Developed well over two decades ago, the originalSilent Hill 2is the magnum opus of Polishhorrorstalwarts Bloober Team.
It begins with your character, James Sunderland, descending from the road towards the eponymous Midwestern nowhere-town.
There is moisture everywhere, gushing from drain pipes and dribbling down concrete barriers.
As you amble into the murk, deathly chords and groaning, unmechanical motifs reverberate from somewhere deep underground.
The winking postergirl is an obvious, cheeky allusion to this.
It’s your first concrete indication that Silent Hill at large is a multitude of mirrors.
The manual third-person camera compliments the crushing grandeur of these spaces.
There’s a grain elevator in the farm, and walking beneath it is like strolling under a guillotine.
It makes your breath catch.
On the whole, Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 sometimes seems more… visually led than it should.
Subsequent, four-legged marionettes are harder to evade.
These are fleeting criticisms.
It’s an easy sell for a spooky night in.
But you’re free to see the potential for something more driven, disorienting and unforgiving.
The opening descent now begins with the view facing towards James, provocatively hiding the forest.
The camera spins around soon after, but there is little to see.
In Team Silent’s hands, Silent Hill itself is lower, less dramatic, and more disconnected.
You sense that there’s nothing behind the walls and windows save mist.
It’s never handsome or authentic, just disjointed and spectral.
It’s a fey jumble of corridors and clearings that are being eaten alive by the pixel grain.
Instead, you must depend much more heavily on the warning crackle of James’s radio to escape detection.
And then there’s the combat.
In both the old and new Silent Hill 2, it’s something to endure.
Team Silent’s game deletes these flourishes.
The Japanese studio also has less patience for stagy build-up or pedagogical due process.
It feels unglamorous, indistinct, unvideogamey.
Because Silent Hill knows a thing or two about burying the past.
It knows that you might’t.
The past is always present, however spurned.
Silent Hill is happy to accommodate James’s delusions.
Or possibly, it’s to embrace these things.
Bloober have been living in Silent Hill for a while, putting down roots.
Nonetheless, Bloober making a Silent Hill game has the weight of inevitability.
What could they be in denial about?
Definitely not the undying appeal of tank controls and fixed perspectives.
It’s gone now.
