Overview:

A remake of one of the most thought provoking games to come out in the past 20 years, Silent Hill 2 is firing on all cylinders.  The main protagonist is James who is drawn to the sleepy town of Silent Hill because of a letter he received from his dead wife.  He starts to notice that things are a little bit off with the town and starts getting into ridiculous hijinks with no explanation whatsoever.  The citizens are now crazed disturbing creatures and the world is a dilapidated mess.  It’s not really a survival horror game but more of a come-to-terms-with-reality-and-grief game.  It still is probably my favorite game in the series.

Visuals:

I really loved the way the original game looked.  The film grain made it look grimey and dingy back in 2001 which really wasn’t an aesthetic yet.  The remake seems to strip that out with the fidelity granted of modern systems but the atmosphere is still there.  The fog is dense and the world is super detailed.  No two places really seem to look the same.  I’m not really a fan of the character models since they look like CGI models come to life.  I feel they could have done better but it doesn’t take me out of the world enough to be a problem.  

Audio:

Good lord is the audio in this game something else.  Just walking around the town you feel the dread of the game in every location.  The music swells which makes you think something is following you only to drop off with no payoff.  I don’t know if I should be upset or not but my heart gets going.  The environments also give off the creep vibe pretty well with the enemies grunting and squishing everywhere.  Playing with headphones doesn’t help because now everything is directly piped into your earholes.  It really is amazing.

Completion:

I’m still working through it and got to the new apartments.  Everything kind of seems to be where you left it 20 years ago.  There have been a little changes here and there, besides the visuals, but nothing that’ll fuck up the story.  I’m curious to see how they’ll handle some of the weirder aspects but I’m gonna keep playing.  Like I said, this is my favorite game of the series and it still holds up.