Silent Hill 2 was released in 2001 for the Playstation 2 and original Xbox. The game is considered by many to be the greatest horror game ever made. After playing it, I am afraid I have to agree. It is a masterpiece and a must for anybody looking to play horror games or the greatest hits of the Playstation 2’s library. However, the game’s status as the peak of horror games seemingly doomed the franchise. Silent Hill 2’s legacy has effectively been worn out through the awful HD collection released for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, pachinko machines, and Pyramid Head’s use as a mascot. Both what makes the game so good and how it has affected the series will be discussed in this review as I do have a lot of thoughts on the matter.
Silent Hill 2’s set up is pretty simple. The game opens with local dork, James Sunderland, looking at himself in a rundown public restroom. He reveals to the player that he has arrived at the fog-ridden town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife Mary telling him to meet her in their “special place.” This strikes James as odd as his wife has been dead for three years due to “disease,” and he has no idea where their special place could be. Nevertheless, he decides to enter the town. If you played through Silent Hill 1 you might notice that dead wife due to non-conspicuous disease and searching through the town for a family member is the set up for that game as well. The main difference is that the town’s death cult, The Order, that had a large presence in the previous game is noticeably absent. The game lacks a central antagonist which does wonders for the game. The town’s role itself has been expanded, making Silent Hill seem like a character with an unknown goal. The supporting cast has also been changed as well. The characters all act in ways that are subtly off, almost as if they aren’t seeing the same monster-filled town that James is. All of this leads to a great sense of isolation. Wandering the town and its abandoned buildings is terrifying because of how alone you feel, and the sense that danger is everywhere all the time. None of the elements in the game can be trusted, as characters behave weirdly, the town shifts to its trademark dark dimension unexpectedly, and the game’s mechanics begin to play tricks on you. Escapist magazine’s Yahtzee Crowshaw put it best when he said that the only characters at play for most of the game are “the player, James Sunderland, and the town itself, and at some point, you begin to wonder which one of you is James’ greatest enemy.”
The game does more to realize the anxiety-ridden horror it’s going for. The soundtrack and sound design emphasize the isolation and panic that can come with many parts of the game. The voice acting isn’t your typical AAA video game affair but does well to sell you on the characters. Guy Cihi’s James Sunderland is unassuming and makes for a believable clueless dork, all the while pained and tragic. When the HD collection was released and Troy Baker played James, he came off as a typical 20-30-year-old tough male protagonist that Troy Baker plays all the time. Nothing against the actor, it just doesn’t fit what the game is going for. The same goes for most of the cast. Angela Orosco, one of the supporting characters, comes off as distrustful, depressed, and at times panicked, all of which went away once higher end voice actors came into the picture. The sound design with its distant screams, animal noises, and reportedly one hundred plus footstep sounds, all add to an eerie atmosphere. What only adds to it is the dense fog that makes exploring the large town feel more claustrophobic than the tight corridors of the buildings.
The game isn’t perfect though. The gameplay is a bit clunky. It works, but clunky nonetheless. You could even excuse the rough combat for a few reasons. Chiefly among them is that clunkier gameplay that functions, but doesn’t feel like it works against you, works to achieve a sense of helplessness. Secondly, James Sunderland is just some guy. He’s not your Resident Evil protagonist who has been trained to be a killer for years and can suplex lunatics into the next century all-day long. James Sunderland has seemingly never held a gun before so he handles it a bit awkwardly. Later games in the series would try to improve on this formula by redoing the combat to include dodge rolls, finishing moves, and breakable weapons, all of which were changes that made those titles much less scary and more annoying. The camera tends to act quite weirdly, which I have no excuse for. Otherwise, the game is a typical adventure horror game. You spend your time exploring, avoiding, or killing monsters, and looking for that one puzzle item to unlock the very contextual way thing that is blocking your path.
So the game is great, but why has it, and the other three Team Silent games, “doomed the series?” Silent Hills 1-4 are great but the problem is, after the dev team was dissolved, everybody who would work on the game past Silent Hill 4 just tried to use a formula to recapture the magic. Most games after four and the movies felt that a Silent Hill anything must have a clueless dork with a dark secret, take place in Silent Hill, and have The Order in it. Silent Hill isn’t that. Silent Hill 1 and 4’s clueless dorks don’t have anything to hide and the protagonist of 4 never sets foot in Silent Hill. Silent Hill 2 doesn’t have The Order and Silent Hill 3’s protagonist spends much of her time not being in the town and not being clueless. If you asked me "what makes a good Silent Hill game?", all I would say is the feeling of isolation and anxious dread. That isn't particularly the easiest thing to achieve.
Eventually, Konami just said ‘fuck it’ and released a dungeon crawler and pachinko machine Silent Hill game because who knows what you people want anymore. A lot of the monsters’ presences are also weird. In the first four games, the monsters are all representations of whichever character’s psyche the town is drawing from, especially Pyramid Head. Putting them all in the movie so fans can gush at how the Lying Figure looks in mid-2000s CGI does nothing. The closest thing the series has gotten to reaching the same heights is Hideo Kojima’s P.T. That game seemingly had everything going for it but was swiftly canceled anyway. Even the HD collection was a buggy mess, with several changes that removed a lot of the tension and atmosphere. Not to mention the collection only had Silent Hills 2 and 3 so it can hardly be called a collection.
Final Thoughts: Silent Hill 2 is a landmark in not just horror games, but video games as a whole. It is tense, horrifying, and dreadful. Besides the gameplay having some annoyances there really isn’t much to complain about. Everything about the game is masterful and has yet to be truly topped. It is a masterpiece that you should absolutely play. It’s just a shame so many people have tried to recreate the feeling of isolation and missed the mark completely.
5/5
Oh this shit rules
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