Director of Original Silent Hill 2 ‘Not Satisfied’ With Limited Camera From 23 Years Ago, Much Prefers the Remake’s Modern Perspective

Now Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 Remake is out in the wild, the director of the original Silent Hill from 2001 has offered his thoughts on this reimagining of his work, and he’s full of praise.

In a series of tweets, Silent Hill 2 director Masashi Tsuboyama began by saying he is “very happy” about the remake and how a new generation will get to play the horror classic. “It’s been 23 years,” he said. “Even if you don’t know the original, you can just enjoy the remake as it is. Whether it’s good or bad doesn’t affect the original.”

Tsuboyama went on to discuss the change in camera perspective from the original’s limited camera to the remake’s modern over-the-shoulder camera perspective. This change — debated by fans in the context of the original tank controls’ crucial role in Silent Hill 2’s famously oppressive atmosphere — has a “significant impact” on everything from combat to level design, and even art creation. “While the impact on the story may be relatively small, it brings a big change to the playfeel of the game,” he added.

It sounds like Tsuboyama has come down in favor of the switch, saying: “The over-the-shoulder view definitely adds to the sense of realism. In other words, it makes me want to try playing the even more immersive remake of Silent Hill 2.”

Tsuboyama, as he has done before, said he isn’t happy with the original game’s camera, but this time added some context as to why it had to be as constrained as it ended up being back in 2001 on the PS2.

“Games and technology are constantly evolving, resulting in significant differences in constraints and levels of expression,” he explained. “This is a common issue with media arts in general, but it is not easy to maintain and appreciate the environment of the time.

“To be honest, I’m not satisfied with the playable camera from 23 years ago. Depth and angle were limited by the processing load,” he said. “It was a continuous process of hard work that was not rewarded. But that was the limit.”

To be honest, I’m not satisfied with the playable camera from 23 years ago.

One aspect of Silent Hill 2 Remake Tsuboyama doesn’t sound thrilled about is Konami’s marketing for the game. He says “it seems like they’re [Konami] not doing enough to convey the appeal of the work to the generation that doesn’t know Silent Hill,” while pointing to the inclusion of the Mira the Dog Mask and the PS5 exclusive Robbie the Rabbit Mask DLC pre-order bonuses.

The original Silent Hill 2 had plenty of goofiness in among its horror, so Tsuboyama may be upset at the idea of players running around the game wearing the DLC masks during their first playthrough, rather than their second or third.

Either way, the Silent Hill 2 Remake is going down well with fans and critics, with IGN’s Silent Hill 2 Remake review returning an 8/10. Unfortunately, trolls are trying to ruin the fun — the Silent Hill 2 Remake Wikipedia page had to be locked down after its list of review scores from the press was edited to make them lower. Check out the Silent Hill 2 Remake’s global release times to find out when it’s playable in your region, and while you wait, check out the remake’s awesome Silent Hill 2 HD Collection Easter egg.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Silent Hill 2 Remake Fans Are Loving This Amazing HD Collection Easter Egg

2012’s Silent Hill HD Collection is perhaps best known by fans for inexplicably changing the Silent Hill Ranch sign font to Comic Sans. It was a tweak to the beloved original that baffled Silent Hill fans and has become infamous in the 12 years since the HD Collection’s release.

Fans had wondered which font Bloober would go with for its remake ahead of release, and so now with early access available it has come as some relief to discover the developers did indeed ditch the HD Collection’s Comic Sans sign in favor of the original’s. X/Twitter user @Wario64 showed off this new/old look.

However, Silent Hill 2 Remake players have discovered that if you clip through or go out of bounds in the PC version when at Silent Hill Ranch, you can find the HD Collection’s Comic Sans sign among other discarded rubbish in an abandoned warehouse (right where fans will say it belongs).

Twitter/X user @GmanLives surfaced the change, since verified by other users, declaring Silent Hill 2 Remake GOTY for this awesome nod to Silent Hill HD Collection.

The apparent Easter egg is certainly going down well with Silent Hill fans. “… Bloober Team and Konami are genuinely amazing for that,” said NONAMEDREDDITER. “… Bloober are officially god tier,” added Low-Positive5888. “Bloober, my heart grows bigger and bigger for you every day,” said stinkyratboiii. “Suck it HD Collection!” declared cyb0rganna.

Generally, Bloober’s Silent Hill 2 Remake is going down well with fans and it’s certainly a hit with critics. However, trolls are trying to ruin the fun — the Silent Hill 2 Remake Wikipedia page had to be locked down after its list of review scores from the press was edited to make them lower. Check out the Silent Hill 2 Remake’s global release times to find out when it’s playable in your region.

Image credit: xRudeAwakening / reddit

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Silent Hill 2 Remake Global Release Times Confirmed

Konami has revealed the global release times for the Silent Hill 2 Remake across PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam.

The publisher shared launch times for each region in an X/Twitter post, below, across its October 8 release date, confirming exactly when survival horror fans can get their hands on the highly anticipated remake.

It sees players take on the role of protagonist James Sunderland as he follows a mysterious letter from his late wife to the terrifying town of Silent Hill, which teems with nightmarish monsters out for blood. “Silent Hill 2 is a great way to visit (or revisit) one of the most dread-inducing destinations in the history of survival horror,” IGN said in our 8/10 review.

Silent Hill 2 Remake PS5 Release Times

  • Los Angeles – 9pm PDT (on October 7)
  • New York – 0am EDT
  • São Paulo – 0am GMT-3
  • London – 0am BST
  • Paris – 0am CEST
  • Warsaw – 0am CEST
  • Istanbul – 0am GMT+3
  • Riyadh – 0am GMT+3
  • Hong Kong – 0am HKT
  • Tokyo – 0am JST
  • Sydney – 0am AEST

Silent Hill 2 Remake PC via Steam Release Times

  • Los Angeles – 9pm PDT (on October 7)
  • New York – 0am EDT
  • São Paulo – 1am GMT-3
  • London – 5am BST
  • Paris – 6am CEST
  • Warsaw – 6am CEST
  • Istanbul – 7am GMT+3
  • Riyadh – 7am GMT+3
  • Hong Kong – 12pm HKT
  • Tokyo – 1pm JST
  • Sydney – 3pm AEST

Those on Xbox will have to wait a tad longer, as Sony itself has confirmed Silent Hill 2 is a PS5 console exclusive for one year. And some fans seemingly upset with the remake’s release took to Wikipedia to falsify lower review scores than Silent Hill 2 actually received, to the point where the website itself had to lock down the page.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Silent Hill 2 Remake Wikipedia Page Locked Down After ‘Persistent Disruptive Editing’ Lowers Review Scores

The Silent Hill 2 Remake Wikipedia page was locked down after its list of review scores from the press was edited to make them lower.

Silent Hill 2 is Bloober Team’s well-received remake of Konami’s classic 2001 psychological horror game for PC and PS5 (it’s console exclusive to PS5 for one year, Sony has confirmed). It sees protagonist James Sunderland following a mysterious letter from his late wife, Mary, and a search for clues in the terrifying namesake town, which is teeming with nightmarish monsters.

As reported by Eurogamer, admins were forced to make Wikipedia’s Silent Hill 2 Remake page ‘semi-protected’ after what was called “persistent disruptive editing.”

Wikipedia’s rules state that semi-protection is sometimes necessary “to prevent vandalism” to popular pages, and that’s exactly what happened here, with admins issuing a number of updates that changelog entries said were “to fix trolling.”

IGN’s was among the review scores tampered with. IGN’s Silent Hill 2 Remake review returned an 8/10, but it was lowered to 6/10. Eurogamer’s score dropped down to 0/5 after awarding the game a five-star review. At the time of this article’s publication, the review scores were accurate.

Why did this happen? Eurogamer speculates it may be driven by trolls who are upset about changes made to the character’s faces and clothes.

Silent Hill 2 Remake is having a better time of it over on Steam, where it currently enjoys an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ user review rating from over 3,000 reviews. (Silent Hill 2 Remake’s global release date is October 8, but advanced access is available now.)

Wikipedia’s Silent Hill 2 Remake page protection is set to expire on October 9, although admins may need to keep an eye on it in the near-term at least.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage Hits Steam This Month

Assassin’s Creed Mirage launches on Steam later in October, Ubisoft has announced.

Mirage’s Steam release comes a year after it launched exclusively on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect on PC, as well as PlayStation and Xbox.

Ubisoft recently ditched its policy of signing with Epic for PC exclusivity and will now return to day-one releases on Steam following the poor performance of Star Wars Outlaws, which also skipped Steam at launch. Outlaws itself releases on Steam on November 21, 2024.

Mirage is the well-received back-to-basics Assassin’s Creed game that focuses more on the series’ stealthy origins. You play Basim, a cunning street thief who navigates the bustling streets of ninth-century Baghdad. Mirage is also shorter than recent Assassin’s Creed games — in stark contrast to recent entries Valhalla and Odyssey, which had massive open worlds that would take dozens of hours to explore. IGN’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage review returned an 8/10.

Soon after its launch, Ubisoft said Mirage’s player count was “in line” with Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey’s launch numbers. The company added that Mirage was the biggest new-generation launch game in terms of unit sales in Ubisoft’s history.

Mirage’s Steam launch comes amid a tumultuous year for the company that’s seen disappointing returns from Call of Duty competitor XDefiant and the aforementioned Star Wars Outlaws. Ubisoft delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows into 2025 following the poor sales of Outlaws, and its staff have arranged a strike for later this month.

In its recent note to investors, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot acknowledged that the company’s “second quarter fell short of expectations” and vowed to launch “a review aimed at further improving our execution.” He also addressed some of the cultural conversations happening around Ubisoft lately, which have intensified around Star Wars Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Last week, Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent were said to be considering teaming up to take the company private following the collapse of its share price.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred Global Release Times Confirmed

Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred goes live today, October 7 in some regions, with a global release date of October 8. Here are all the release times across the globe.

Vessel of Hatred — Diablo 4’s first expansion — goes live as early as 4pm PDT on October 7. Pre-download on Battle.net and console (Xbox and PlayStation) is already available. There is no pre-download for Diablo 4 on Steam (Steam users must wait to download the update when Vessel of Hatred goes live at 4pm PDT on October 7).

It’s worth noting that Diablo 4 players can pre-download the patch that contains Vessel of Hatred and the Season of Hatred Rising (Season 6) content regardless of whether they have bought Vessel of Hatred. Blizzard recently released the patch notes for 2.0.1 and 2.0.2, and not only are they huge but change the game in significant ways.

Vessel of Hatred’s headline new features include a new class, new region, and a new story. The new Spiritborn class is joined by the new region of Nahantu, where you search for Neyrelle, who is on a mission to destroy the Prime Evil Mephisto. You can also recruit mercenaries to aid you in combat and fight together in a new PvE co-op activity.

IGN’s Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred review returned an 8/10. We said: “Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred is a stellar expansion that hits all the right notes, but only feels like the first act to a larger adventure.”

Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred PC, PlayStation, and Xbox global release times:

  • Irvine: 4pm PDT, October 7
  • New York: 7pm EDT, October 7
  • São Paulo: 8pm BRT, October 7
  • London: 12am BST, October 8
  • Berlin: 1am CEST, October 8
  • Istanbul: 2am TRT, October 8
  • Seoul: 8am KST, October 8
  • Sydney: 10am AEDT, October 8
  • Auckland: 12pm NZDT, October 8

Last week, Blizzard confirmed Diablo 4 and Vessel of Hatred will be PS5 Pro Enhanced. Diablo 4 is the first Microsoft game with confirmed Enhanced support for Sony’s $700 mid-gen upgrade, which launches November 7.

Microsoft owns all Activision Blizzard’s franchises following its $69 billion acquisition of the company in 2023, and since then has added a number of the firm’s games to its subscription service, Game Pass. Diablo 4 is in Game Pass, although not in its Standard tier. Vessel of Hatred is not in Game Pass.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Future Halo Games Moving to Unreal Engine 5 as 343 Industries Rebrands, ‘Multiple Projects’ in Development

The future of Halo is starting to come into focus. During Sunday’s Halo World Championships, 343 Industries made a number of announcements, including that it will officially be changing its name to Halo Studios and that it’s working on multiple new games. In addition, the newly-rebranded studio say that all future projects will be developed on Unreal Engine, leaving behind the Slipspace Engine utilized by Halo Infinite.

The announcements were unveiled in a seven-minute video shown ahead of the Halo World Championship’s grand finals, which showcased the results of Project Foundry — an experimental project designed to show a Halo game built using the Unreal Engine. While it’s not much more than a tech demo, it offers a glimpse at a fresh beginning for Xbox’s flagship franchise in the wake of 2021’s Halo Infinite.

It’s a huge shift for the Halo series, not the least because of the resources poured into the Slipspace Engine over the course of its development. The studio formerly known as 343 Industries notoriously struggled with the Slipspace engine during Halo Infinite’s development, in part because it used tools dating back to the early 2000s. Still, it was expected to serve as the foundation for the series after Halo Infinite.

“Respectfully, some components of Slipspace are almost 25 years old,” art director Chris Matthews said in an interview with Xbox Wire. “Although 343 were developing it continuously, there are aspects of Unreal that Epic has been developing for some time, which are unavailable to us in Slipspace – and would have taken huge amounts of time and resources to try and replicate.”

An early 2023 report suggested that Halo’s developers were ready to hit the reset button on the series after a heavy shakeup within the studio, including transitioning to the Unreal Engine. The report also said that Halo’s developers were focusing on pitching new Halo games while prototyping ideas. Project Foundry appears to be the culmination of that effort.

The newly-rebranded Halo Studios, for its part, is seeking to forge ahead under the leadership of Pierre Hintze, Elizabeth Van Wyck, and Brian Koski, with the studio now working on multiple new games. The three stepped into top roles at the studio in the wake of studio GM Bonnie Ross’ departure in 2022, with series veteran Joseph Staten leaving Xbox in 2023. The new name and engine follows Xbox saying earlier this year that it’s “full speed ahead” on a next-generation successor to the Xbox Series X|S.

“We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite,” says Hintze. “[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible.”

The projects will be “ready when they’re ready,” Halo Studios says. For now, stay tuned for lots more analysis on IGN as well as Podcast Unlocked.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Future Halo Games Moving to Unreal Engine as Developer 343 Industries Officially Changes Its Name

The future of Halo is starting to come into focus. During Sunday’s Halo World Championships, 343 Industries made a pair of significant announcements, including that it will officially be changing its name to Halo Studios. In addition, the newly-rebranded studio say that all future projects will be developed on Unreal Engine, leaving behind the Slipspace Engine utilized by Halo Infinite.

The changes were unveiled in a seven-minute video shown ahead of the Halo World Championship’s grand finals, which showcased the results of Project Foundry — an experimental project designed to show a Halo game built using the Unreal Engine. While it’s not much more than a tech demo, it offers a glimpse at a fresh beginning for Xbox’s flagship franchise in the wake of 2021’s Halo Infinite.

It’s a huge shift for the Halo series, not the least because of the resources poured into the Slipspace Engine over the course of its development. The studio formerly known as 343 Industries notoriously struggled with the Slipspace engine during Halo Infinite’s development, in part because it used tools dating back to the early 2000s. Still, it was expected to serve as the foundation for the series after Halo Infinite.

An early 2023 report suggested that Halo’s developers were ready to hit the reset button on the series after a heavy shakeup within the studio, including transitioning to the Unreal Engine. The report also said that Halo’s developers were focusing on pitching new Halo games while prototyping ideas. Project Foundry appears to be the culmination of that effort.

The newly-rebranded Halo Studios, for its part, is seeking to forge ahead under the leadership of Pierre Hintze, Elizabeth Van Wyck, and Brian Koski. The three stepped into top roles at the studio in the wake of studio GM Bonnie Ross’ departure in 2022, with series veteran Joseph Staten leaving Xbox in 2023. The new name and engine follows Xbox saying earlier this year that it’s “full speed ahead” on a next-generation successor to the Xbox Series X|S.

For now, stay tuned for lots more analysis on IGN as well as Podcast Unlocked.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Daily Deals: College Football 25, PlayStation 5 Slim, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and More

The weekend is officially here, and we’ve rounded up the best deals you can find! Discover the best deals for Sunday, October 6, below:

EA Sports College Football 25 for $47.99

EA Sports College Football 25 is available on sale for the first time this weekend. This game marked the first college football title from EA since NCAA 14, as a lawsuit regarding player NIL (name, image, and likeness) prevented the company from producing further entries. Many of the older modes have returned to College Football 25, including Dynasty, Team Builder, and Road to Glory. Of course, dozens of new features have been added, including Stadium Pulse, which creates challenging road environments in college football’s biggest stadiums.

Save $50 Off PS5 Slim

As part of an early Prime Day deal, Amazon has dropped the price of the PS5 Slim by $50. This goes for both the digital and physical editions of the console, with Best Buy also offering an NBA 2K bundle on sale. It’s the perfect time to buy a PS5, with games like Astro Bot and Silent Hill 2 now available on the console.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for $49.99

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is also on sale, priced now at $49.99. This matches the previous low, which occurred during the Days of Play sale earlier this year. Spider-Man 2 features both Peter Parker and Miles Morales as playable characters, with a whole new area of New York to explore. You can swing through the city with new suit abilities like Web Wings and take down criminals all around. You’ll need to be prepared, as both Kraven the Hunter and the symbiote Venom are prepared to take you down and rule over NYC.

Visions of Mana for $49.99

Visions of Mana recently released at the end of August, and it’s available on sale for the first time this weekend. This is the first new Mana game in almost two decades, starring a cast of characters on a quest to save the world. In our 8/10 review, we stated, “Visions of Mana finally brings the long-dormant classic RPG series into the modern age, looking great and playing even better thanks to multi-layered class and skill systems that interact in clever ways.”

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth for $49.99

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is officially on sale at an all-time low price. This sequel to 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake brings Cloud, Tifa, Aerith, Barret, and Red XIII outside of Midgar for the very first time, with Sephiroth looming and moving in on his goals. This experience offers well over 100 hours of content, with 36 sidequests and a main story over 40 hours long. If you haven’t played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, now is the time to score one of the best 2024 titles out there at a discount.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder for $44.99

Super Mario Bros. Wonder was one of the best games of 2023, with a diverse offering of levels and abilities to discover. The Wonder Flower defies all expectations throughout each level, allowing for a Mario experience like no other. In our 9/10 review, we stated that Wonder “looks and plays like the true next step for 2D Mario platformers.”

Meta Quest 3 512GB VR Headset

Hot on the heels of the new Meta Quest 3S announcement, the Quest 3 has officially been marked down by a not insignificant amount. The 512GB model, which previously retailed for $649.99, is now priced at $499.99. The Quest 3 is a superior headset to the new Quest 3S. It has much better optics, with a higher resolution, higher FOV, and a thinner pancake lens design, and it boasts a higher maximum storage capacity.

Demon Slayer -Kimestu no Yaiba- Sweep the Board! for $47.99

Sweep the Board! is the latest game from Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba-, focusing on a fun, party-like title that is extremely similar to Mario Party. You play as Tanjiro, Nezuko, Zenitsu, Inosuke, and the rest of the Demon Slayer cast as they traverse through multiple party boards and complete minigames against each other. We’ve seen the Nintendo Switch version drop to $29.99, but this is the first price drop for PS5.

Luigi’s Mansion 3 for $39.99

Luigi’s Mansion 3 is available this weekend at Woot for only $39.99. This is one of the best games available on Nintendo Switch, filled with charm and all sorts of fun puzzles. With Halloween right around the corner, there’s never been a better time to pick up the game if you haven’t already!

PlayStation 5 Pro Disc Drive Available at Amazon

After having sold out for most of September, the attachable Disc Drive for PS5 Slim / PS5 Pro is back in stock at Amazon. If you plan on purchasing a PS5 Pro this November, you will need one of these to play any of your physical games. The drive will require you to connect to the internet once to register it, but after that you can use it offline.

Silent Hill 2 Is Utterly Miserable (and That’s Why It’s Great)

Warning: this article contains mild thematic and environment spoilers for Silent Hill 2.

The Silent Hill 2 remake is the most miserable experience I’ve had with a game in recent memory.

With an opening sentence like that, you’re probably expecting to read a very negative critique of developer Bloober Team’s recreation of Konami and Team Silent’s survival horror classic. But, in this very rare occurrence, complete and unrelenting misery is actually a positive. The original Silent Hill 2 is perhaps the bleakest, most sombre game ever made and Bloober Team has successfully preserved its miserable magic, ensuring this remake is a deeply effective descent into genuinely uncomfortable terror.

That journey begins with sound and vision. The thick, opaque fog that conceals the town of Silent Hill is part of the story’s instantly recognisable iconography, and the remake’s impressive modern volumetric effects mean it feels thicker and more isolating than ever. Moving away from the monster-infested streets should feel like an escape, but instead you’re forced to find shelter in some of the dankest, most depressingly disgusting residences you’ve ever seen. Much of Silent Hill 2 is themed around a descent, and there’s a clear gradient in the visual texture of each area that communicates that downward spiral. Locations initially feel unkempt and abandoned, such as apartment blocks with peeling wallpaper and empty cupboards. But push onwards and the architecture becomes increasingly oppressive. Recognisable shapes and textures are replaced with rougher, broken alternatives, and eventually the entire area becomes a rusting, decayed husk. What starts as unnerving transforms into truly nightmarish the further you dare to press on.

Contributing to all this, as horror tradition demands, is minimal lighting. You are locked inside dark buildings for the majority of the game’s lengthy runtime (anything from 12 to 18 hours, depending on your playstyle). This becomes increasingly distressing, particularly during exploration of Toluca Prison – the facility’s lights can only be turned on for a few seconds at a time, forcing you to sprint between breaker switches in a mostly doomed attempt to hold back the darkness. Being starved of the sun for such long stretches means that the mere sight of daylight is like gasping for air after spending what feels like days beneath water. It’s deeply, unpleasantly effective.

That visual palette is accompanied not so much by a musical score, but by the most oppressive collection of noises your ears have ever suffered, provided once again by original Silent Hill 2 composer Akira Yamaoka. It’s particularly effective in the late game, when what sounds like an approaching beast is dynamically woven into the orchestration during times of high tension. It makes you second guess every sound you hear, and over time it grinds away at your sense of reality. It’s not easy to simulate insanity, but this soundscape is as close as you can (un)comfortably get.

The most impressive, unsettling achievement is inflicting empathy through gameplay design.

Effective art and sound design has been the flagship feature of many horror games, but these disciplines are the surface of the experience. I don’t mean that disparagingly – the surface is vital – but it’s what’s beneath that truly cements the terror. Games like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space are, in reality, action games with horror masks, and so are rarely ever truly scary. Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, is a horror game right down to its nerve endings and bone marrow. Its environment and objective design pull on similar threads to the art and sound, constantly seeking new ways to unnerve you. Each location visited is an obtuse puzzle to be solved. You’re forced to walk circuits of each floor, backtracking to find keys or hidden entrances to rooms that will once again send you backwards to progress. This almost spiral-shaped route through the apartments, hospital, hotel and more forces you to endure increasing mental exhaustion.

This fatigue, combined with the seemingly relentless length of each area, robs you of hope. It’s particularly horrible in the final third, when you’re forced to navigate the prison and the subsequent labyrinth back-to-back with absolutely no respite. These locations feature long stretches of near-impenetrable darkness, thematically grim puzzle work, and the most aggressive, grotesque enemies in the entire game. The resulting emotional toll effectively communicates the mental space that the protagonist James Sunderland finds himself in. And that’s Bloober’s, and by extension Team Silent’s, most impressive, unsettling achievement: the ability to inflict empathy through gameplay design.

The miserable tone of Silent Hill 2 is maintained through a number of other gameplay tricks. As mentioned earlier, the story revolves around James’ descent into horror, and that’s represented both metaphorically through the visual design, and literally through a frequent need to jump into pitch-black holes. Each leap requires you to press the action button a couple of times, replicating his hesitancy and reluctance to leap into the unknown.

As the atmosphere becomes increasingly unbearable, there’s nothing built into the campaign to offer any levity or security. In the Resident Evil series, for instance, you gradually collect an increasingly powerful arsenal, allowing the late-game to be an exciting, explosive romp through blood and guts. It also toys with its dialogue and monster design, often opting for goofy characterisation that secures the series its beloved ‘cheesy horror’ credentials. Last year’s Alan Wake 2, despite clearly being inspired by Team Silent’s work, features absurdist humour and Lynchian direction to lean into the weird instead of horrifying, allowing for laughs to cut through the tension. Silent Hill 2, though, has none of this. For the most part your weapons are a broken pipe and a pistol, and even when you do get access to something a little more hard-hitting it’s nothing more than a simple shotgun or rifle with a long reload time and limited ammo. Alongside a difficulty curve that sees familiar enemies become erratic, wall-crawling freaks, Silent Hill 2’s atmosphere consistently finds ways to suffocate you.

Silent Hill 2 isn’t about having fun, it’s about exploring parts of the human experience we traditionally avoid.

It’s not usual for an assessment to use terms like ‘suffocate,’ ‘oppressive,’ and ‘miserable’ as positives, but horror is not a usual genre. It’s one of only two entertainment categories built around eliciting an uncontrollable response from the audience (the other being comedy). Horror is an emotion-manipulating machine, and the genre’s most effective stories can force us to experience feelings we typically don’t encounter in our everyday lives. Horror films spend their entire runtimes exerting different levels of pressure in order to achieve that manipulation, and the most effective etch images in our mind that continually reappear when the lights go out.

Video games are a very different medium, though, and their experiential nature enables them to manipulate us in more intense ways. Rather than ask us to observe, they demand that we interact, typically for four, five, sometimes even 10 times longer than an average scary movie. This can force us to experience a very different reality. While there’s a frequent insistence from some parts of the player community that games are only about fun or escapist entertainment, that’s often not the goal of many developers. Sometimes that goal is communicating uncomfortable ideas, and the path to that is through exposing us to a reality that’s deeply unpleasant. Silent Hill 2 isn’t about having fun, it’s about exploring grief and guilt – parts of the human experience that we traditionally avoid. Strangely, there’s an uncomfortable thrill in actively exploring those ideas via a video game.

The 2001 original’s technical limitations helped contribute a few thorns to that painful experience; the semi-fixed camera made environments feel restrictive and claustrophobic, and the awkward aiming installed each encounter with a sense of desperation. Bloober Team’s remake prunes those thorns, replacing them with modern third-person controls that make the experience a little friendlier to play. But those are the only significant concessions provided, so while combat sequences are perhaps a little less panicked than they once were, Team Silent’s nightmarish vision is preserved. It means the remake is a modern reminder not just of an era where Konami was a master of survival horror, but also the significant power of Silent Hill 2’s unrelenting misery.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor.