Resident Evil Requiem

Introduction

So I guess you would call me a Resident Evil fan. I didn’t really think about it until playing the most recent entry, when I began noticing all the mechanics of previous games this new one was riffing on. I've played and enjoyed to varying degrees the remakes of Resident Evil 1-4, the original Resident Evil 4, 7, and 8. Plus, I’ve opened the wiki once or twice before. But like I said, I didn’t really consider myself a fan before. Maybe it was how every game seems to end with a sour taste in my mouth, but more on that later. Point being, that when Capcom announced Resident Evil Re9uiem, the 13th mainline Resident Evil game, I knew I would play it, but I wasn’t excited per se. It was more of a yeah, that seems fun and I’ll play it if I hear good things. Months later, the game released, reviewed, and sold well, and so I decided to rent it from my local library and give it a go. Quick shout-out to your local library, by the way. Anyways, I have some notes on the experience, but my overarching note is that this is a greatest hits album in video game form. 

What’s Resident Evil?

Because I said that Resident Evil Requiem is a greatest hits album in video game form one sentence ago, I feel the need to explain a bit what Resident Evil is, so my points make a little bit more sense. 

Resident Evil began in 1993 with director Shinji Mikami. On the suggestion of his mentor, Mikami began working on a horror title for the PlayStation by himself at first. The next 3 years consisted of some pretty slapdash development, but eventually Resident Evil released in 1996. Despite the slapdash nature of development and some clunkiness throughout, the game was a hit and defined horror in video games for the first time. Weird camera angles, limited inventory, item management, tank controls, walking up to a crank to open a door only for it to break so you gotta walk across the entire map to find a replacement crank, finding notes on the ground of guys going “y’know maybe it was a bad idea to create giant monsters who can rip my spine out of my body,” etc. all became pillars of survival horror in games that continue to this day. The game itself featured its main characters trapped in a spooky mansion that became overrun with zombies, with that cool setup ending in an underground lab revealing the whole thing to be a conspiracy orchestrated by the Umbrella Pharmaceutical Corporation. 

With this success came two more main entries and a couple of spin-offs, with Resident Evil 2 taking place in the fictional Raccoon City as Leon Kennedy arrives in the city for his first day of work, only to find it overrun with zombies, and he must navigate his escape. Cool setup that once again ends in an underground lab, with the whole event being a conspiracy caused by the Umbrella Corp. But as the entries went on, they got a little more up their ass about their own lore with more and more underground labs by Umbrella and every game ending in a fight against a wall of snot. More importantly, however, the games were becoming more action-focused as time went on. After all, it's hard to have a game about stopping global conspiracies, just about walking around scared in the dark, so the games began to have more of an action bent but never fully committed. It always started with that spooky start, but it couldn't keep it up. Ending action sections always feel kind of half-assed. With this, the games began to become bland, and they needed a change. 

Then, on my birthday in 2005, Capcom released Resident Evil 4. This was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that revolutionized video games the second time in the same series. Gone were the fixed camera angles (where the camera only showed one angle per room), and now the camera was free to move with the player’s control. There was free aiming instead of auto-aim and a full commitment to action and fun. You play as Leon Kennedy, on the search for the President’s daughter in Spain, where a village has become overrun by a cult worshipping a mind-controlling parasite. Resident Evil 4 leant into an Army of Darkness kind of campy vibe that gave it that crucial edge. Sure, it still had the Resident Evil hallmarks of picking up documents, item management, the beloved Leon Kennedy, and ending in another fucking underground lab, but it may as well have been a stand-alone title unconnected from the series. Resident Evil 4 was electrifying, and I’ve reviewed its remake and sort of the original. Both games are phenomenal, and you should play them like right now. Fuck it, I’ll stop writing to play them right now.

But with this electrifying change into a more action-oriented territory, Capcom shifted the series into increasingly more over-the-top action while taking itself more and more seriously. Once again, we’re back to the global conspiracies of the previous games as the lore begins to get up its own ass yet again. Resident Evil 5 had zombies that could wield guns and mechanics that made it feel like all the other brown, washed-out cover shooters of the day. Resident Evil 6 had explosions happening constantly and a long, underbaked story. Still ended in the lab and wall of snot, though. With a few spinoffs around the same time that reviewed poorly, the games became bland, and they needed a change. 

    Then, around my birthday in 2017, Capcom released Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. This game came with a first-person perspective and a brand new tight focus on survival horror. You play as newcomer Ethan Winters, who is captured and hunted by a family of hicks turned superhuman by a powerful black mold in the Louisiana bayou. Again, cool setup and in truth a great game that loses steam when it ends in an underground lab as part of a conspiracy, and you fight a big wall of snot. More games released, mostly remakes of older games, we got Resident Evil 8: Village, which had more of an action focus, and you see where I’m going with this. The Resident Evil games all kind of function in this overarching pattern, so while I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil Requiem, I am concerned for the series future. 

So What’s The Cool Set Up of Resident Evil Requiem?

Grace Ashcroft, an FBI agent who’s afraid of her shadow, is sent to investigate the hotel where her mother was murdered, after a body matching the pattern of recent deaths has been found. While there, she gets captured by a big gray man named Victor Gideon. Meanwhile, series veteran Leon Kennedy is investigating the string of deaths and arrives at the hotel to find Victor Gideon leaving the scene with Grace. Leon then trails Gideon to a health care facility he runs in an effort to find out the truth behind these deaths and why he kidnapped Grace. At the facility, we see Grace and Leon take two completely different perspectives on the game as we switch between them chapter to chapter.

When you’re playing as Grace, the game is meant to be a horror game. You have the claustrophobic first-person view of Resident Evil 7 and 8, combined with a lot of mechanics from 1 and 2. You have limited inventory management, zombies that take a while to kill but can get stunned more easily, zombies that will come back stronger if you kill them, a mansion layout with a staircase in the center of the main hall, and on harder difficulties, you have the limited save mechanics of Resident Evil 1 and 2. It’s a throwback to the early tight design of the original era of Resident Evil games. And the design here is tight. I was getting quite scared trying to avoid all the zombies, as the limited ammo and health don’t make it practical to fight them, but I still had a smile on my face throughout Grace’s section. I was having fun. The new addition to the formula, one of the few, really, is that the zombies each have quirks that you can use to sneak past them or get them in a position to kill them. For instance, one likes to be in darkness and will keep flicking the lights off if you turn them on. 

The scares also work for me in Grace’s section. At one point, a giant fat baby monster bursts through a wall and chases you and I, out loud, said “Jesus fucking Christ!” not loudly but y’know. The headliner of Grace’s section, which surprisingly isn’t in it that much, is an unkillable stalker monster. Harkening back to Jack Baker from Resident Evil 7. I did find this monster scary in its introduction. So much so that I felt like turning the game off and stopping. Even more so when it broke the cardinal rule of these games by bursting into a save room. However, I do think by the second or third section with the monster, you get how it works well enough to not be too scared by it. It doesn’t become annoying, but rather it becomes a decent challenge to overcome. Even if by the end I’m flash-banging the shit out of the thing and moving around it, no problem. 

Ultimately, what Grace’s sections work is control. When you’re caught by a zombie, you’ll start to run away from it and maybe bump into more zombies on the way. Lose enough ammo, and you’ll be unable to shoot a zombie later on. The fuck ups pile up and make you lose control of the situation. Good horror comes from the characters not having control over the situation, not knowing what’s next, and their safety being in question, and the actions of the player can make that lack of control natural. That early section of the game is so strong for this reason. But even if you do get control of the situation by carefully planning and conserving your resources, that gain of control is fun because you feel smart for having planned those steps. Either way, control makes Grace’s section excellent. 

What’s equally but differently fun is Leon’s sections. Leon gets the third-person action of Resident Evil 4-6, but mostly 4. If Grace is a horror final girl, Leon is an action star. Leon starts his section, roundhouse kicking zombies that don’t laugh at his terrible one-liners. It’s a good way to let off steam after Grace spends her section cowering in fear and sneaking around zombies, that you get to run in afterwards as Leon and shotgun blast the heads off of every zombie that stood in your way before. It’s an incredible lurch to go from 1st person horror to 3rd person action, but it works for the most part. 

It’s just as much fun as it was in RE4 to suplex zombies into the pavement as it is here. Leon’s weapons have a good punch to them, and the zombies seem like they notably get downed in fewer hits from Leon than with Grace so as to not disrupt the flow. Leon practically gets all the boss fights and the action set pieces, which can be a lot of fun. Most of all, I just like Leon. He’s a good character, and hats off to his voice actor, Nick Apostolides, who has played him as the young, bright-eyed Leon in Resident Evil 2 Remake to the now grizzled 50-year-old in Requiem without ever missing a step. It shows great range on his part in making this seem like a continuous character with a large arc. I was willing to buy his arc of a guy who is reliving some part of the trauma of the events he experienced in 2. Set all that aside, however, his one-liners rock. When Victor Gideon is about to torture Leon and says “if you won’t answer my questions then I guess we’ll have to go straight to your… treatment.” as he picks up a syringe, only for Leon to say “the silent treatment, I hope.” it doesn’t make a lot of sense as a response or a joke, but that’s what he’s been since RE4, so I was saying “I LOVE YOU, LEON” in my impression of Troy McClure doing the Planet of the Apes musical every time he was on screen. 

All that said, Leon’s sections might get a little too much action by the end. You get the second half of the game as mostly Leon and some Grace, as opposed to the mostly Grace and some Leon of the first half. You get a weapons shop and the attache case management of Resident Evil 4, though without the fun merchant, which condenses the growth of your arsenal in those games into half the time, and without much of the personality. I’m also not sure why you get a limited inventory attache case as Leon, considering you can’t store items, and there was never a moment when I had too much inventory for what I could carry, like you do with Grace. I mean, I know why the attache case is here; it’s because it’s a throwback to an old game. 

References to Old Stuff

As indicated by my references to the old game in the review thus far, most of Resident Evil Requiem will remind you of older stuff in the series. I didn’t find any idea, besides the zombies having their own personality in Grace’s section, that was new. There’s a bit with a car driving towards you, like in 4, the snarky remarks about “who builds this shit” from Grace, like in 7, and we return to Raccoon City, the setting from 2, and so on to infinity. Not to say that I think the game is one filled with references like Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In that game, references and callbacks are meant to endear you to a plot without a lot of good substance. Rather, in Resident Evil Requiem, these references are meant to be pieced together to give you a good time by giving you all the good ideas of the Resident Evil series. Like I said, it’s a greatest hits album. And we like listening to our favorite bands play the hits, which is why we like them. Even if it is old stuff, it’s stuff we fell in love with that completely works in the context it's presented.

Not to say that clunky references aren’t in the game. One of the boss monsters from RE2 just shows up, and we kill him non-ceremoniously. The bit in Raccoon City as a whole takes some time in locations we spent time in during RE2, trying to convince us of Leon’s character arc. Oftentimes showing us flashbacks of his time in RE2. Which kind of worked for me, but not so much for others. Leon’s arc throughout the games is this: he started his journey as a cop. In Resident Evil 2, he arrived in Raccoon City to start his first day as a cop, only to find the city overrun with zombies. Throughout the game, he fails to save most of the people he meets, and takes a train out of the city as the place he swore to protect gets nuked by the U.S. government to control the spread. So Leon’s character arc, the game tells us, is of a guy who fails to save people, and he feels the need to protect and save Grace, just to save anyone. As this game goes to Raccoon City, we tie together Leon’s failure with his chance for redemption. I’m willing to believe that the Leon in the remakes of 2 and 4 has survivor's guilt and he’s having redemption, but you don’t need to throw an old locale and an old boss at me to convince me of that.

STOP FUCKING AROUND AND GET TO THE LAB AND WALL OF SNOT

I don’t know why, but I’m surprised the game ends in an underground lab, and you fight a wall of snot. I feel like such a schmuck every time. It’s like even though I’ve been to tons of theme parks, I’m still surprised it ends in the gift shop. So sure enough, the game takes more of a turn to over the top action at the end, as the game gets more up its ass about the lore of the Resident Evil franchise, going back to grand revelations about the founder of the Umbrella Pharmaceutical corporation, and the main villain becomes a wall of snot. As is tradition. But every time it happens, it deflates a lot about the whole experience. We spent most of the game in this great hook of an interesting villain, claustrophobic horror, and a well-designed setting. Only for the game to end in hoard rushes and lame giant monsters, where we mow down a ton of enemies and are learning about how this all ties together with the past games. It's boring because you’ve seen the game be more interesting with less.

 A perfect example is when you’re fighting armed guys. Towards the end of the game, in the lab, you’re confronted by men with guns, whom you have to shoot and kill in a brief cover shooting section. This is egregious for two reasons. Firstly, you haven’t really developed the skills to fight armed guards throughout the game. Fighting zombies through third-person shooting out in the open or slow creeping first-person stealth is different from shooting military men in a firefight where you’re hiding behind a chest-height wall. It’s a weird lurch because it’s asking for skills from the player not developed throughout the runtime of the game. And we only use this new skill once and never again. Because of this, the section is more difficult in an annoying way than this being a meaty challenge. Secondly, the game has spent most of its run time in survival-horror or action-horror, and just shooting armored machine-wielding guys is less interesting. The zombies in Grace's section are tough as nails challenges you have to puzzle your way around, and Leon’s section makes them fun canon fodder with both sections using the environment of the Rhodes Hill Medical Centre and the destroyed Raccoon City to their advantage because those sections were intelligently designed around them. The section with the armed guards does not feel tightly designed. The lab section as a whole feels like there's a lack of thought in its design. Even if the visuals of the lab are pretty good. 

How Up it’s ass does the game get about the Lore of the Franchise?

Another issue with the lab is that the game begins to get up its ass a little about its lore. In fairness, the game tells you this is about Umbrella and Raccoon City’s destruction within the first hour, but the lab section takes the great hook from the opening and blows it out.

The main villains of the game are hunting an underground lab underneath Racoon City. No, not the underground lab in 2. No, not the underground lab underneath the one in 2 in 3. An underground lab inexplicably underneath all the previous ones. In this underground lab, the founder of Umbrella, Oswall Spencer, developed a brand new bioweapon right before his death. Also, right before his death, he gave away a child, our main character, Grace Ashcroft. So, because we know that he developed a brand new bioweapon and Umbrella experimented on children, the villains make the Hail Mary assumption that Grace is somehow the bioweapon or can unlock the bioweapon.  None of this is true. Grace is just some child, and the bioweapon is actually a cure to all variants of the bioweapons Umbrella ever developed. The key to accessing the cure is a password screen that, if you type in the wrong password, blows up. 

I find this reveal kind of funny, but it is pretty dumb. It’s such a big jump for the villains to assume that Grace is a bioweapon or could unlock it. Their only evidence is a video recording of a girl who looks like Grace wandering around an Umbrella-controlled orphanage. But we know this isn’t Grace. She was given to her adoptive mother as a baby and stayed with her until her mother was murdered when she was in college. So who is this? What’s this reveal? Some bullshit that shows why the villains make their big plan? More than likely, it will be explored in the DLC that was announced the week the game came out. But as the game stands by the credits, the villains and Grace are interesting until we get to the end, where it’s just dumb and confusing. 

The most egregious example of the story kind of falling apart at the end also relies on the game being a greatest hits album. The Resident Evil fans among you may remember Albert Wesker. He’s the closest thing to a series antagonist the franchise has and was present in some form or another for most of the games (even if in passing or easter eggs). That said, he was killed in 5. So you can imagine my surprise when Albert Wesker kind of shows up in Requiem. I say kind of because the mid-game reveal is that this guy, Zeno, is the main antagonist of the game. Despite the fact he looks just like him, has the same superpowers, roughly the same motivation with a thing for Umbrella’s founder, dresses the same, and has the same voice actor and face capture actor as Wesker, he is not Albert Wesker. This twist that we clearly see Albert Wesker, but is just a different guy and is killed by the end of the game, shocked me. It’s once again playing the hits by playing the Albert Wesker song, but it's too much. Bringing back a dead villain, calling him something different, having him be kind of uninteresting, then die, is bewildering. 

What does this mean for the next game?

Resident Evil games tend to follow a pattern, but so does the franchise. The first game is electric, then the games get too action-focused and up its own ass, so the series practically reboots itself with an almost stand-alone title that has different gameplay styles and a change of scope with a good hook. This happened with RE4 and RE7. It's a cycle. And sure enough, that’s true here. But unlike the games that right before the soft reset, we have some hanging threads here. The previous games have been setting up a criminal organization called The Connections, which the main villains here work for. At the end, Leon Kennedy says he has a call from the main character of RE 1, 5, 6, and 8 (yes, I know he’s not the main character of 8, but he’s on the fucking box art, so let’s be real here). We are told this call is for “something important.” 

My point is that we’re probably not getting the rebooting/reinventing RE10. The global conspiracy shit of the Resident Evil games necessitates that we get to more action-oriented gunplay and shooting waves of monsters, which is so boring when it happens. How can you fight a global criminal organization by being a cowering guy sneaking in the dark with a gun that has 1 bullet in it? Especially when this series is known for going to the action-focused nonsense as we get to the global conspiracies. I have a sinking feeling that the next game will be huge action that somehow out bores the giant monster fights of Requiem. 

So, Do You Recommend Requiem?

I know I spent the past paragraphs kind of lambasting the game, but I would recommend Resident Evil Requiem. Grace’s and Leon’s sections are so much fun until the final 2 hours of this 12-hour experience. I was scared, but I was having fun. The design of the Medical Center is so tight you can’t help but marvel at it. Plus, Leon Kennedy is here saying shit like “erm, I think I want a second opinion” when a zombie doctor picks up a chainsaw. It’s good stuff, I just think it kind of falls apart in the final hours. You have to wade through some bullshit as the game begins to wrap up, and you’re desperately hoping it will wrap itself up a little quicker. Sure, there aren’t a lot of new ideas here, but it’s a greatest hits album. You love the stuff of the older Resident Evil games, and here it is, repackaged in a new context for your pleasure. If you’re a fan of the series, you might even enjoy these mechanics and the big dumb reveal even more. 

    I’ll also add, as an addendum, that I played this game on the Switch 2 (switch to what?). It’s a surprising day-and-date release on other consoles, and I would like to say that the game runs perfectly on Switch 2 (switch to what?). I never had a dip in frame rate or thought it looked ugly when playing on TV or handheld. Sometimes during handheld, there would be that lower quality fuzz around a character’s hair, and the battery drains like a mother fucker when you’re playing on the go, but ultimately it’s a perfectly good way to play the game. I love having games on the Switch 2. Beating the final boss of Resident Evil Requiem on the way home on the LIRR will be a pleasant memory of my time with the game.  

Battle of the Remakes: Silent Hill 2

  

        So we’re finally at the release of the Silent Hill 2 Remake and the end of my belated battle of the remakes posts. Now that I have played it to the end and given it a week to marinate, I’d like to sit here and answer some frequently asked questions about the remake. But before that, a few disclaimers. (1) I’m a huge fan of the original, it's one of my favorite games ever. Not to say I think it’s perfect, it is not, but anything I will say will be from the perspective of a fan. (2) Spoilers abound to talk about any and all changes to the characters and story, but I will try and be conservative about it. (3) Opinions on the remake have been moderately varied so your mileage will vary, (4) this will be a long review, and (5) I'm not really gonna talk about the anti-woke psychos on the internet engaging with this game or the unhinged fanbase but I look forward to seeing them all in hell. With that out of the way...

Is it good?

Yes. On its own merits, the remake tells a good story and tells it well, it looks great, sounds great, plays great, and so forth. The team at Bloober should all feel proud of themselves. I enjoyed playing it and would recommend it to others. Silent Hill 2 (2024) is worth your time and money, especially on a sale. 

Is it better than the original?

Probably not, no. Silent Hill 2 (2001) is a masterpiece that, while flawed, is a phenomenal exploration of psychological horror that has yet to be matched in the medium. The remake gets decidedly close though. The same point I gave to the remake of Resident Evil 4 I give here. For every change that I like, there’s a change I dislike so it's about the same in quality overall. That sounds deflating but making something as good as one of the best games of all time is not nothing. It is actually an achievement worthy of celebration. While the two versions are not interchangeable I will question which I play in the future when I have a desire to experience Silent Hill 2 again. Although, Silent Hill 2 (2001) was a tent pole title and standard for horror moving forward and that historical importance can not really happen twice, especially in just modernizing the old game. Speaking of which…

Is it soulless? 

Look, pal. I do not know how you use this word to refer to games or art in general, but I am going to define how I’m going refer to it here. A game is typically referred to as soulless if it’s a cash grab or has little to no “care” in it. As for the former, I get the argument, and not just because I made it last year. Developer Bloober team and publisher Konami needed this game to change their reputation so it was something that needed to make money and do well to turn public perception around. Cranking out a remake of one of the famed games of the PS2 era and modernizing it to a state of homogeneity with other 9th-generation AAA titles seems like a soulless way to do that rather than go all in on a new vision. Then again, such a situation kind of necessitates a substantial amount of care and for what it’s worth Bloober team has put a shit ton of care into this game. For all their buzzword-filled sentiments in trailers about how the game is “true to the original but modernized” there’s clearly a deep love of the original with enough care to make this a good release. It has not been half-assed in the slightest. Except for some stutters on PC because of the Unreal Engine, it’s a game polished to a mirror shine. So while I can hear the argument, I cannot say full-heartedly that Silent Hill 2R is a soulless product. Bloober has also been, for the most part, pretty intelligent with what to change and what to keep the same. Speaking of… 

Has the story changed?
Not in any substantive way. Every story beat is the same and some of the game’s cutscenes are word for word the exact same. I think the lead writer, Andrzej Madrzak, showed a tremendous amount of restraint in his edits. Really the biggest difference is that they’re all a little bit longer and some lines are re-worded and extended. Likewise, some new cutscenes are added and I typically found them to be kind of unnecessary. Not to say that they were bad just doesn’t really make Silent Hill 2 better. Of the three new scenes, I thought the scene with Angela in the park was good, the one with Maria in a different park was pointless, but the big one I liked was the new scene in Heaven’s Night. Having more skilled actors and with more advanced technology, the characters can convey more nuance even in their faces. In the aforementioned scene, Luke Roberts’ James Sunderland conveys a complicated history with alcohol solely with silence and his face which I greatly enjoyed. Those smaller changes like that scene, James’ building more rapport with Laura, and breaking down crying in one of the endings all felt like smart changes. Maybe not needed, but smart.

I will say that I generally like the endings more here than before. More naturalistic conversations and more content for the optional endings felt less game-y and did serve to genuinely move me. For example, the original James confronting Maria at the end of the game says “It’s time to end this nightmare” in a really stilted way that even in a game full of stilted deliveries that work, this one just goes a little too far. It feels like House of the Dead where the final boss would awkwardly announce “This is the final battle!” In the new one, James has a more determined, but pleading tone and says "This has to stop."

On the other hand, a majority of the more naturalistic line delivery in the 2024 version isn’t better but isn’t worse than the old game’s psychotically wooden delivery. This delivery in the original was because most of the actors were just the first white people to walk into Konami’s Japanese headquarters for auditions. Maybe not the way it should have been done, but it did give the game’s dialogue a surreal quality that generally, but not always, worked in the game’s favor when even the people you meet isolate you. Not to say there was no craftsmanship in the original actors. There was. By the end of the original game, Mary/Maria’s actor has shown a crazy amount of range and emotion that doesn’t really survive the remake. Speaking of…

Do the updates to the characters and their new actors work?

For the most part. Opinions will vary on the actors because none of them are bad, they’re just a different take and performance from the original actors. That said, I think Salóme Gunnarsdóttir’s interpretation is the one that genuinely loses something in the transition. Salóme Gunnarsdóttir nails Maria’s detached and flat delivery but still manages a convincingly seductive tone with that, but what she lacks is the venom the original had that made her feel like something malevolent. Without this or the bouncing between Mary and Maria’s voices that Monica Horgan managed in the original, I cannot help but feel like a layer of complexity has been lost. I don’t share these sentiments about the rest of the cast, for the most part. Scott Haining’s Eddie may come off as too sinister from too early, but I generally like the new versions of Angela, Laura, and Salóme Gunnarsdóttir’s Mary. Those takes are different, but maybe not better or worse. 

Which brings us to Luke Robert’s James Sunderland. Luke Roberts is phenomenal. I was very quickly won over by the amount of work he puts in with his face and motion capture as well as his voice. But his James is a different character than Guy Cihi’s original take. Guy Cihi’s James was awkward and distant to the point where there was clearly something wrong with him, which is good. You get the vibe that maybe he had given up on his life already. Luke Roberts’ James is naturalistic but always looks like he’s on the verge of crying, which I liked. Gives off the vibe of a guy who has one thing left to keep him going. Relatedly, Luke Roberts does cry in one of the endings which I don’t know if Guy Cihi could do as convincingly. Then again I don’t think Luke Roberts could land some of the delivery of some of James' lines that even he sounds like he doesn’t believe. I like them both equally and couldn’t pick a favorite.

Recent remakes tend to minimize the soundtrack, does this game do that?

No. The game’s soundtrack is still there and beautifully remixed by Akira Yamaoka. It may be a little quieter and there are undoubtedly mods that put the original tracks with their original volume back in. But the soundtrack is necessary to get the atmosphere across so it couldn’t have been altered as heavily. Speaking of… 

Does the atmosphere survive?

To an extent. The sound design in the remake is superb as is the visual design. The town feels abandoned, gross, diseased, and there’s always something visually or audibly interesting going on to break the silence. Whether it be whispers in the apartment buildings that are just soft enough that you can’t be sure they’re really there or the tight sheets wrapped around buildings in the dark of night, there’s always something to unnerve you. More than these things being scary, these design choices make the game feel claustrophobic and drowning. The original had this sense of atmosphere too and it made it unique among the horror landscape. But the original also carried with it a more isolated vibe where you felt truly alone that doesn’t quite make the transition. 

The original felt more detached. The abandoned town was watching over you from a distance and waiting for the player to explore all of its horrors where even the land itself was diseased. Now, the vibe the game gives off is a town that’s a bit more hostile. Part of that is the new action-oriented camera. Perhaps a more pointed example of this tone shift is towards the end of sections where you’re exploring the city streets. When it’s time to move on into a building, a harsh wind will blow, with shit flying everywhere, and in one section a horde of monsters emerges from the fog. This feels far more hostile. The town is actively trying to push you and attack you for daring to think otherwise. Maybe this vibe isn’t worse because the panic of the weather change and increase in monsters is still scary just in a different way from the druggy and detached vibe the “””liminal””” atmosphere of the original accomplished. Just empty bloodied streets with the distant noises of monsters. Monsters that by the way are more hostile now and will attack more aggressively. Speaking of…

Has the combat gone too far into pure action?

Silent Hill 2’s lead, James Sunderland, is just some asshole. He’s not a military super soldier, or a grizzled scavenger, or whatever. He’s an office clerk. I don’t think the guy has ever even seen a gun before. So we accepted that when combat in the original was kind of shitty it served dual purposes. A) it made sense context-wise B) It helped the sense of vulnerability. But don’t let it be said that the original’s combat was perfect, it wasn’t. As I said, it was kind of shitty. Primarily because nothing you ever hit had weight to it and bashing a thing with a stick with no feedback was both lame and boring. Not to mention the point-blank shooting fight with Eddie. Here, combat is a lot more of a Resident Evil affair with much of the same controls and third-person camera of the recent RE remakes. I found the combat to be enjoyable and visceral without it feeling like a power fantasy. I never had enough bullets to mow anything down in my playthrough and every swing from James Sunderland of a melee weapon made it seem like he was gonna pass out with the way he was screaming as he did it. James still is just some asshole.

Boss fight of the original Silent Hill 2 where you enjoy a brief point-blank standoff

The camera is the biggest point of difference between the original, which had a more distant angle than the third-person standard one in the remake. Look, I agree with the sentiment that the farther-back camera helped with the atmosphere, as I mentioned above, but I never loved the original camera. I always thought it was serviceable but fucking unwieldy in so many areas and required me to manually fix it by holding down a shoulder button. There are some good camera angles the original gives the player but I don’t think any of the shots from the original. 

 The restraint Bloober’s combat designers showed with the commitment to the original game’s weapons selection and enemy variety is commendable. Even if they can do more attacks now. The gameplay of Silent Hill 2 (2024) strikes the perfect balance where it isn’t clunky and frustrating without ever going into pure action-power fantasy. The boss fights too are pretty intense and fit the horror theme. However, the combat doesn’t work in the few sections where more than 3 enemies are thrown at you at once. The prison especially was ridiculously packed with mannequin enemies. By the time it was over the floor was covered in the fucking things and I couldn’t help but remark how absurd that was. That many enemies threaten to become more annoying than scary, and while I never found it to cross that line it would not be hard to imagine it doing so for others. On the other hand, I get you need more combat to fill in the space between these larger areas. Speaking of… 

I heard the game is double the length. Does the game feel bloated? 

I would not go so far as to say the game is bloated or overly padded. That said, this more than any point here will depend on your tolerance, but for me, I thought it was fine. There are more rooms to explore and sections are longer, but it is spread out enough that no one area feels like a chore (maybe except for the hospital). The bigger areas gave me two feelings that might be bad for any game that wasn’t in the horror genre; (1) when I enter a place I feel overwhelmed by its size, and (2) by the time I was wrapping up I felt a panicky “I gotta get out of here” kind of vibe. This also meant that I was relieved to leave the area, which I felt helped the pacing immensely.

Not to say these additions were necessary. Silent Hill 2 did not need more rooms to explore or longer hallways. The most succinct way I can put it is with the soundtrack. When James meets Maria for the first time, the song in the 2001 game is titled “Null Moon.” In the 2024 version, this track is called “Beneath the Null Moon.” No, those two extra words do not ruin the song or the game, but whats the fucking point? The entire game feels like that. Any new content is not needed and I can’t say the game is better or worse but there sure is more of it.  

How do you feel about Bloober handling Remakes of Silent Hill 1, 3, and 4? Any last thoughts on the recent crop of Remakes?

Now, when the question comes up of which game they should remake next, Silent Hill 1, 3, or 4? My answer is probably none of them, but 4 would be fine. Interest in the series has been revitalized. congratulations. But, you can just re-release the originals at this point without having to go through this whole hoopla again. Part of my reason for saying that is that 1 and 3 are more subject to change because of their less rabid fanbases, so the careful process of remaking 2 might not be repeated. But more importantly, I would prefer a new horror game learning the lessons of Silent Hill (2024) rather than just another Silent Hill game. If companies keep focusing their resources on remakes then less go into brand-new experiences and the new instant-classics will be fewer and farther between.

I also think there’s a lot of value in putting the originals on modern platforms. If that’s even what people want. These remakes do not justify aversion to porting/emulating the original due to laziness/fear either from the developer/player. Then again, even if a game is in its original form, original resolution and all, and gets an official release on Steam, a lot of people do not want it. Metal Gear Solid was released on Steam with the original resolution and aspect ratio last year, but with a strategy guide and soundtrack, for 15-20 bucks. Half the negative reviews for one of the greatest games of all time and one of the most important for the evolution of the art form are just “It’s the original PlayStation game. No changes. Thumbs down.” But that’s game preservation! That’s what we want!

The OG game being sold in 2023, much to the chagrin of idiots

My other reason for not wanting more remakes is that these games all look and play the same. Silent Hill 2 (2001) and Resident Evil 4 (2005) are both important horror games of the sixth generation but are nothing alike. The 2023/2024 versions, however, have the same 3rd person ranged combat with a stun mechanic by shooting for the knee which can be used for a follow-up close-range attack, using the same controls, the same sections of squeezing through walls, parts where you push things to a painted ledge that point you in the right direction, and so forth. These things are also present in a million other games. Final Fantasy VII, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, The Last of Us, Guardians of the Galaxy, and so on to infinity. 20 years ago these games did or would have had extremely different gameplay and art styles. In the 2020s, these games all have the same art style with a fair amount of mechanics shared between them. Remakes and new games have managed a state of bland hegemony. I don’t want every old thing I liked to be uniform to every other fucking AAA 70-dollar game I play. Not only is this antithetical to the preservation of game history. Not only does it make once unique games blander. But it is also more selective than just porting the games or having them on an official emulator. 

Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Nintendo, for example, has put several Gamecube games on the Switch in HD like Pikmin 1 + 2, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Metroid Prime, etc., and some third-party developers have done this as well. Some people prefer this to just dumping them on the NSO emulator but not me. While I appreciate a lot of these games are getting put into widescreen with resolution bumps, and some even more touch-ups, this is inevitably going to exclude some Gamecube games never coming over. The original Animal Crossing, for instance, is a good game and some people prefer it to the newer games but Animal Crossing: New Horizons just with less stuff and meaner villagers is not going to be a good enough sell to justify a 20 dollars HD re-release. This goes for most Gamecube Mario Party, Mario Sports, Wario Ware, etc. games that have newer versions that seemingly replace the older ones for most people despite the fact that those old games have an immense amount of value. Silent Hill 4: The Room has good ideas but is bad, should it be dumped into the dustbin of history because a remake wouldn't turn a profit?

Relatedly, any game that gets remade should be one with good ideas but is kind of bad, or a game that would be good were it not for one glaring issue. I don’t mind the Dead Rising remaster/remake because the original’s survivor AI was bad and really ruined the game for me. Fixing that doesn’t fundamentally change the game. Silent Hill 4: The Room has some good ideas about a ghost serial killer who really wants your apartment, but is bad. Taking that good idea, getting rid of most everything else, and giving it another go would be welcomed because it would be so different to practically constitute a new game and I wouldn't care about the homogeneity as much when applied to a game that sucked. Both old games should still be available but I wouldn’t mind either of these remakes in particular. 

Should I play this game? (summary)

Whether it is your first time with Silent Hill 2 or you’re a hardcore fan, I do think there is something worth seeing and playing in the remake. As a hardcore fan, I am happy this exists. I like having a remix of a favorite game even as a novelty. It is also nice to see so many new people trying a Silent Hill game. It’s fun and it's scary, it’s moving, depressing, and exhausting. Silent Hill 2 (2024) is what any good horror game should be, and while I don’t think it is better than the original, there’s no shame in being about as good as one of the best games ever released. While I like some of the changes more and some less than the original, on its own merits, Silent Hill 2 is nothing short of a phenomenal video game that I think would be worth people's time and money. Flaws and all, this shit rules. But with that said, I don’t want Silent Hill 2 to be one and done. I want new great horror games with these bigger budgets that use this as a jumping-off point to build weird new ideas that horrify and excite me. I don’t want the older Silent Hill games to be brought up to modern hegemony, even if all the positive things said in this review remain true. 

5/5

Oh This shit Rules