Silent Hill 2 Review (PS2)
The beloved psychological horror about a guy trying to find his dead wife.
Developer: Team Silent
Publisher: Konami
Platform: PlayStation 2, PC, Xbox.
Release Date: PS2; 24th September 2001 (NA), 27th September (Japan), 23rd November 2001 (EU), 19th November 2002 (Director’s Cut). Xbox; 18th December 2001 (NA), 22nd February 2002 (Japan), 4th October 2002 (EU). PC; 2nd December 2002 (NA), 28th February 2003 (EU)
I came in late to the Silent Hill series. I had always known about it as a kid and growing up I saw of the film. I didn’t know much about it but I was at least aware of it. In my 20’s I got to watch the film properly and in 2017 I had bought Silent Hill on the PS3, but it wasn’t until 2022 when I finally got into the series proper. At the announcement of Silent Hill 2’s remake on the 19th October 22, I snatched up Silent Hill 2 and 3 for the PS2 and dove way into Silent Hill. I was compltely enamoured.
After completing the first game I was a little between 2 and 3. I wasn’t sure which I wanted to play more, let alone first. 2 was more of a standalone sequel while 3 took place after 1 following Heather Mason going back to the eponimous town. Technical difficulties decided for me on what to play, however. The first copy of 2 I had bought was a little worse for wear. It was scratched up and damaged enough that I couldn’t leave the opening area in the toilets. I could roam around the dingy place and look through the menus, but the moment I tried to leave it would stay stuck on the loading screen. What a rip and what a good start. It was like something didn’t want me to play it. So I had to wait a week to get another copy, but at least I had 3 to dive into (of which I loved and will get into another time.)
Finally another copy arrived and thankfully this one was in much better condition. It even came with one of the four collectible stickers as well, I didn’t get that in the first copy I bought. So I slapped that sucker in, was met by the unnerving start menu, was greeted by the opening cutscene in the toilet mirrors again, roamed around a little, dig through my belongings, and stepped outside the toilets. Oh, pleaseohplease work! I hated the anticipation that built, but then Harry was outside! He wandered over to the view of the lake while Mary read out her letter; “In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill.” I could finally play it! I was so happy.
First impressions were really quite life changing for me. The opening eerie music sounded and felt nostalgic and familiar to me somehow. I never really heard the soundtrack before playing this but something about it brought me all the way back to being 10-12 again. Something about it made my brain assosciate with how my childhood felt, particularly where I grew up and how it felt during the autumn and winter months. I’ve not listened to anything before or since that’s had that affect. Arguably, no matter when I would have played this game it would have had a profound impact on me, but if I had played this as a kid/impressionable teen…
Mary reads off her letter and James questions why and how he is there when Mary had died already 3 years ago. Yet you’re there. And then you’re off to explore Silent Hill. A long, daunting and slow walk deliberately designed to steal you in. The developers said that once you’re already on that opening walk you’re already closer to entering the town than heading back to your car and leaving this place, so you may as well just keep going, and I think that is such a clever way to open a game and pull you into it. It sets up a curious and unsettling atmosphere shrouded in fog and uncertainty. You don’t know what you’re walking into, what you’ll find, or how this ordeal will go. It’s great.
Then you head ever closer into the town. Passing through a graveyard you bump into Angela, an integral character who is there for her own reasons, trying to find her mama mother. You bump into her again later on, but I believe it gives you a false sense of security that this place won’t be as solitary as it’s setting out to be. You might come across a familiar face here or there but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be a friendly one.
And the acquaintances of Silent Hill 2 aren’t people you want to come across much at all anyway. There’s Eddie, the dubious glutton with an icy look in his eyes on the run from the law; Laura who somehow knows Mary and has ties to her; and Maria, who bares a scarily striking resemblance to James’ deceased wife Mary. Her hair, her voice, the way she looks. The only difference being her clothes, the way she behaves and the left over dye in her hair and her brown roots showing. She could be Mary’s twin but she bares no relation to her at all. From what it seems…
I want to get into the gameplay before I get any further into the story and artistry of this game.
It controls more of the same as Silent Hill but with some very small refinements. You can move around all the same. Use L1 and R1 to strafe, R2 readies weapon and X to attack, X by itself to interact, Square to run and guard against enemy attacks, and Circle to toggle your torch and back out of menus/puzzles, Triangle opens the map, Select pauses while Start opens the inventory, options and memo menu. It all works perfectly fine and it’s inoffensive. Combat might feel a bit stiff at times, but James (and Harry in 1) isn’t a highly trained soldier made to fight off hordes of evil creatures. He’s just a guy. He’ll swing a club of nailed wood or shoot a gun with some kickback as any regular fella would. And that’s fine. There’s nothing majorily wrong in the combat really. Yes, it can be a little simplistic and restricted and the boss fights, though grand in design, might not have a whole lot going on with them, but it works well enough and it’s satisfying slaying monsters with all the tools you’ll have at hand; a club, a pipe, a handgun, shotgun, and rifle. Complete the game and you’ll be awarded with a chainsaw you can pick up outside Silent Hill Ranch, although it is a little laboured to use. Take the correct turn in a maze later in the game and you’ll find Pyramid Head’s sword, a heavy, labourious knife James hurls in a slow, wide arc to cleave monsters in twain. You get a good load of toys to play with and combat works well. I can’t pick many holes at it.
What I can pick at is the camera. It captures some amazing visuals at the right angles, but sometimes, particularly in combat and down corridors, it doesn’t always want to cooperate. L2 swings the camera around behind you, as the camera is mostly in a fixed position, but this can be a detriment to gameplay sometimes as often you’ll be shooting off or swinging at something off shot and the camera will get a little caught inside a tight hallway. It’s a little finicky sometimes.
I also found some difficulty on my first playthrough with navigation. Arguably you could say it’s kind of the point in getting a little lost going through the rather large town on your first go through. The Wood Side Apartments I found myself going around in circles a lot trying to figure out where to go, what I need to do, and what I can do. Sure, I was still getting familiar with the game and finding my bearings but it took me a little less time to acclimatise to the first Silent Hill than it did here. Contradictively, I flew right through the prison with ease, finding what I needed and solving the hatch puzzle, all the while I had forgotten to pick up the map thinking this area doesn’t have one. Fair enough.
The puzzles are pretty well done and you get to choose what difficulty you want your puzzles to be, much like you get to choose combat difficulty; easy, medium, hard or extra. I found some puzzles can be a little confusing however, even if on the easy and medium difficulties, although arguably that would be more on my part than the game itself. Some puzzles I found a little confusing and esoteric such as the music box puzzle in the hotel. On easy it doesn’t matter where you place the boxes, on medium it gives more intentional clues as to what box goes where testing your knowledge on Snow White, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid, and naturally hard and extra difficulties gives you much vaguer, more complex clues. But otherwise they’re pretty well designed, enjoyable and memorable. For puzzle afficionados they’ll have a ball, but for everyone you’ll be seriously scratching your noodle making you work your brain. It’s great.
And now to address the elephant in the room. The one key part of this game it is perhaps best known for and adored for the most; Pyramid Head Akira Yamaoka’s music and sound design.
Yamaoka’s soundtrack for Silent Hill 2 is considered to be the greatest horror video game soundtrack of all time and is also Yamaoka’s personal favourite that he has done. From top to bottom this ethereal, nostalgic, emotional and haunting soundtrack is astounding and captures you instantly. Silent Hill’s soundtrack was more industrial, unsettling and mechanical having used dentist’s drills as an instrument of all things. Silent Hill 2’s soundtrack is, for lack of a better term, one giant mood. Yamaoka explained in the making-of that he uses less melodies in his music but more mood, a feeling, and capitalises on that. The Theme of Laura is rought with sorrow and passion bursting from it, with a little twang of James Bond and themes of Silent Hill 1 into it. Betrayal harkens back to the first game with clanging metal pipes shrouded by a haunting choir, driving deep a devastating theme symbolic of James’ punishment at the hands of Pyramid Head— Heads rather, plural. Magdalene is heart wrenching. Prisonic Fairytale is wonderous and mystical. Pianissimo Epilogue feels like you’re waking up from a long, long disturbing dream but feel uncertain that it’s finally over. A World of Madness reminds me so much of Ico with its otherworldly synthesizer. Angel’s Thanatos a nasty, hellish shred as though it were grinding you, or James, to powder as a final punishment to rid you away. Love Psalm has Yamaoka practically letting his guitar sing out almost like it is beckoning for a love lost. And then of course Promise, the very iconic, bluesy and tragic theme full of heartbreak and desparation. Both Love Pslam and Promise also remind me a little of Joe Satriani in parts.
I could gush about the music all day long and I’ve listened to it so many times now. It’s a wonderously, beautiful, beautiful soundtrack that is timeless at this point. Yamaoka created fantastic, emotional tracks and incredibly atmospheric tunes that highlight Silent Hill to its fullest.
And then there’s his sound design for the game!
The sound effects are subtle but effective. The rusty hinges of gates are familiar, the creature noises are nasty and gross, the crackle of the radio static is unnerving teasing of a horror lying in wait in the depths of the fog, and the weapons pack an appropriate punch. For the most part though you’re gonna hear footsteps more than anything, for as effective as the other effects are, Yamaoka knows how to use silence just as effectively and expertly. The moment you step into Wood Side Apartments you hear nothing. Not a peep, not a whistle of wind, a distant footstep. Nothing. And that creates a very uncertain atmosphere that accentuates pyschological horror and the fear of the unknown. You’ve already bumped into waddling horrors in the streets and creeps crawling out from underneath vans, so who knows what the hell you’re going to run into in here? Even the sound effects in menu navigation are a little offputting in the best of ways. As such, Yamaoka has created a wonderous, multilayered soundscape.
Last of the audio is the dialogue. I remember when I first heard it, and the more I listened to it, I noticed how odd it sounded. It’s not quite the same in Silent Hill 1 but here it’s more noticeable. It doesn’t sound like dialogue from Resident Evil or Metal Gear Solid or anything particularly ordinary. The vocabulary isn’t overly complex or sophisticated at all yet it can still convey a lot implicitly and explicitily. Moreover is how the lines are delivered. Everyone speaks in a very deliberately paced and labored way that sounds almost dreamlike and otherworldly, meant to unsettle you and sound unrealistic because you are in a plane of existience now that is separate from ordinary reality. Everyone’s a little unhinged and damaged in this place and their dialogue is reflective of that. And I think it’s an amazing choice they made when portraying these characters. Each character is still very distinguishable and you feel what they feel; Laura with her mischievousness and innocence yet defenciveness and spite towards James, Maria with her lustful playfulness toying with James’ reality and judgement, Eddie with his anger and bitterness hiding something sinister beneath, Mary with her frustration and sadness, and James with his deeply reserved guilt, depression, heartbreak, and confusion. The cast did amazing work bringing these characters to life and the deliberately delivered dialogue is so charming.
If there is one thing that is abundantly apparent with Silent Hill 2 is how artistic it is. From everyone involved, everyone’s artistry and creativity is fully exercised and Silent Hill 2 served as a great opportunity for them all to create and express themselves. With Masahiro Ito’s monstrous designs, Takayoshi Sato’s wonderous cinematic directions, Yamaoka’s incredible music, Masashi Tsuboyama stellar direction, and Hiroyuki Owaku’s insightful writing, together they created a wonderously, densely layered artistic masterpiece.
I’ve gushed enough about the music of it, but the art design and writing is extraordinary. The creatures are born from James’ pysche, such as how the nurses represent his lustful desires seeing them so often while Mary was in the hospital with their cleavage and legs distinguishably highlighted and faces nonexistent, the mannequins being only two pairs legs attached to each other representing another primary aspect of his lust, Lying Figures being a manifestation of James’ memory of Mary in the hospital, of his internal suffering watching Mary in pain as well as her own, Pyramid Head himself being an avatar of James’ guilt, made to punish him for his sins and wrongdoing, and the final boss Mary being a distorted version of her bound and imprisoned to a bed, symbolic of her having been bedbound, an almost agonising prison for her. Even the inspiration behind these designs is fascinating, such as the Lying Figures’ design was inspired by Ito seeing a co-worker walking down the hall in a hoodie from behind, obscured and hands in his pockets. In his mind he saw a figure writhing, almost like they were in a straightjacket. Ito is always talking about his inspirations and design philosophy behind his creature designs on Twitter.
The visuals of Silent Hill 2 are phenominal as well. 1 had some more hellish and rusty designs, 2 is much more dilapidated and shrouded in fog and darkness. And it uses dark incredibly well. Once you reach Wood Side Apartments it is pitch dark, and when you first find Pyramid Head waiting for you beyond some bars and bathed in a red light in that darkness it gives an unsettling, foreboding feeling. It is so effective. Each place you visit quickly becomes familiar and stands out in your mind vividly due to how well designed they are. And with how Brookhaven Hospital and Lakeview Hotel change into nightmarish realms, with the hospital going much bleaker and twisted and Lakeview becoming so much more waterlogged as though it were drowning and decked with barnacles, it only adds further to the maddening descent James continues on. The whole look of the game is an illustrative delight on horrors that lie in the unknown darkness.
Because of how layered the game is you can enjoy it for a multitude of reasons; you can enjoy it for the story, its multiple endings and how dense and detailed it is, the puzzles, the gameplay, the music, the art design, the visuals, and the horror itself. There’s something for everyone to enjoy here and there is so much to enjoy. It is so jam packed with artistic creativity across varying fields that through its multiple playthroughs that you’re sure to take you can admire and notice new things you didn’t see on a previous playthrough. And because of its artistry, at times playing this game is like perusing artist’s alley.
Silent Hill 2 has held up extraordinarily well and has grown to be a timeless and beloved horror game. Some parts of the game may have not aged so well, such as the boss fights and the camera may be clunky in parts, but overall it is a beautiful horror game oozing with creativity and passion that is so finely made. Best of all, it continuously attracts newcomers to the series, as is evident by the success of the recent remake.
I do adore this game and as I sit here thinking about it, I like this for similar reasons to 1, 3, and 4, but I also like this game for different reasons to those 3 games. Such as this was such a separation from the first game it almost feels like a standalone sequel if not for subtle ties to the first game, but only for 4 to feel like more of a direct sequel to this and bring it in whole and even expand upon the mythos of Silent Hill further. I love how it is a tragic and emotional love story and plays on those emotions so expertly and how incredibly written it is with lots of twists and depth to it. I love the music and it gets stuck in my head maybe a little too easily. I feel my fondness for this game, and the series, will only grow deeper and deeper as time goes on.
I highly implore people give this a play as it feels like one of those games that needs to be played at least once in your lifetime. It is that good and that important. There is tons of replayability to this with multiple endings to discover, different things to uncover in the game, and going through on a new game plus you can adjust how many items you can pick up giving you a terrible abundance of ammo. And with the remake having recently come out (of which is an outstanding effort) there’s never been a better time to dive into this series. Only downside is this game has become extremely costly over the years. Thankfully, the PC version is free to grab!
Where to Purchase (As of 16/10/24):
eBay: £70 - £700 / $50 - $2,5000
Amazon: £80 - £130 / $203 - $230
CeX: £38 - £105
Enhanced Edition Site: It’s free! https://enhanced.townofsilenthill.com/SH2/