Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

The Good
SH2 has a great story. I've read a lot of reviews of ppl complaining about the confusing story with so many missing pieces of information. Guess most of this ppl where the kind of ppl who finish adventure games with the game guide or who just take the shortest route through the game. SH2 needs more than that...it deserves more time and if you are willing to spend more time you'll get the real deal. Try to discover the past of Silent Hill.....read everything you get and you won't have too many questions in the end. Besides that, discovering the story is the real (maybe the only) puzzle of the game.

Besides that, be sure to have the appropriate audio to let you frighten by the sound itself. SH2 has some of the best sound effects i ever encountered in a game and some really gave me a chill. Still remember the feeling when the elk ran litteraly through my living room while examining the prison court. Besides the sound, the melancholic music adds real athmosphere, especially once it gets to an end, you encounter the truth, the music really makes you feel sad.

What's left? The graphics. Well, the blur filter too annoyed a lot of ppl but after turning it off to see the crisp graphics i though that it looked better before :) The details are great.....the restroom at the start.......disgusting.....and it goes on and on. You'll see incredible detailed textures through the whole game to give all the locations their special touch.

Another thing I liked where the 5 different ending sequenzes. While there are several "bad" ones there's one which you really should care to see and at least it should increase replayability.

So what's on the neg. side

The Bad
Sold as action-adventure with better puzzles than the RE series it was still disappointing to see those baby puzzles. Especially with the possibility to play with diferent skills i really hoped for more but we have to face the truth.....adventures are dead and what's left are puzzles a 5 year old would solve if he really would try hard!

The voice acting is quite poor, they didn't really fit into the situations but living in the german speaking parts of europe where every film gets dubbed it's kinda common to have bad voice acting and so that doesn't hurt too much :)

The biggest disappointment IMO was the sucky controls.....shortly after the start i restarted the game with easy action skill because the controls where kinda slow...sometimes it took to long to hit and while in combat that could cause quite a lot of damage fastly. Besides that it was too easy to get stuck on corners, especially with enemies around. Well, at least the different skill levels should make it possible for everyone.

The Bottom Line
It's a great game. It's dark, it's scary and it's sad. If you want a action packed game and don't care for story or puzzle elements you shouldn't really go for it. Like i said before, you'll miss a lot of the story and will be left with an unsatisfying story at the end. If you like puzzles or at least aren't afraid to READ, then go for the game, it's deffinatly worth it :o)

The Good
everything in this game was great :) when i first played it i was sitting in front of the tv waiting on the FMV sequence finishing at the begining where he was standing in the road side toilet cubicle. and i waited for about a minute thinking when is this going to give me control of the character cos i just saw him standing there so i tried to move him and he started to move and i thought to myself i`ve been standing here like a fool and i could have moved all along that was how god the FMV sequences were just like the graphics i couldn`t really tell the difference i had never seen anything like that before.

the story line is the best one in any game so far it touches your emotionaly at times or tries to while still keeping its horror feel to it which was really good i thought. atmosphere was and is second to none ill wait till res evil comes out on the cube to see if it can match SH2 for atmosphere .

great game far superior to the original in every way the start of the game was well done you started at least a couple of miles away from the town and had to run all the way there when you left the road side toilet and ran down the stairs into the forrest and down the path you heard a loud noise as if something was coming through the trees at you but nothing happened its things like that that i love about the game pure genius so it is they have to be to think of games like Silent Hill 2.

roll on Silent Hill 3 cant wait to see how #3 turns out.

The Bad
there is nothing to hate about this game if you like survival horror games<br><br>**The Bottom Line**<br>if you like survival horror games then you have to play this even if you did not like the original you will like this because it`s far far superior.

The Good
As a huge fan of horror games it's pretty safe to say that I was really looking forward to this one. Silent Hill 2 at first glance seems a lot like a revamped version of the first game and in many ways it is. The graphics have been obviously updated with the fog that surrounds the town all day being the first noticeable change. It swirls, changes direction and is completely volumetric. Lighting seems fairly standard until you get inside one of the dark buildings. Suddenly huge shadows are cast all over the walls by the light of your flashlight making for some of the creepiest visuals ever seen in a game. Seeing the shuffling shadow of a mutant nurse coming ever closer really gets your heart going. The monsters are some of the strangest and most bizzare creatures ever concocted. They have form but a form that doesn't quite make visual sense. Truely the stuff of nightmares. Sound is nigh on perfect with strange musical accompaniments that send shivers up the spine as well as some of the creepiest sound effects ever to grace my speakers. Definately one to turn way, way up. For example: At one point I could hear something very faint and it wasn't until I paid closer attention that I noticed that it was some kind of ghostly whispering. Little touches like that really add to the procceedings and often have something to do with the story. Yes the vague, thought provoking story telling has returned but this time it's been much better written. There is a depth to the story that the first one never had and it's in this story that I feel SH2 truly excels. Easily this is the best story in any horror game to date and with multiple endings to find that are determined in an ingenious manner as you play, there's a lot to keep you interested. There are 3 immediately available endings plus a special forth one that you can get the second time through an an additional hilarious 'joke' ending that you really must see to believe. The puzzles in this game are really good and the difficulty of both the fighting and the puzzles can be scaled according to your own personal liking.

The Bad
SH2 may be great but it's not free of problems. The voice acting is for the most part pretty poor and really can be quite off putting with a game of this calibre. The lighting routine while it looks amazing, also uses vertex based lighting and so the light zig zags unrealistically across straight walls at times. James is also quite slugglish to control, particularly in combat. It can be infuriating when you are killed by a monster because James got stuck on something or was too busy standing in the one spot for 5 seconds after you tried to hit whatever evil creature was after your blood. The game itself is also pretty short despite the 5 endings. I got through the whole thing in 7 hours my first time through which is a little less sizable than an adventure should be.

The Bottom Line
It has its faults but it's still one of the best horror adventures ever made and a vast improvement over the original.