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.

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.

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.

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.