Conversations debating whether a remake of any game is valid have become exceedingly droll and ultimately it’s up to whomever is forking over the cash to decide if they believe a remake will be worthwhile for them. However, it seems bewildering that Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 remake has now been able to confidently achieve what the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Dead Space have before it by reimagining a classic faithfully while reinvigorating it with a ton of modern additions and changes that are in service of the original’s atmosphere and survival-horror gameplay.
Indeed, the remake of Silent Hill 2 gets a lot of mileage out of nearly tripling the amount of exploration players had in the original, and that naturally includes many more areas and puzzles players must traverse. It also means players run into myriad enemies, ensuring that they should be persistent while searching cabinets and corners for ammunition and healing salves. Both are scarce in the remake relative to the original, but how the remake goes about healing items in particular is spectacular as they pertain to a modern interpretation of Silent Hill 2.
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The Original Silent Hill 2’s Healing Items are Unnecessarily Abundant
The original Silent Hill 2 offers health drinks, first-aid kits, and ampoules that players select and consume from their inventory menu while monitoring James’ vitality in the top-left corner of the screen. Interestingly, the original’s combat can often be avoided with players running around enemies in narrow corridors or through wide, fog-filled streets in Silent Hill, and players who do decide to put down figures, mannequins, or nurses aren’t ever truly at a disadvantage because the game is packed with ammunition and healing items.
Therefore, the more frugal players are and the fewer enemies they engage with the more likely they will have a huge stockpile of consumables they may never need.
Silent Hill 2 is hardly an action game and so it’s great that players aren’t punished brutally so long as they take time to search for items, but it arguably takes away from how suspenseful these encounters could be and truly forgoes a survival-horror subgenre for psychological horror as that’s undoubtedly where its emphasis is. The remake, though, has clued into the idea that this same philosophy may no longer be as effective, and it’s a boon that healing items have been adapted to meet a modern survival-horror standard.
The Silent Hill 2 Remake’s Healing Items are Understated in Modern Survival Horror
Silent Hill 2’s remake pares healing items to health drinks and syringes. Health drinks are fundamentally the same, while syringes have replaced ampoules and serve the same purpose of providing a larger amount of health restoration. There are two explicit reasons why this change is an improvement: it gives James Sunderland healing animations that players need to time well in the midst of combat, and healing items can now be used with two distinct button presses that are cleverly implemented.
It’s clear that health drinks and syringes were decided on because those were actions James could be animated to perform with him drinking from a bottle or injecting himself in the arm, whereas first-aid kits being adapted would’ve necessitated a much more complicated, non-immersive, and time-consuming animation.
Of course, players can decide to jab themselves with a syringe once they’re free of danger, but doing so while two mannequins have James backed into a tiny corner of a Blue Creek apartment creates a panicked scenario that draws on legitimate survival-horror tactics the original lacks. Players can slip into their inventory menu and use multiple heals liberally in the original, which once more dilutes what little tension can amount from whatever combat players decide to engage in.
Moreover, at least on a PlayStation 5 DualSense controller, players tap the triangle button to use a health drink and hold triangle to use a syringe. This is essential and incredible as it makes using one over another unmistakable—it’s impossible to accidentally waste a syringe when players meant to only use a health drink, for instance, and makes holding triangle for a syringe slightly more difficult to perform if players are either dodging an aggressive figure’s long-reaching bile spray. The cherry on top is that these items are also strewn about creatively, such as in medicine cabinets, kitchen drawers, or behind glass James must shatter.
Silent Hill 2
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 87 /100 Critics Rec: 94%
- Released
- October 8, 2024
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Bloober Team
- Publisher(s)
- Konami
WHERE TO PLAY
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- Franchise
- Silent Hill
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, PC
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
