Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 is finally here and its just as bold and disturbing as we had hoped.

This 2024 remake of the the classic 2001 psycho-sexual horror game has managed to successfully blend all of the key elements of the original with the technical gameplay advancements necessary to win over a modern audience.

Gone is the fixed camera angle in favor of a more modern over-the-shoulder perspective. Combat is likewise updated, and enemies are cleverer, dodging and skittering away from James’ attacks, and often lying in wait behind furniture for the right moment to strike. Resource management is also fair, but never generous enough to give the player a sense of ease. And the game’s various puzzles are a combination of classics from the original with a few new additions. Finally, the map now plays a vital role in exploration without offering the player a safe-haven.

As in the original, we find ourselves playing as James Sunderland (Luke Roberts), a grieving widower who comes to the misty, rain-soaked, and now very much dilapidated town of Silent Hill. Silent Hill wan’t always like this, we are told. In fact, the spot was once a favorite romantic haunt of James’ wife, Mary (Salome Gunnarsdottir), who begged James to take her back one day, although he never did.

It appears (the story is left deliberately vague on the details) Mary has in the intervening years died of caner, or as the story refers to it — that damned disease — and James’ return is a solo one. Or is it?

Mary has left James a letter telling him she’s waiting for him, and despite knowing in his heart she is dead, he is compelled to search for her anyway. And so begins James’ slog through the streets, buildings, and apartments of Silent Hill, as it slowly gives way to a nightmarish vista that forces James to face the reality of his wife’s death and his own remorse and shame.

At its core, Silent Hill 2 is a psychological horror but the remake adds a new layer of emotional resonance with themes of guilt, grief, remorse, shame and depression taking centre stage in its narrative. In fact, the game can feel relentlessly miserable and deeply disturbing at times.

Enemies come in grotesque fetishized form: straight-jacketed torsos totter along on stripper heels. Others are female body parts sewn and bandaged together. The classic nurses look more like decayed bodies in “sexy nurse” costumes, but wield iron pipes. And then there’s the iconic Pyramid Head who is just as just as terrifying and inscrutable as ever. These characters serve as deadly placeholders for James’ repressed desires, as does Maria, a playful and seductive version of the more buttoned up Mary.

Immersive, stunningly detailed, and superbly atmospheric, Silent Hill 2 is a triumphant success for Bloober Team, and a horror entry that won’t be forgotten in the decades to come.

However despite its towering strengths, the remake it not without its flaws, and in particular a single glaring one. In Silent Hill 2, every female character in the game is a passive victim of abuse, and none have any real agency over their fates.

Dead Mary is a forgiving and accepting victim of James’ violence, frustration, and desire to be free of her, while Angela, a sexual assault survivor, never finds peace or respite from her trauma. Even Maria, Mary’s sexy, freewheeling doppelgänger is Pyramid Head’s victim, and the game’s ending does nothing to represent her in any other light.

While it wasn’t unusual for female characters to serve as one-dimensional plot devices, unresisting victims, and various means to various ends for male antagonists twenty years ago, games have come a long way since that time. Ellie from The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy, and Control’s Jesse Faden are just a handful of examples of characters who feel like real and lived-in characters with their own thoughts, desires, fears, and hopes. They come with depth, compelling stories, and contributions to the evolution of female representation in gaming. It’s a shame that Bloober Team couldn’t find a way to update a tired trope along with the other game elements. What might Mary, Maria, or Angela have to say if given meatier roles?

Our score: 8/10. A visual masterpiece, Silent Hill 2 is a both terrifying and emotionally resonant remake of a classic horror game, that almost nails every detail beautifully.

Genre: Survival Horror

Platform: PS5, Windows

Release: October 8 2024

Studio: Bloober Team

Publisher: Konami Digital Entertainment