4/5 ★ – Tye_Boy's review of SILENT HILL 2.

For as great as it is, I find it unacceptable that Silent Hill 2 Remake is longer than the equivalent of two playthroughs of the original game (from my personal experience). I understand trying to expand on the original. It's worked out great for other horror remakes; look at RE4 and Dead Space. But the amount of bloat in this game does a number on the pacing, somewhat souring the overall experience. Yet beyond this and some other issues I had, Silent Hill 2 Remake ends up being an unnecessary retelling of the original story wrapped up in a solid gameplay loop that more or less kept me coming back. On Unreal Engine 5, the game looks stupendous! The amount of detail on display truly blew me away, a standout showcase of today's graphics. All the while, the sound design goes insane! I played the whole game on a little pair of earbuds and still found myself absorbed by an eerie soundscape full of depth that constantly had me on edge. The typical survival horror gameplay loop, modernized here in the third person, had me hooked pretty quickly. The combat was largely a blast to experience, controls good, myself getting sucked into the ebb and flow of melee and ranged weapons. As for the puzzles, I found most of them a touch too easy, a shame since standard puzzle difficulty in the original offers up a fair challenge even after a few spread-out playthroughs. What got me to give the remake a try, the exploration similarly had me hooked, one of my favourite aspects of the mediocre Silent Hill: Downpour, more opened up and running better than that game ever did. Where this game becomes sour for me has to do with a few key elements. Again, the aforementioned bloat and muddled pacing. Everything is made bigger and longer as though trying to justify the full-price tag. While it's doable for a lot of the game, well into it did it really start getting to me, almost forcing me to plow through certain sections just to get closer towards the end at a much quicker rate. Luke Roberts gives an exceptional performance as James, but the rest of the cast is heavily hit-or-miss. A lot of the sublime, heavy-hitting dialogue from the original is fumbled by these other actors, especially Maria's. Their line deliveries feel awkward to a T, seldom good, only amplified by occasionally off-key facial mo-cap, the intensity of the vocals not matching up with the corresponding facial expressions. Similarly, the music, redone for this remake, feels less impactful compared to the original. A lot of it is hit-or-miss for me too, and that's a huge shame alongside the voice acting, given how truly pivotal both were in the original. In the end, Silent Hill 2 Remake still finds a decent place among other pantheons of modern horror remakes, yet sits a few notches below them from the issues I find it to exhibit. My skepticism towards Bloober Team has largely faded after playing it, a great game overall. Even then, I have no real desire to come back to it, but the journey winds up being worth it in the end.