Silent Hill 2 Remake is already separating fans into camps of pro-remake and anti-remake camps. In the age of classic game remakes, such as Final Fantasy 7, all the Resident Evils, and Doom, it is not surprising that Bloober Team and Konami looked to remake the popular classic, Silent Hill 2. The game follows James Sunderland as he searches the town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his wife Maria, even though she died from an illness three years earlier.

With the Silent Hill 2 Remake scheduled to be released on October 8, 2024, there have already been numerous trailers and game play videos officially released, and the response has been mixed. Japanese YouTuber 2BRO posted 90 minutes of gameplay on YouTube and openly depicts some of the issues many original fans of the game have voiced. A modern take of the classic seems to have stripped what made the game so universally loved back in 2000.

Enchanced Combat Mechanics May Ruin Silent Hill 2 Remake

James Isn't Supposed To Be An Action Hero

The creatures of Silent Hill 2 are manifestations of James' guilt and trauma and the first he comes across in the streets of Silent Hill is the Lying Figure, representing his wife on her deathbed. In the 90-minute game footage, James easily dispatches the creature with a nailed board and moves on.

This section of gameplay is the epitome of what is being missed from the original - desperation. The combat in Silent Hill 2 was never the smoothest. It was clunky and amateur, the way one would expect a regular person trapped in a terrifying world to perform in a fight. The player felt as if they were at a disadvantage, simply from the controls.

What is lacking in the video is a sense of psychological fear when engaging with a creature. The modern style of combat and flowing action may be more appealing to gamers who prefer cutting to the chase, but the change pulls away from the helplessness of the unknown.

The lack of mobility and fluid motion assisted in that fearful experience, even if that was simply due to the technical capabilities of when Silent Hill 2 came out. Similar to Resident Evil 1, it was a struggle to control. Remakes are smoother, which is good from a developmental standpoint, but sometimes the feel of what made the game special is lost in translation.

Silent Hill 2 Remake Can Still Work For New Audiences

But Konami's Remake Forgets What Made Silent Hill 2 Special

Players looking for an old-school Silent Hill 2 experience appear to be in for disappointment. The high-end graphics and increased environments to explore certainly add to the overall game's appeal in a basic sense of game development - it looks better and there is more to do. On paper, those attributes, along with fluid combat and full camera control, only sound like improvements to a clumsy, awkward original.

With these changes, Silent Hill 2 Remake is seemingly easier than Silent Hill 2. Exploring will be smoother, fighting will be simpler and surviving will be less of a challenge. Those aspects that come along with the heavily improved graphics and mechanics are what is forgotten. When the game is released in October 2024, it will become much clearer how the game plays all the way through, but until that time, Silent Hill 2 Remake is lacking the special factor that made survival horror so psychologically thrilling; it was clunky and that gave players nightmares.