Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

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.

The Good
-The atmosphere is unbearably good. Never before have i been so frightened in a videogame. The ridiculously thick fog in Silent Hill makes everything so scary.

-The sound is amazing. The sound effects of the monsters are so scary. This game also uses background noises for the monsters. For instance; you are walking through a forest, you hear your own footsteps but you also hear footsteps that are not synchronous to yours which means that someone could be behind you. You turn around to find out there is nothing there. This happens in a lot of places in Silent Hill 2. The music is also great. In many places throughout the game you will hear mucho scary ambient music & sound effects that also add up to the atmosphere of this game. The idea of a broken radio used as a monster detector is also cleverly thought of.

• The graphics are simply amazing. No pre-drawn environments like in the Resident Evil games, but rendered three dimensional backgrounds. The grain effect is probably the best thought of feature of this game. The grain effect really comes to life when you are in the apartment building. The shades of dark colors are also nicely done.

• The monsters are probably even better. I've never seen such craftsmanship when it comes to enemie's. Not your standard "Thriller video clip" type zombies, but four legged what-ever-you'd-like-to-call-it enemies. A survival horror game is even scarier when you expect and find the unexpected. I also loved the sound effects from these monsters. The monsters are also pretty smart. They'll back each other up in combat, they respond to footsteps and your flashlight, and some of them even use other forms of attacking (the sprayers can/will lay themselves down on the ground and start crawling around at immense speeds and they can collide with you to cause extra damage).

-Some of the scripted events are also nicely done. Distant screams, monsters that avoid being detected by your radio by staying still etc.

-The idea that you received a letter from your deceased spouse alone is scarier than the entire Resident Evil series.

The Bad
-Well, some of the puzzles are to straightforward and perhaps a little too easy. -Oh, and another thing. Don't play this game on your own at night before you go to bed. Believe me. It was pretty hard for me to sleep that night (i've even had a nightmare about this game :-).

The Bottom Line
Resident Evil, move over! This game is TRUE horror. Never before has a game been released with so much suspense and horror. This game is not gory, but it will frighten your pants off.

The Good
Almost everything. Graphs are nice, specially on cutscenes (which are almost same as graphics in game).

Game`s plot is very good and there are many sad scenes which can even make you cry. It´s also very long, but it isn´t that it would be too hard, it just rocks. Monsters are very scary, they (still) looks like cool, specially bosses, like pyramid heads.

There are separate levels: action and riddle level, so if you like e.g get more challenge to shoot monsters, but don´t want to solve stupid puzzles so much, you can set action level to hard and riddle level to easy.

5 endings are really cool, my favorite is Rebirth. You can get that ending only on replay game. In PC version, Directors Cut, you have sixth ending, called UFO, it also rocks very much.<br><br>**The Bad**<br>Sometimes, you can get stuck pretty badly, but usually you can find answer with Google. Also, some graphs has problems, even if theyre cool, you can see some cracks on textures.

The Bottom Line
Horror game from top