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Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #1
I'm taking these notes as I play, there's gonna be a lot of them probably.
1. Character models are pretty meh. They have been touched up a lot from the trailers actually, but still not great. James' hair really sticks out color-wise and sometimes looks like it's not part of the scene.
2. Fog is not represented in the reflections, heavily breaking immersion. Fog in general doesn't carry the same weight and atmosphere it does in the original. I think this is partially because the characters always appear to be "in front of the fog" rather than inside of it. There was a notable moment in Angela's cutscene where there was a very clear line between her and the fog, like a halo effect.
3. Voice acting sounds technically "better" but it definitely doesn't have that same dreamlike feel the original did. James' VA is actually pretty accurate, Angela's is definitely in that territory of being "too good" if that makes sense. Angela had a couple added dialogue lines too, not sure how I feel about that.
4. Cutscene animation is a bit stilted. Kind of like when you've got two characters talking to each other during regular gameplay of an RPG.
5. The atmospheric sound is actually really nice. Maybe a little too much going on, but that's an extreme nitpick. I can actually see myself listening to it to sleep, it's very calming which is actually exactly what I want from Silent Hill audio in moments where nothing is happening.
6. There was no shader pre-compilation stage, but it seems like the only stutters here are traversal ones, so that's good. Still wish there weren't any, though.
7. There are lots of options to turn off "modern gameplay" guides, such as interaction icons and the health status vignette. I'm glad to see this. The downside is that, since they are using an over-the-shoulder camera, they've had to mark important things with white cloth, this game's version of "yellow paint." I'll take the white cloth over the yellow paint, absolutely... But it still feels a little cheap when compared to how the original guides you. There are some things like the radio that feel much more natural. Health items and ammo pickups are really hard to see though so I might end up needing to turn this setting back on.
8. The fidelity of the environments is very high. They are really well crafted.
9. There are some weird things going on with the rendering pipeline. Even after turning off any upscaling, motion blur, and anti-aliasing, lots of objects still leave these nasty ghosting artifacts behind them. I'm not a fan of Unreal Engine's render pipeline in general due to weird things like this.
10. The save screens no longer show a static image of James in the background. Instead, it's the model of James looking into the camera wherever he was standing. Kind of a neat idea I suppose, but it lacks the creepiness of the original. To me, it looks a little derpy because it's just an emotionless James model staring back at you, sometimes blinking. Like you're looking at him in a model editor.
11. The combat takes an approach a lot closer to something like The Last of Us. Whether or not that's good or bad will be a matter of opinion probably. For the camera they have gone with, this probably works better than trying to keep the original combat in.
12. The light bar on PS4/PS5 controllers pulses depending on how low your health is, so that's a pretty cool feature if you have one of those controllers. I'm always glad to see features like that taken advantage of.
13. It seems like the game is going to follow the same story beats and overall narrative, but remixed a little bit. Instead of getting the radio in a blocked off tunnel, you instead get it at a house and then the moment with the monster plays out mostly the same. This will help keep things fresh, but I hope it doesn't get taken too far.
14. They added bug monsters in the game the run around and do a little bit of damage to you, but die in one hit. Kind of inconsequential, idk why they're here.
15. There is seemingly no intro movie on the title screen if you wait there. That's actually pretty dumb.
16. An unexpected thing I didn't really think about is how much more impactful certain dialogue is when it is just text on the screen meant to be read versus the character actually speaking. Something about James saying "this makes me feel like someone's groping around inside my skull" hits different when you read it instead of when you hear it.
So that's about 2 hours. Honestly, so far it isn't too bad. It's different enough at this point that I can easily separate it from the original in my head. It's not as good of a game as the original so far, but it's still a pretty good game doing its own thing so I don't mind it too much. Who knows if that will change, but for now I'm decently surprised.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #2
Second gameplay session, more notes.
1. The content warning at the beginning is not too egregious. It doesn't come off as pandering or anything like that. It's very simple. It's weaker in terms of setting up the experience while also being a warning because it just outright says what's to worry about, but it's not really worth complaining about.
2. There are these notes and papers and stuff scattered around the environment. There are these sorts of things in the original as well, but there are many more placed here. You can really tell which ones were original and which ones are newly written.
3. The camera is starting to become cumbersome. I truly do think the original camera is superior.
4. Again I'm having issues with how all of the dialogue that was previously just text is now voiced. I think I know why now, too. When it's text, it makes it seem like you are getting a glimpse into the character's thoughts. When it is voiced, they're just talking to themselves out loud and it feels really awkward when some of these lines have barely been changed.
5. Sometimes the game will fail to render geometry if the camera is swung around in a particular area. Either that, or there is some lighting artifacting going on. It's very rare for it to happen and it's only for a split second, but it's immersion breaking.
6. James has an animation of marking stuff on his map when new information is learned. He marks stuff in the original but not visibly like this, it just sort of appears. So that's a nice little touch.
7. Combat is... Not great. You can tell this is combat from a studio who has never done it before. You have a dodge button but it's pretty much pointless because enemies barely telegraph their moves and by the time you notice they are attacking, your dodge isn't going to come out fast enough. The original game has no dodge at all, and it feels like a meaningless inclusion at least right now. There are enough health pickups where you can safely take one after every encounter and be fine.
8. The music feels a lot more present. I don't fully remember how often there was ambient music playing in the background during the original game, but I feel like it was more often just completely silent. For a game called Silent Hill there's honestly a bit too much going on in that department for my liking. It's stuff like this that made me turn off music completely in Alan Wake. It builds up tension, but it completely ruins the atmosphere. You can tell they're going for a much more "cinematic" approach to the audio and I'm not really a fan of that.
9. James going around smashing glass on buildings, cars, and even showers is still hilarious.
Shorter time playing this session, but got a decent way through the apartments. Just saw Laura for the first time basically.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #3
1. I ended up turning on the little UI elements that show you things you can interact with. Look, the game does a decent job at showing the things you need to collect and whatever, but it just doesn't meet the mark. I view this as a necessity, unfortunately.
2. The flashlight is infuriatingly bad. It seems very selective on how far it can actually go, depending on if there is a wall in your line of sight or not. I liked the Alone In The Dark remake's flashlight so much better. I can't fully remember how SH2's was, but that probably means it was at least not an annoyance. I think they are trying to limit visibility by making the flashlight not let you see down long hallways and such but that's just another reason why fixed camera angles are superior for this type of game.
3. Eddie looks horrible, and not in a good way. Something about his model just really makes him look like he's not a real human. The original cutscene models for *all* the characters are far superior.
4. There's no shoulder swap for the aiming. If you're going to change up the camera to be over-the-shoulder, AT LEAST put in shoulder swap.
5. Unfortunately, the game does play into the whole "shoot out their kneecaps" trope from Resident Evil, it seems. Since the original doesn't even have aiming, each enemy just took a set amount of shots to kill but this one has way more strategy to the action. Personally, I don't think that belongs in a Silent Hill game.
6. Combat still sucks. You pretty much just have to guess when an enemy might want to attack and dodge at that point. There are tells, but you really don't have enough time to react to them. I feel like there is going to be a point where the game's health item pick up to janky combat balance is going to be upset and I'll have to lower the combat difficulty to compensate for it.
7. Enemies are being hidden behind walls, Fromsoft style. Yeah, I am starting to feel the action horror element kind of seeping in. I really shouldn't have to be dodging around corners, thinking an enemy might be there, in Silent Hill.
8. Again, more filler notes that aren't in the original. They are kind of cringe, honestly. Like they're taken directly from a 14 year old emo's MySpace account.
9. For fans of the original, you might remember the apple juice garbage chute puzzle. It's a little "out there." Well, here it's not even something you have to think about, the juice is just right next to garbage chute. Interestingly, it doesn't put the coin into the trash can, but it falls out onto the pavement. Wonder why they changed that. Adding to that, the newspaper about Walter Sullivan being arrested isn't in the garbage either. I haven't seen it at all. It's actually important lore building so them leaving it out is really peculiar. If I recall, a puzzle also relies on this information.
10. Okay, actually, now that I think about it all those edgy notes ARE from Walter Sullivan. So, they added in these edgy notes and removed the newspaper, seemingly. Honestly, I disagree with that change. It really feels like extra padding and unnecessary changes. It's heavily embellished while also leaving out crucial information. I hope it gets filled out more later, but it shouldn't have to be in the first place.
11. The coin puzzle has several steps to it, which is actually pretty cool.
12. Pyramid Head reveal... Not as good. Still okay, gets the job done. But it's nowhere near as visceral as the original. You don't see as much of the mannequin rape (it's a lot more implied) and James only fires a few shots as opposed to mag dumping the thing. It's like, all of the elements are there, just presented in a different way. It's like, higher fidelity for sure, but at what cost?
13. Really...? Not only are there glass breaking mechanics, but now there are WALL breaking mechanics? Bro I'm destroying WALLS with a plank of wood. This is just kind of ridiculous. Why did this stuff even need to be added in? It makes the game borderline comedic.
14. When you investigate an item, it doesn't go back to your inventory. You have to navigate to the menu again, which has also reset your position. It gets really tedious when you want to examine multiple items at once.
15. The game has auto saves, but it also has manual saves. The manual saves seem to be in relatively the same spots as in the original, so I can't help but wonder if it would have been better to just add more manual saves around instead of doing auto saves too. If it weren't for the significance of the save points, I'm willing to bet they would have done away with them entirely and had it all be auto saves, then let you make manual saves from the menu or something. Just seems like the design philosophy is clashing a little bit there.
16. Every single puzzle has a cloth draped over it. Like some guy had gone through and said "ohhh this is an important puzzle location, so we have to cover it in a cloth so nobody can find it!" This really could have been solved by either A) fixed camera angles setting up shots to show an object's significance in the scene or B) just make the objects stand out way more from a design perspective. Make them look like things the player would want to interact with. Just draping a cloth over it seems a little lazy.
17. Not a huge fan of the Otherworld design. It's a bit too realistic and not artistic. Maybe it's just because of the limitations of the PS2, but the Otherworld was a lot more simple and easier to digest whereas here, it's extremely noisy and your eyes kind of get pulled all over the place. However, it is still very tense and keeps you on edge. It's the most scared I've felt my entire playthrough, which is now up to 5 hours. Still, there are much better Otherworld depictions in the franchise.
Overall, I think there was more bad than good this time around. I think they're going a little overboard in some areas. For someone who has never played the original, it's probably outstanding. It's just really, really not the same game at all.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #4
1. I turned the combat difficulty to easy. Puzzles are still on normal. Just like with the Alone In The Dark remake, the combat on display here is just not good enough for me you want to continue putting up with it. With AITD it was just horrendously janky with strange hitboxes and bad collision, but with SH2 Remake it's more or less cut back Last of Us combat with extremely simple AI and it's just not interesting. I haven't died yet or anything, and I feel like I've been given an adequate amount of supplies, but it is just so damn generic I don't give a shit about it anymore. It's a shame that there's so much of it, too. There are way more enemies than there were in the original and it seems like they respawn far more often too. As a side note, I've found myself doing this a lot in games recently. If the game isn't greatly focused on the combat aspect like a hack n slash or something, I end up turning the difficulty down just so I can continue through the game without spending as much time on it. I think it may that I just wanting to focus on what the game does well and that I have so many other games to get to I'd rather not waste even a little bit of time slogging through stuff. If I like a game's combat a lot I'll pump the difficulty up on subsequent playthroughs, like I did with Metal Hellsinger, but not for this.
2. The music continues to get on my nerves. There will be this loud, suspenseful music going on while absolutely nothing is happening. It'll happen in specific areas that makes it seem like there's something else to do there but there's not. Again, I wish I could just get rid of the music but I'd be missing out on some bangers.
3. There are a LOT of shortcuts that you can open up. It is appreciated, but sometimes these shortcuts are right next to the original path and it had me wondering why they were included at all. I keep thinking I'm going to have to use them to outrun an enemy or something but that hasn't happened.
4. I just got absolutely assaulted by a loud whisper that occurred for seemingly no reason and it was completely unintelligible. Creepy, definitely spooked me, but as soon as I realized what was happening I couldn't help but roll my eyes. As far as I can tell it was literally just for spook factor and nothing else.
5. The game does this thing where you'll see little set pieces from the original game and you can interact with them. They play a little melody and that's it. Pure nostalgia bait. "Hey, you remember that thing that used to be in the game? Well we did something else this time, but you can still see it here! Isn't that cool?"
6. The camera work in the cutscenes is genuinely really good, there are a lot of cool shots. In the cutscene with Angela in the mirror room, it uses the mirror as a way to show James while Angela seems to look at you in first person and it's pretty sweet.
7. The scene with Angela by the mirror I originally was thinking was not nearly as good as the original, but it's actually copied almost beat for beat. I think that feeling maybe comes from the actress for Angela? She sounds a lot more dead inside. Which I guess makes sense, but it definitely is more on the realistic side of things than the signature dreamlike nature of SH2. Probably a matter of preference and honestly they did do a good job at recreating the scene. I think part of it also might just be me lot vibing with the way the models look and how they animate. Just Unreal Engine stuff.
8. I've noticed that the game kind of likes to arbitrarily lock doors and block passageways to funnel the player to where they need to go. Normally I wouldn't mind something like this, but there are certain optional things that you get locked out of doing if you don't do them before this occurs, and you have no way of knowing when it will occur. It also just kind of happens on a whim and your map gets auto updated, so it's not like debris falls or doors become stuck or anything like that.
9. It's hard to judge the puzzles because the way they have changed existing ones and the puzzles they have added are all really good, but the problem is that there are now just so much of them. It really extends the game and changes the pacing. A lot of what this remake changes is extremely subjective, I think, and that makes it kind of hard to really give it a proper critique. Personally, I would have preferred as much as possible to remain the same, maybe with a lower budget and therefore a lower price point. I know that some people would say "what's the point of a remake then?" but I still think there is something to be said about updating the visuals and maybe changing up a few things here and there, like some QOL features.
10. They changed the location of the first Pyramid Head fight but it's pretty much exactly the same as it used to be. I did in 2 hits even on easy mode with full health so that was kind of funny lol. He's also way more active and faster, which goes along with the heavier focus on action. I will say though, it is far less imposing seeing him go through a big door instead of down into murky water.
11. Whereas the Angela scene was beat for beat perfect, they totally mutilated the first scene with Maria. To get her character design out of the way, yeah she basically just looks like a man honestly, not pretty at all and her head is too large for the rest of her model. The cutscene, though, it leaves out the flashback to the hotel and James talking about it (instead he has amnesia or something), it changes Maria's lines and they don't sound quite the same, it even changes how she pokes fun at James saying "maybe you hated Mary." This is the first time I can definitively say that the original was far better. Maria is just so much more expressive in the original.
12. Oh no... Maria and James have conversations during gameplay. I can tell that I'm going to start seeing the game sink in atmosphere. I hope I'm wrong but seeing the one leak/spoiler that I did, my hopes aren't high.
13. The game does a good job of not letting Maria get in your way. She'll either walk around you or in super close quarters you can just walk through her.
14. Holy shit I haven't been with Maria for more than 5 minutes and she's already getting on my nerves. Adding little quips to everything I look at.
15. HOLY FUCKING SHIT I WANT TO KILL HER! THREE TIMES. THREEEE TIMES SHE HAS TOLD ME I'M GOING THE WRONG WAY. BITCH I KNOW IT'S BEEN TEN MINUTES, LET ME EXPLORE IN PEACE HOLY SHIT.
16. NOOOOOO FUCKING WAY. NOOO FUCKING WAY THEY REMOVED THE PIZZA CUTSCENE WITH EDDIE AND LAURA. Instead, there's an empty bowling alley and a mostly eaten pizza where Eddie would sit in the original. Holy shit I have NEVER seen a game just fucking nose dive like this. Now you can click the pizza and James says "who could just sit here and eat pizza?" FUCK YOU.
17. Oh yeah, the last two times I've closed the game it's just crashed. So that's pretty cool.
Damn... Done for tonight. Played another 2 and a half hours or so. I'm honestly impressed with just how quickly I went from thinking "this game is like an 8/10 probably" to "wow this sucks ass." Maria seriously sucks to have around and they removed one of the best cutscenes in the game. Also I'm fairly certain that lowering the combat difficulty doesn't change damage values, but it does seem to change how many supplies you get by a wide margin. I might go back to normal if I find I've got like 20 health drinks or something.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #5
1. I upgraded the DLSS version to the latest one, and it does fix some things but it breaks others. That's why the game has been crashing when I exit it too. Bloober released a patch to fix things that break when running on the newest DLSS along with some other performance enhancements and gameplay fixes, but it introduced a glitch in the game that prevents progression at a certain point. They have said it likely won't be fixed until Thursday which is really shitty. Not gonna update until that's fixed, but when I do hopefully all the DLSS stuff works.
2. They actually used 0451 for a lock combination haha pretty neat.
3. They have the USA flag hung the wrong way. I notice a lot of foreign devs do this by mistake. Crazy how even with all their consulting firms they still manage to mess up stuff like this, huh? When the flag is displayed, the stars are always supposed to be on the top left no matter the orientation, but a lot of people just rotate the flag 90 degrees and call it good.
4. Man they did Eddie dirty. They changed the pizza scene to one where he's in the movie theater eating directly from a comically massive tub of ice cream with his bare hands. His voice is monotone as hell and he's kind of a prick. He was pretty endearing in the original cutscene, I thought. The cutscene itself is just not as good either... They don't bring up Mary at all or the fact that Eddie is on the run because he did something. He's just... There, being a slob. Not just a guy who likes eating food, but a SLOB.
5. Laura is also different... She seems... Way meaner. In the original, it comes across as her just teasing and being a bit of a brat, not really realizing what she's doing is wrong sort of thing, but in the remake she seems actually just straight up MEAN. I think with her, Eddie, and Maria they are kind of like caricatures, facsimiles of their personalities boiled down to the simplest of traits and then exaggerated. It really messes with the mood.
6. Whoever was in charge of the ambient sound did such a good job. I really hope more people make some hour long YouTube videos of it or something. So cozy, which is exactly what it should be like for Silent Hill!
7. Funny, I got rid of Maria at the hospital and the game increased in quality again. Back to feeling really tense.
About 2 hours this time. A lot less to say that I haven't already said. I still really think that a remake for SH2 in this sort of capacity wasn't a great idea. I would much rather have had one for SH1.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #7
Been a bit, moving and all that junk. Let's get back into it!
1. The whole "points of interest are covered in white cloth" thing isn't as great when you have other things covered by white cloth that can't be interacted with.
2. Due to the save screen showing James in real-time now instead of just an image, Maria can show up in it too. This is kind of an issue due to some symbolism crap.
3. They really butchered Maria's death scene and the sequence that leads up to it. Something about the original's fixed camera angles in a claustrophobic and angled hallway while you see Pyramid Head chase you down and slash at Maria is so daunting. In the remake, the camera is behind you and Maria is running in front of you, and you never really see Pyramid Head at all. Then when her death comes around it just feels so much more flat. Nobody is yelling or screaming, James isn't frantically pushing buttons on the elevator, and when the doors finally close he doesn't seem anywhere near as broken up about it. Then the somber music kicks in but it's greatly diminished by the dumb ambient horror sounds in the background. There's no moment of silence to make it hit harder. It's proof that nobody calling the shots here actually knew what made the scene impactful... They just copied the main points of it and tried to make it more Hollywood. Speaking of that music by the way, the original version has a refrain with chords but this one is just the melody repeated over and over again. It's really disappointing.
4. The ambient horror sounds playing outside of the hospital have a very obvious loop point to them and just a little bit before that happens there is this really loud, abnoxious sound that plays. I know it is supposed to be there to make you feel like something is going to happen, but when nothing does you realize that it's just baked in to the track and that's really stupid. There are a lot of ambient tracks like this in the game and I really wish I could turn the music off so I didn't have to deal with them. It's stuff that would be better suited for playing outside of a haunted house during Halloween, not in Silent Hill.
At this point, I've played for 12 hours. I think I'm only about half way through and it is starting to wear on me a bit. I would have been done with the original by now.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #8
1. There are times where you need to push a cart into a certain spot to use it to hop over something. I kind of get it when it's like, you want to the player to not be able to go back quite yet. It still feels like unnecessary padding most of the time though. I just ran into one where the cart is like 5 feet away from the gate I need to hop over. Wouldn't it have been easier to just make it so you hop over the gate and then you just can't go back? Kind of dumb.
2. I haven't done much melee combat since getting the handgun, and the game mostly starts to put enemies at a greater distance to make using guns more tempting. I just tried some more melee though and I found that enemies will auto lock and magnetise to you super hard, even if they're like 10 feet away, your ass is getting hit if you don't dodge in time. You won't, by the way, since it'll catch you off guard and the dodge is way too slow to be used as a reaction. You more or less have to use it as a cautionary tool, either predicting when the enemy will strike or just doing it to get out of harm's way before anything bad happens. The melee combat is so bad.
3. I just went through an empty hallway (which was really probably just a glorified loading screen) where the game got extremely dark, made some weird spooky sounds, and then that was it. Was that supposed to be scary...? As if the poorly looping ambience wasn't already scary enough!
4. The melee combat... Seriously it's really bad. Enemies will sometimes be put into a stun animation by your hits and you basically just mash the button to kill them to death. Other times, though, they'll decide they don't want to be turned into a cutscene and they just shrug off one of your attacks and then counterattack. There's no way of knowing when this will happen. I think it might be if the enemy was already beginning their attack animation, but if that's the case then the frames where that can be canceled by attacking are not wide enough. It feels bad when you swing and nothing happens to the enemy even though they are seemingly not doing anything.
5. They added in another cutscene with Angela. Honestly, I thought it was pretty good. They have done a fine job with her character so far and that's the one I was most worried about.
6. Just had a nice "puzzle" where you had to guess a keypad combination in a room with respawning enemies. Coooolll....
7. They elongated the "Killin a person ain't no big deal" cutscene by quite a lot. They really laid on the spookiness of it super thick. I think it's still a good scene but it definitely carries a different vibe, just like all of Eddie's scenes. They changed his character quite a lot.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #9
1. Got stumped by a puzzle and had to look up a hint. It looks similar to the one in the original game but it works completely differently. It also affects the entire map instead of just the puzzle itself so it's pretty different.
2. The ambient sound for the prison has like, random screams in the distance. Actually, the audio for the prison in general is just annoying. Again, I wish I could just turn it off without worrying about missing music that's actually good. When none of these sounds correlate to actual things happening in the game world, it makes it far less scary. Especially when you can tell they are looped. Then add this music on top of it that is trying to make you tense, and it really just screams "western horror." The original uses audio much more effectively.
3. There are now enemies that climb on walls and ceilings and I am extremely glad I've been playing on easy combat difficulty because ohhhh boy, if you thought it was dumb trying to dodge enemy attacks before, now trying dodging attacks you literally can't see! Sometimes they will make a screech sound first, but not always? It's really frustrating. It would be nicer if you weren't carrying around the shittiest flashlight known to man. I feel like they probably added these enemies in just to help justify the new freelook camera.
4. The default zombie enemy dude has a vomit attack, and apparently it can hit you from an infinite distance away if you're in a straight line from it. Cool.
5. So many enemies respawning... It can be interesting to do this a couple times throughout the course of an entire game for specific moments, but when enemies come back every single time I return to a room it's just frustrating. It's only useful in games like Metroidvanias when you can grind them for pickups or EXP. And no, it's not because I'm forgetting to double tap.
6. Okay I'm actually like pissed off now. I'm in a bathroom, it's pretty spooky. They always are in horror games. Then I hear a woman screaming and loud banging sounds, so naturally it scares me. THERE'S NOTHING IN THE ROOM. THIS IS FUCKING RETARDED. Cheap, dumb jumpscare. Because you know, Silent Hill has tons of those. Even with the cat in the locker scare, it sets up for another one later on and there are actual THINGS tied to the scares instead of just random screams.
7. I had a dead enemy get stuck in a doorway I needed to go through and had to kind of cheese my way through. 10/10.
Wow, I don't know if it's just the mood I'm in or something but that was by far the worst session yet.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #10
So, the bathroom jumpscare is actually in the original game, I found. I'm going to have to watch a playthrough of it again once I'm done with the remake just to see if any of my other complaints were present in the original as well. It would be interesting to see. I'm sure there are problems with it too and I hope that I can stay consistent with it instead of being blinded by my negative outlook on the remake in general. Or, at least some things might have another explanation in regards to how they were set up. I'll make sure to do that before giving an actual review, and I'll be looking at other reviews before that too just so I can see things I may have not considered, both good and bad.
1. They completely changed where the noose puzzle was and how you progress to the next area. Kind of odd I guess. They also changed how it functions a little bit. Like I've said before, the game is remixed so much that it may as well not be Silent Hill 2 anymore.
2. There's a newspaper clipping talking about Angela killing her dad. Is that in the original? I don't recall. Either way, with how much other information you get about it I always just assumed that's what happened.
3. There is an entirely new section of the game added and remixed with Angela and the first time you see Abstract Daddy. It's alright, but definitely too on the nose imo. The original walked a pretty fine line and did it well, this goes a little overboard. It's additive in terms of the raw information being presented, but it does change the mood significantly and because of that it FEELS reductive.
4. They treat the Abstract Daddy more like a boss encounter when, iirc, it was more like a regular enemy in the original. Not exactly but a lot closer to that. It has this scream thing it does that stuns you and that's kind of bullshit, but what's even more bullshit is that you can just sort of spam dodge, get a quick shot in, and then spam dodge again. I'm getting hit from across the room by regular ass enemies and boss enemies can just be i-framed I guess?
5. Another dumb jumpscare with a painting falling off a wall. It really is getting tiring.
6. Yeah this part is TOTALLY changed and brand new. Haven't even had the reunion scene with Maria yet so it's even shuffled around a bit. If they have changed Angela's stuff this much I wonder what else they've done with Eddie.
7. Cutscene with Maria in the cell was decent. Idk, it is like a word for word and scene for scene recreation, minus some depth of field, but it still feels... Wrong? Comparing it to the original, it's missing Maria saying "I can't do anything through these bars" but it isn't just that. The voice acting and the inflection are very different from each other and it makes the new one seem more sinister versus the original being more confusing but also giving that odd, cozy feeling. I'm not sure how to convey that without just telling you to compare both scenes. It kind of goes along with the theme I keep noticing, which is that the game feels more like a western movie than a Japanese game.
8. More enemies that scream and stun you... Great... My question is just... Why? Why is this even a mechanic? You can't dodge a scream, and they never do anything to take advantage of the stun. Just mash dodge and you'll be fine. It's just an annoyance.
9. I'm now faced with another set of locked doors and another puzzle to figure out. I'm honestly getting really tired of playing the game. I'm at 16 hours now, and I haven't even gotten to the hotel yet. Why is it so long? Probably to justify the $70 price tag, kind of like how they made NES games really hard so you felt like you got your money's worth. It's really dragging though, and I'm going to have to force myself through it which means I'm going to like it less and less.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #11
1. Had to look up a walkthrough again. Turns out the way the map is drawn here is a little scuffed. What looks like a wall is actually a ledge you can jump over. More annoyances with the verticality.
2. Lol, there's a spot you can squeeze through but they made it too big so you can just run through it instead. I'm gonna bet that this is because you can get chased through it.
3. When you start a combat encounter with an enemy, it'll play this loud spooky combat music. Since the battles only last like 5 seconds though, it gets kind of annoying...
4. I'm just as scared of Pyramid Head in the remake as I was in the original. I'm trying to work up the nerve to go down into the tunnels where he's lurking because the dude is a genuine threat. This is something I like about Silent Hill versus Resident Evil 2. I hate being chased around the map all the time by an undefeatable force. When it's in a specific place that you have to go though, and you can hear the screeching of his weapon being dragged across the floor, that shit is scary.
5. Another boss fight against Pyramid Head, and this one is a little bullshit. It's in a tight corridor and you would immediately think the goal is to get around him since there is a wall of flesh that was previously not passable behind you. Nope, too tight to get around him. You have to just walk into the wall because you can magically go through it now, and dodge his attacks. Kind of lame.
6. Seeing Maria's dead body behind the bars, that whole cutscene is COMPLETELY different and so much worse. James is actually crying for some reason, there is no music, there's not nearly as much blood, and Maria doesn't have a permanently horrified facial expression. What the fuck did they do to this scene?? In the original, the music adds so much and James' demeanor is more like "how could this have happened?" Ughh I hate it.
7. Now I've got the Giant Knife, but once you grab it you can't swing it and can't put it away so I wasn't able to save. That's cool. Also the movement controls with it suck ass. Unironically it feels better to move around with it using tank controls. What the hell is this?
8. WAIT I DON'T GET TO TAKE IT WITH ME?? WHY NOT?? That's dumb! It's actually a pretty useful weapon despite it being slow. I wonder if they just couldn't figure out how to make combat work with it so they cut it or something? Ugh.
9. Oh and NOW the music kicks in. Why was any of this changed?? Just for the sake of changing it?
10. Hey finally we get to see Walter Sullivan's name on a gravestone! Doesn't really make much of an impact though since it's the first time we have even seen his name.
Gonna stop tonight before I jump down James' grave. Man, what a rollercoaster of emotions that one was.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #12
My phone decided to randomly delete all of my notes for the past two hours, but basically I did Eddie's battle and stuff. Short version is that it's okay taken on its own but a very different mood from the original game. Also the music in the hotel sucks, so many areas have the most generic modern day slasher movie music going and it actually just hurts to listen to. Not in the same way Room of Angel does either. I mean it's grating and there's absolutely nothing out of the ordinary going on.
Anyway, continuing from there...
1. So many enemies have that scream stun attack. It's so annoying.
2. The hotel has used the same "doors blowing open" jumpscare 3 times now.
3. Another moment of pure terror. Having to leave all your items behind, including your map, and go down a spooky elevator. I HATE this part in the original lol, in a good way! It's such a huge security net that you're losing.
4. I had forgotten that you could click practically anything and James would talk about it a little bit, just in unspoken text on the screen. I miss that. I think it adds a lot of character to the game and lends to that "cozy" vibe. The remake lacks that vibe entirely. There is nothing cozy about it. It always feels hostile, even clinically so.
5. I thought that part where you got rid of all your gear was changed quite a lot so I went back to the original let's play and damn, this segment out of all of them is the perfect example to show just how bloated the game is. At every place they could have possibly put a puzzle, they did. I really think they should have saved a lot of these for a NEW Silent Hill or one of their own games.
6. There were a lot more enemies you had to dodge in the original too. Instead of lots of mannequins that deal a little bit of damage if they hit you, they instead opted for those chunky hand hanger boys that are patrolling around that will deal much more damage if you get hit. You won't though, because the dodge button is OP.
7. This segment also really exemplifies how much they had to change the level layouts to fit the new camera. Gone are the obscene amount of claustrophobic hallways in exchange for much more open, more realistic areas. That will be a matter of personal preference, but I think when remaking a game there is always going to be something lost when you change that.
8. The video tape has music playing over it for some reason. AGH I really hate what they've done with the music. I hate to keep ragging on it but it's the major thing that stands out to me.
9. The pillow scene is, I think, sufficiently well done. There's still something that's more raw about the original though, especially the uncensored version. It really feels like they went more on the side of implying what was going on rather than showing it outright, but not fully. Kind of like the Pyramid Head introductory scene.
10. Laura finding out about what happened to Mary, that whole scene, is not as good. Like sure, the voice acting is better and the punching is more kinetic, but her facial animation is actually really bad and they focus on her face a lot. It's almost entirely static. In the original, most of the scene is shot farther away from the subjects, which helps mask the low quality of the assets. They knew their limitations and worked with them well, whereas Bloober doesn't know their limitations and thus they think they can do whatever. That's a big issue with modern game devs in general.
11. Whereas the original game shows the aftermath of the revelation as a slow decay, the remake jumps STRAIGHT into the otherworld. It's a little jarring. They still have a good "calm before the storm" kind of atmosphere going but it's definitely not the same.
12. Angela's fire staircase scene is a downgrade for sure. From the delivery of the lines, to James not saying "I'd never kill myself," to the music being totally off, it's really not as poignant as the original. You don't even get to watch her walk off into that daunting stair case, she disappears at the corner of the camera and James leaves the room before you regain control.
I GOT THE FUCKING IN WATER ENDING?? WHY?! As far as I know I did everything to get Leave in the original. That's lame, I fucking hate that ending and I hate it even more in this remake. What the fuck was I supposed to do differently?? If I remember right, Leave is the "default" ending of the original and you have to fuck up somehow to get In Water. However, some of the devs say that In Water is the one they think is "canon" so I'm tempted to think that they pushed it further to the front for the remake because of that. So lame dude. Fuck this game.
Silent Hill 2 Remake first impressions/notes #6
1. Updated the game to 1.05 and the performance is MUCH smoother now. Incredibly so. I could try changing my resolution settings and locking to 60fps instead of 30, but I think I'll just keep it as-is for now. I'm getting better looking visuals than the PS5 version anyway so I think that's fine.
2. Within the first minute tonight I got jumpscared! Wow! It did get me, but let's just say Silent Hill isn't known for those.
3. While it is nice that you don't have to go into the menu to change weapons, the animation for doing it could be much better. It's way too subtle and I keep rotating the camera around to make sure I have actually switched my weapon.
4. The shotgun itself also kind of looks a little pathetic. Don't really know how to explain it but it just looks small. Maybe it's in the way James holds it. With how he is aiming and firing, I'm surprised his arm isn't ripped out of its socket or his wrist sprained. It doesn't have a stock but he still holds it up as it it did. With those kinds of shotguns it's much better to hold it down by your stomach. You don't really need the accuracy of aiming when you're using a close-quarters shotgun like that. If the game wasn't going for more of an action focus, I wouldn't mind this as much, but it does just look really weird.
5. More jumpscares... Just for like, standard enemies. Bro I haven't even been playing for 20 minutes.
6. There are save points EVERYWHERE in the hospital lol.
7. I finally had to look up a walkthrough. My bad, I forgot that breaking windows to access other areas is a thing in this game. I thought it was stupid when I first saw it and I still think it's stupid now.
Overrall, not too bad of a session actually. I'm really starting to feel that they went full horror mode with this game and practically none of the atmosphere and mood of the original is there. That doesn't make it bad per se, in fact I think most people will probably prefer playing this version of the game. I actually know a few people who I could recommend this too but probably not the original. It's just not why I like Silent Hill 2.