Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

The Good
The most striking thing about SH2 isn't its fast-paced action, it's riveting storyline, its use of the Xbox's graphical capabilities or even the gameplay itself. This game manages one thing that may be said about very few (if any) action-based horror game: the suspense.

While many such games promise suspense, terror and spine-tingling thrills, very few deliver. With the unique combination of seemingly arbitrary sound effects, subtle changes in scenery and the tell-tale overall darkness of the game, it certainly delivers some interesting surprises. There will be times when the player will take a bit of a scare, which is exactly what the game is supposed to do.

Working well on a system with good surround sound, you'll hear footsteps behind you, rustling in the bushes, rattling of pipes and a barrage of other auditory illusions and effects that will keep you turning around in your chair to make sure that there really isn't something sneaking up behind you.

The Bad
Visually, this game isn't much to look at. Some of the cinematics are well-rendered, but the overall appearance of the game is lukewarm if you're charitable. Yes, the town is cloaked in fog and yes, the interiors of the buildings are almost complete darkness if you don't have the flashlight turned on, but the visual obscurity almost leaps from ambiance to hinderance in one mighty bound.

Also, while using the 3D control mode, our hero is all but unmanageable. Combined with constant spinning of camera angles, the "up equals forward" process (which doesn't even work half the time) can be maddening. Fortunately, you can switch between 3D and 2D control modes (which will give you more of a Tomb Raider feel) at any point in the game.

The voice acting also lacks something to be desired. The actors were trying to lend some strength to situational dialog, but it was as though they recorded the lines without ever hearing each other and were given almost nothing contextually to navigate by. This left the dialog seeming almost alien to the scenes in which it occurred.

The puzzle solutions were also a little outlandish. The solutions appeared to have no relation to the puzzles themselves, and it seemed more work than fun to collect the answers. (I'm not sticking my hand in a festering toilet because something appears to be stuck there, nor am I sticking my arm blindly into holes in a wall if I'm walking around a town that's infested with things right out of a Clive Barker novel.)

The storyline is fragmented and uneven, and though I enjoy the idea of being able to explore freely, the play offers very little directional assistance as far as which direction you need to go. The gameplay boils down to checking the map for places you haven't been and going to those places in hopes of finding something useful.

The Bottom Line
All in all, this is one of those games that you simply must have a taste for already. Chances are good that this game won't attract you to this genre, but if you're already interested, it will keep you busy for a while.

The Good
I’ve never really understood horror games or the horror genre in general. I always thought it was strange to willingly subject oneself to feelings of fear and stress. Yet for some reason I always end up playing games like Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness. Okay, I’ll admit it; I’m a bit of a wuss. Years ago, the Resident Evil remake gave my teenaged self nightmares. I guess I find greater reward in a game that I have to force myself through. Enough self-reflecting though, because the latest game I forced myself through has been one of the best games I’ve ever surmounted.

Silent Hill 2’s premise starts simply enough, James Sunderland gets a letter from his wife, telling him to meet her in the town of Silent Hill. The kicker is, she’s been dead for three years, yet for some reason, James still decides to search for her. It doesn’t take long for things to get spooky. James finds Silent Hill to be buried in fog, and almost completely deserted, that is, except for numerous monsters that stalk the streets.

The storyline is easily Silent Hill 2’s greatest asset. It starts off mysteriously enough to get you hooked, and things just continue to get more and more intriguing as you continue. The story is told through sometimes awkward cut scenes, but also through imagery and documents you come across. What I find most fascinating is how the game leaves it to the players to draw their own conclusions. There are a lot of things in Silent Hill 2 that aren’t clearly defined. There are even a number of endings, none of them claiming to be the true ending. It’s really engaging, and it makes you think for yourself.

The story is really original and interesting. On the surface, Silent Hill 2 appears to be an almost cliché survival horror game, but as things drag on, you realize it’s anything but. Despite its horrific setting, the game’s story is completely centered on James. It’s an introversive character analysis that not only gives you a glimpse into James’ head, but also gets into your head as well. It’s a welcome change from the industry’s norm of two dimensional characters, which normally lack human flaws.

Another thing that Silent Hill 2 does exceedingly well is atmosphere. Your field of vision is always obscured by fog or darkness from which a monster could shamble out of at any moment. It’s all very oppressive and gives you the feeling of everything working against you. Silent Hill 2’s strange music just adds to it all, without becoming too intrusive. It always keeps you on your toes, even if you know you’re probably safe for the moment.

The game is almost artsy in its approach. But they manage to pull it off without all the pretentiousness that most artsy games seem to trip over. It seems fully aware that it’s just a game and never takes itself too seriously. It also avoids feeling too campy or silly. Its charm is almost intangible and difficult to explain.

The Bad
It amazes me that a game that is so intelligent in its presentation can screw up the gameplay so bad. It’s like the game was made by a group of the greatest storytellers and artists in the industry, but no one thought to hire a designer. It’s hard for me to think of a single thing I enjoyed about Silent Hill 2’s gameplay. Silent Hill 2’s biggest flaws are the twin demons of stubborn camera and clumsy combat. They work together, you see, to ruin your fun.

Whenever you walk into a new room, there’s a good chance that the camera will be pointed directly at you, while a monster sits slightly off screen. You can manually place the camera behind your back, sometimes, when the game is in a good mood, but there’s no guarantee that it will stay put. By the time you finish fiddling with the camera, a monster may have already bitten your face off. The camera also has an odd tendency to twist to strange angles in an almost sickening manner. It might be the developers attempt to make the game have a more picturesque look to it, but it just gets in the way.

Combat, on the other hand, is easily one of the least immersive systems I’ve seen in a game. They totally missed the feel of combat. It’s all really bland and unnatural. There’s no strategy to it either, you just flail at something until it falls to the ground, and then you stomp on it. Unless you use guns, but I never bothered with them, except on bosses. In fact, I used guns so rarely that I ended the game with enough leftover ammo to supply a small army. I had over 360 rounds of pistol ammo. The frigging Doom guy could only carry 200 pistol rounds without a backpack.

I can understand that some of these problems are likely added for effect. Knowing an enemy is just off screen is pretty unnerving, but I thought that was what the fog and darkness were for. I also realize that James is supposed to be an average everyday guy, but surely he’s not THIS incompetent. Now that I think of it, Silent Hill 2’s combat is completely unnecessary. Why didn’t they scrap the whole thing and just make you run to avoid combat? Maybe they could have allowed you to throw rocks at enemies so they’d stop chasing you. Now that would be scary.

Why is it that terrible voice acting and scripting seems to be a staple of survival horror genre? It’s a good thing that a lot of the story is told outside of these cutscenes, because they’re pretty awful. Everyone’s delivery is either flat or over the top. Everyone also pauses after every sentence or so and they all move slowly and awkwardly. Even the main character’s performance is terribly stiff and lifeless. It doesn’t prevent you from getting into his head and the cutscenes don’t ruin the overall plot, but my god, think of what the game would have been like if the cutscenes were up to par with the rest of the game.

Lastly, Silent Hill 2 is extremely rigid with how you play it. Basically, the only decision they leave to the player is whether or not you choose to explore. Let me give you an example: James walks up to this hole and tells me that he can’t see the bottom. The game then asks me if I want to jump down. No, Silent Hill 2, that sounds like a genuinely stupid idea. For all I know, there’s no bottom to it, or no way out once I get down there. Since there’s no other way to progress through the game, though, I’m kind of wondering why the fuck you asked?

The Bottom Line
I might as well note that I’m not an established fan of the Silent Hill series, and that this was the first one I played. Therefore, I don’t know how well it stacks up to the other Silent Hill titles. As it stands, though, I think Silent Hill 2 is a strange and wonderful game. It’s completely rotten at its core, but everything else about it is so charming and original. It’s almost like a delicious meal comprised mostly of sandpaper and shards of glass, you know something’s not right about it, but you can’t stop eating it. I’m sure Silent Hill 2 isn’t for everyone, but most people should at least try it. It’s different, and intelligent in everything except its core gameplay. Even despite all the negatives, I still think Silent Hill 2 is an OUTSTANDING game.

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.