as a device in your story and silent hill 2 didn’t have the sauce for it. The atmosphere is a high point, and I like the surreal layouts, images and architecture as you dive deeper into endgame, but signalis pulled it off better for me.
Did you have to be there at the time? Re1 Remake I can see it would have blown my mind as a child and it does as an adult. I could see if silent hill 2 was your first survival horror experience how it could be incredibly formative, like re2 remake was for me.
What is the metaphor the story is going for, in your mind? What makes it a unique experience to other survival horror games? What should I be looking out for in the remake, narratively, metaphorically or otherwise?
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Silent Hill 1/2/3 are probably the earliest examples of professionally produced games having genuine theming, properly written and conveyed subtext, as well as taking advantage of the medium and landing as a great psychological horror. Pyramid Head is neither meant to be a foreboding metaphor nor a heart-racing boss fight. He is James’ self-punishment made manifest, his belief that he deserves pain for what he has done. But like, not metaphorically. That’s literally what the monster is in the story, brought to life by a town that holds a unique but very defined spiritual power.
James killing the monster at the end is him killing the part of him that feels guilty for what he has done, which materially changes how James behaves. Depending on James/player behavior, this why the endings of the game can range from James killing himself or James making peace with his distorted memories of his wife and leaving town.
I’m sure that a game released in 2022 does all of this at least as well if not better, but SH2 was absolutely monumental for the industry and almost every psychological horror game today has some roots in what SH1/2/3 were doing. There’s a definite ‘Seinfeld effect’ with this. But I do reject the idea that you had to play it in its prime to properly ‘get it.’
I will say that its exploration of domestic abuse, sexual violence, terminal illness, did not come off as edgy in 2001. It came off as downright shocking that a game dared to explore it and demanded maturity from its audience. Back in 2001, this was unheard of in games.
Great stuff, this helps me track the historical significance better. Being an example of an early psych horror game instead of just “largely a worse resident evil” is definitely a huge part of this puzzle.
This also fits because I tend to dislike the psych horror games I’ve played, in contrast to the more classic survival horror or action horror stuff.
It’s interesting you describe Silent Hill 2 as “2000s edgy” when the Team Silent games most definitely never gave me that vibe. If you want to see “2000s edgy” Silent Hill, check out basically any of the Western-developed Silent Hill games made after Silent Hill 4 (sans the 2 remake)
spoiler
On second thought, don’t
I think it’s absolutely a consequence of that trend in horror media. I’m seeing it backwards, it’s very similar to a ton of (what I find to be) schlocky edgy monster designs in bad movies and games that came after because it was ahead of that curve.
I’m probably a bad person to try and explain what to look out for in the remake compared to the original because I think the remake fundamentally has boring generic design for the gameplay. I think the original game has a unique experience with the atmosphere and the general traversal of the world, with the camera oftentimes deliberately forcing you to head towards unknown areas that you can’t fully scout ahead of time, and a lot of the moment to moment scares within the gameplay rely on that, also it uses wide angles to emphasise isolation in a lot of the outside areas while using close ups to emphasise the cramped indoor spaces.
As far as the combat gameplay goes it does seem like that’s more of a draw for you so I definitely see how Signalis would work better, and the new remake might work better just by virtue of following very blatantly in the footsteps of RE2 and RE4s remakes with tactical locational damage as a pretty critical part of crowd management, from what I’ve seen.
I love the fixed cameras in re remake 1 and silent hill has some of that but yeah the straight cinematography vs the limited but still frequently moving and pegged to your character camera in sh2 wasn’t nearly as artistically interesting. I did get that it was going for that fear of the unknown.
I’m a fixed camera purist now I feel like we’ve left a lot of artistic potential behind, really wish they’d do a full bore new re game with fixed cam and see what can be done with it now vs 20-30 years ago when it started dying off.
Re2make and 4make were decent but the over the shoulder is eh. 2 is much better at creating a movie like vibe.
