Silent Hill 2 Review

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Silent Hill 2

By CerebusJuly 2002

When I was about ten years old, I had recently moved to Iowa City, Iowa, where, as many kids do when they want to make a little bit of money on top of their paltry allowance, I had a newspaper route.  Every day of the week, regardless of the weather (okay, occasionally my mom would drive me when it was truly yucky outside, but I digress) I’d leave the house at about 4:15 a.m. to go pick up my papers a few blocks from my house, and spend a good hour and a half delivering them—twenty-three papers on weekdays, and about eighty on Sundays.  On this particular weekday morning, as it often was in Iowa early in the morning, it was foggy—very foggy, in fact. I followed my normal route through the neighborhood, and halfway through my route, as usual, I cut through the empty lot next to my house to save some time. Since it was foggy, I wasn’t wearing my glasses—they would have hurt my clarity of vision (I’m nearsighted) more than they would have helped. As I strolled across the lot, it was absolutely quiet, with only the rumble of trucks on the highway about ten miles away echoing across the rolling hills.

It was at this moment that I stumbled across something that looked like a human skull.

Granted, with my bad eyesight, it was probably a rock, but as any ten-year-old would, I got close enough to get myself utterly terrified, and then took off running, heading directly for the nearest streetlight, and didn’t stop until I had reached the apartment building at the bottom of the hill, which was completely out of my normal route.  It took a good ten minutes before I could venture outside again. 

Why am I relating this story? Well, it’s simple—since that morning, I’ve been fairly difficult to scare. Perhaps it’s the dulling effect that television has on a person after years of exposure, or maybe the simple inevitable act of growing up nearly removes that emotion from the human suite of emotions. Regardless, the simple fact is that playing Silent Hill 2 came closer to scaring me than anything in the intervening twenty years. The combination of eerie ambient sound effects with the most maddeningly realistic fog I’ve seen in a video game brought me all the way back to that morning in Iowa—that’s not to say that Silent Hill 2 is a perfect game, because it’s not. It does, however, get under your skin, and truly brings into question the sanity of the game designers.

“Hello, My Name Is James, and I’ll Be Your Protagonist this Evening.”

You begin the game as James Sunderland, a sad fellow whose wife passed away three years before from a long illness. He’s wandered aimlessly since her passing, until a letter—from his dead wife—arrives in the mail, beckoning him to Silent Hill, where she’s apparently waiting for him. James hardly believes that it’s possible that his wife sent him the letter, but he’s curious enough to jump in the car and head for the small lakefront town. Once he arrives at the outskirts of Silent Hill, he finds the road blocked off, and he must venture into the area on foot—which is where you begin.  You goal is to attempt to find the person who wrote you the letter, and determine if your beloved was responsible for it.

I wasn’t as captivated by the plot as I expected to be—it seemed to be secondary to the gameplay, or more likely, secondary to the technical presentation of the game. I didn’t care that he’d lost his wife—all I knew was that he had to go through a ghostly town, solve puzzles, kill bad guys, and progress from one point to another. I still don’t know why there were all sorts of creepy creatures lurking around the streets, but perhaps I just didn’t understand the conclusion of the game. The plot in the original Silent Hill was far more engrossing than that of this game—I’m pulling for a return to a better story in the recently announced Silent Hill 3.

“Let’s See What’s Behind Door Number Two …”

As far as gameplay goes, SH2 is pretty much right on. Your controls are simple—move with the left analog stick, use the right stick as a camera in first-person mode, and your essential maneuvers are assigned buttons. There are two character motion options a la Grim Fandango; one mode is based on screen directions (up = forward, left = left, etc.), and the other is based on what direction your character is facing (left = turn left, forward = move character in direction he’s facing, etc.). I can’t stand the second option (the default) so I switched it right away. This only causes a few problems when the camera angle changes dramatically in between rooms, so I recommend using whatever option you find most intuitive.

Silent Hill 2, like Silent Hill, is not a game of killing everything that moves—it’s a game of running away from things that might likely kill you. The reason I didn’t like the original game was because I couldn’t get into that mentality. Now that I’m older and wiser, running seems a more likely option, especially for the main character—James is an amateur fighter. He’s not a very good shot, so close range is about all he can handle. He’s also a bit slow—he’s no Jesse Owens, that’s for sure. Still, the fact that he is such a … well … wuss, makes the game that much more frightening to play. You have to run away from some enemies.

There aren’t very many inventory puzzles in SH2, so I won’t reveal any of them in detail. I will say that simply navigating through a building with locked doors and stairwells, trying to reach that floor that you know exists but you can’t find your way—I enjoy that sort of spatial exploration puzzle. There are some maze-like areas that make very little sense, but they are short-lived, and your character draws a map as he’s exploring. (In fact, the auto-mapping that was introduced in the original SH returns in this game, as one of the star attractions.) Other than exploration, there’s on the order of five run-of-the-mill adventure game puzzles (no Zork Nemesis severed heads, sorry), none of which were very difficult to solve.

Much of your time playing this game will be wandering the streets and buildings, looking for things. You will run into creatures, many of them quite disgusting (although there are only about six types—a bit of a disappointment there). You will have to either run away or beat them/shoot them/slice them into submission. Although it makes little mention of this in the game’s manual, apparently the “attack” action button makes use of the analog PS2 button feature—I never noticed. If you have an option to hit something scary hard, harder, or hardest, which will you choose?  Hardest every time! (An undocumented “feature” when fighting—oftentimes, your opponent will be knocked unconscious on the ground. You must finish him off, but your stick with nails, for some reason, can’t hit the ground. Hit the attack button without readying your weapon with the shoulder button to stomp its head and kill the beast. Nice image, eh?) I should mention here that upon starting the game, you have three choices for puzzle difficulty and three choices for enemy difficulty. Adventure purists can actually turn off the combat, leaving James to simply wander the streets, looking for things to do—but that gets very boring very fast.

I’ll say one fairly negative thing about the gameplay. It just doesn’t make sense much of the time. There’s a series of holes later in the game that you have to jump into, even though you can’t see the bottom. Could anyone really do this? Four times in a row? Without breaking his legs? And while I’m asking questions, who left all of this ammo and health scattered about town? You don’t have to ask these questions, but again, the story seems secondary to the technical experience of playing it.

“Look at this Beauty, Folks—Can You See Yourselves in It?”

Silent Hill 2 may not have the most compelling gameplay among PS2 games, but I can easily say that the presentation of the game is absolutely superb. This was my first PS2 game, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from the platform at all—based on my experiences with PC games and older consoles, I knew that many of these adventures started with a somewhat long rendered movie, detailing the backgrounds of the characters and their predicaments. I expected the same from SH2, and so I sat, watching as James walked into a roadside rest stop, looking into a mirror and rubbing his eyes and face, asking himself what he was doing here in Silent Hill. Then, nothing. Just James looking into a mirror. I started to panic—what if the system was broken already? I hadn’t even had it a day, and it wasn’t working right. I picked up the controller to try to reset the game, and James moved away from the sink as I moved the analog stick. The realization that “this was the game” took a few minutes to sink in, and I’ve been impressed ever since.

There’s a lot of fog in SH2. A lot. But this fog is so real, swirling into eddies of mysterious shadows, filling nooks and crannies—it’s a pleasure to “walk” through.  Of course, it does serve the purpose of preventing any sort of distance clipping when exploring the environment, but that aside, it’s a great way to build suspense. When you hear something that has got to be dangerous, just outside of your fog-inhibited vision, it gets very creepy very fast. I played this game with headphones on, and the sound effects were tremendous. Wandering through an abandoned hospital with creepy things following you, listening for their footsteps, the only light coming from your flashlight—classic horror gaming. The entire town was meticulously designed, with signs, construction sites, abandoned vehicles, houses, apartment complexes—everything you’d expect to find in a town like this but wouldn’t expect to be rendered in a game, regardless of platform. In fact, the experience of playing this game was extraordinary, with the following exceptions.

Exception A: Voice acting. These folks can act, and they perform well—but every time you hear them speak, it’s as if they’re in exactly the same room. No echo, no nothing. If I talk to you in a carpeted room, and then talk to you later in a jail cell, I’ll sound quite different. It’s as if they recorded all of the dialogue in a single session, in one studio, and decided not to enhance it with effects depending on the characters’ location. I’m nitpicking here, but it did seem inconsistent.

Exception B: Prerendered movies. The movements of the characters in the real-time rendered scenes was quite good—so good that I don’t know why they bothered prerendering movies with higher resolution and better anti-aliasing. The characters in those cutscenes don’t move quite right, and it interrupts the experience to switch to a different mode. Sometimes it was only for a second or two, and then back to real-time rendering. Again, nitpicking, but it bugged me.

“Here’s My Business Card—Call Me If You’re in the Market in the Future.”

Overall, the Silent Hill 2 experience is worth having, if just for the freak-out value. It’s not that compelling a story, and the puzzles aren’t too difficult, but it’s gorgeous to look at and listen to. I finished SH2 in a depressing ten hours, and got a rating of 9/10 upon completion (I was quite the swordsman with my nail-ridden plank!), but there were at least two additional endings that I could play through again to see, if this was the only game on my list to play—but it’s not, and until companies realize that very few games are worth replaying, console adventure games will remain somewhat short and uninspired. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Release Date: September 2001

Available for: PlayStation 2 Xbox

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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