Silent Hill 2 Remake PS5 Review
Summary: Bloober Team finally put to rest any doubt that over their rendition of Silent Hill 2. They have excelled in producing a faithful update to original masterpiece, while injecting some of their own ideas into things.
4.5
Excellent!
Bloober Team’s remake of the ground breaking, 2001 masterpiece, Silent Hill 2 is finally upon us. There was a not-insignificant trepidation on the remake’s announcement in October 2022.
Bloober Team’s output up to that point had been a mixed bag, ranging from not great to basically okay, with 2017’s Observer being a high point for the studio.
So, a healthy amount of scepticism was in the air regarding the decision to entrust the remake of what is often regarded as one the best survival horror games ever made, to them.
Initial impressions from trailers didn’t look too great. Tonally, the game felt off. The decision to highlight the switch to a Resident Evil Remake-style combat system seemed off at best and didn’t emphasise the strengths of Silent Hill, which has always been its ability to build atmosphere and tension.
I’m happy to report though, that those trailers aren’t reflective of the game as a whole, and that Bloober Team has nailed the original’s tone. Mostly.
One of the things that made the original Silent Hill 2 so effective at setting that tone, was its sound design. I can’t think of many games since that have done quite so well at making the mundane and empty, so unsettling, and Bloober Team has recreated this fantastically. From ambient drones building in the background to the crackle and hiss of the radio static that plays whenever enemies are nearby, the atmosphere from audio alone is palpable. Series veteran Akira Yamaoka also returns to arrange the remake’s score.
Voice acting is provided by an entirely new cast and is generally decent. It’s certainly far better than the re-recordings used on the Silent Hill HD Collection. The original voice acting was occasionally delivered strangely, though was often seen as highlighting the oddities of the town itself. Something being subtly not quite right that managed to intertwine itself into everything, even the people. Whether this was intentional, or a result of poor direction is unclear, however. The remake takes a more traditional approach, with most dialogue coming across far better as a result. There’s the occasional interaction that feels like something has been lost as a result of the dialogue feeling more human, though.
Other than the obvious upgrade to visuals 23 years of technology brings, the main change to Silent Hill 2 Remake over the original, is the general gameplay style. As with Capcom’s Resident Evil Remakes of recent years, Bloober Team went for an over-the-shoulder, third-person camera. This, along with the previously mentioned update to a similar combat system, marks the biggest changes. Combat in the original release of Silent Hill 2 was clunky and awkward. It was thematically relevant, however. James isn’t a former marine on a quest for vengeance, he’s just a regular guy looking for his wife. So, his not being an obvious weapons specialist fits the narrative. There was always a feeling of desperation about getting into a fight.
This isn’t the case any longer. It’s impressive in a slightly concerning way, how competent James is at using a bit of wood with nails hammered into it, as a weapon. He takes to beating down the horrors that wander the streets with an enthusiasm rarely seen outside of the Manhunt games. Firearms are as effortless to use as you’d expect, ammo is scarce though, so I found that I stuck with the trusty 2×4 and pipe for the most part.
Bloober Team has done a great job of translating the PS2 visuals to a modern engine. Built on Unreal Engine 5, Silent Hill 2 Remake makes full use of the technology to deliver a highly detailed rendition of the town, unlike any seen before. There’s a huge amount of detail in objects and the environment. Fog envelops the outdoor areas and the impressive lighting spills through broken windows, illuminating the area while indoors.
With the use of high-end technology comes high-end system requirements, however. The PS5 release has two graphics modes available, a quality mode at 30fps and a performance mode that targets 60fps. Both modes make heavy use of dynamic resolution scaling and use Lumen for reflections and global illumination. Temporal upscaling is used in both modes to get the image to 4K, and this is where the first of the visual issues lies.
It isn’t a perfect system, and both modes have plenty of artefacts when in motion. Hair especially challenges the system, and it often looks very poor when the technique falls apart. It’s most noticeable in the performance mode as you might expect, the lower base resolution means that the upscaling has to put more work in to get the upscaled image.
Reflections and shadows, especially in puddles, flicker, and shimmer when they should otherwise be relatively static. It can be very distracting when wandering the streets, however nowhere near as noticeable when indoors.
Quality mode largely stays locked at 30fps, with performance mode hovering at or around 60fps for a lot of the gameplay. Neither are perfect experiences, quality mode is probably the better of the two, however, assuming you can get by with the noticeable input lag that the lowered framerate brings with it.
Final Thoughts?
Bloober Team’s rendition of Silent Hill 2 is one of the most pleasant surprises of the year. Expectations going into it were admittedly quite low, but they’ve done a fantastic job of bringing this legendary game into the modern era.
They’ve done more than just copy and paste the PS2 original into a new engine and improve the graphics. There’s a massive suite of accessibility options present now that cover a host of different options related to visuals, audio, gameplay, and controls as well as on-screen text, and difficulty can be independently set for combat and the huge amount of new and returning puzzles. It’s awesome to see and something more studios should undertake.
While I don’t think this version of Silent Hill 2 eclipses the original, given the lack of availability of it, and the poor quality of the Silent Hill HD Collection, this is definitely the premier way of experiencing the game now and absolutely one that you should check out. It retains much of the character and atmosphere of the 2001 classic while making it far more accessible than it’s ever been.
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