Last Month I had finally finished playing Silent Hill 2 Remake after a very long playthrough on the PlayStation 5. Of the Silent Hill series, I have only previously played 3 on the PlayStation 2 years ago, which I remember really enjoying. I’ve seen videos of PT back in 2015, and have been upset that they canceled it ever since. Silent Hill F being released this year, and with the characters and setting, I have been dying to play it (although hearing disappointing reviews is a bit… well… disappointing). I decided to play SH2R due to it being on sale on the PlayStation Network, going in to it with positive thoughts and ready for an amazing story. Boy… was I wrong.

Growing up I had already looked into the story of SH2, with James looking for his wife, Mary, that was thought to have passed away, and Pyramid Head being a physical manifestation of James’ internal issues. I have read people hype up the original and remake like no other. The remake was praised for the voice acting and staying true to the original, which was on my list of games I would love to play. When I actually started it, I struggled to get through it.

Starting off, the game is graphically beautiful. They did an amazing job at rendering the scenery, both the real world and the other world. The characters and enemies also look great, although I feel like that’s where my enjoyment stops. You don’t actually get to enjoy a lot of the scenery because you are too busy trying to play the game through darkness, with only a small circle of brightness due to your flashlight (which is a poor excuse for a flash light). The character’s voice actors are all monotone, and even when there is some sort of emotion, it still comes off as monotone. There is very few enemy variety within the game, and you see the same four enemies throughout the game, with the exception of bosses. As much as I love the Silent Hill nurses, with only two variants it feels lackluster.

We start out the game meeting James Sunderland, who is brought to the town of Silent Hill because he recently received a letter from his wife Mary, who has supposedly been deceased for the past three years due to a terminal disease. This in itself should have been the first red flag, but I can understand curiosity (and I mean, the ending does explain it haha). James leaves his car at the entrance of the town, going through the forest and eventually coming upon a cemetery. This is where he meets Angela, who is looking for her mother. She immediately gets defensive about the town, telling James not to go due to it being dangerous. Should this have been another red flag? I would think yes but we look past that to continue on the game.

I actually really enjoyed exploring the actual town of Silent Hill in the fog, because there is a lot of detail put in it. It takes you through a junkyard, a flower store, some bars, all different kinds of buildings that are falling apart. This is really well done, and if I could take everything out and just explore the town I’d be thrilled! You meet some lying figures, and then some mannequins, and eventually I grew tired of these enemies.

James made his way into some apartments, which is our first introduction to Laura, the young girl who we later find out was friends with Mary at the same hospital, who picks on and teases James throughout the game. This is also where we are introduced to Pyramid Head, who I feel like we could actually see standing behind some bars in one of the apartment halls. We have our first run in with him though up close and personal when it comes to him and some mannequins. James is hiding in a closet, watching this all happen, and then eventually decides to follow Pyramid Head through the door to the other world apartments. Third red flag, and we are just following the creature that is essentially built like a wall through a creepy doorway to what looks like hell.

We also meet Eddie, a man who has been bullied for his weight, who immediately denies killing someone who is currently stuffed in a refrigerator. At first, for a brief second, you can feel bad for him but he is another character that I found unlikeable, and just found him annoying. James leaves Eddie in the room by himself, exploring more of the apartments.

Eventually after running around and solving some puzzles, we make it to the lake! James thinks he is going to see Mary here, because he thinks this is where she meant by their special place, but instead he find Maria, who (really doesn’t at all to anyone with a set of eyes) looks like Mary. Maria is immediately flirty with James, who is turned off and focused on finding his wife instead. Maria instead joins James in exploring the town, making suspicious comments that only Mary would know.

James and Maria go through the motel, the hospital, and the prison-labyrinth, sometimes traveling to the other world, sometimes not, but encountering a bunch of the same three types of monsters. In one of the chases, Maria is stabbed in the stomach by Pyramid Head, which shakes James up. We find out that Angela was brought here because of her father and brother’s abuse, which was formed into the Abstract Daddy, which wasn’t a terrible fight but repetitive. We also find out that Eddie was brought here because he killed a dog of one of his bullies, which he doesn’t have a monster form. His boss is just fighting Eddie in a shootout in a large refrigerated room with the bodies of something hanging down.

Once we finally get to the hotel, James finally has a discussion with Laura, who gives him a letter from Mary to her. It is stated that Mary wanted to adopt Laura, but Laura didn’t like James because of how he treated Mary. She also goes to give James a letter from Mary to him, but the envelope is empty, so she runs off to go look for it. After some exploration of the hotel, James finds a video in his and Mary’s room that they previously stayed at, admitting that he actually smothered his wife, murdering her.

After navigating the hotel, which is now quickly falling apart, James finds Maria alive, but then immediately killed by two Pyramid Heads. This is a quick battle, and rather easy if they are both corralled together. He gets some eggs to unlock the doors to this area, and eventually climbing the metal staircase to the top level to find Mary bedridden. A battle between James and Mary ensues, and eventually she is destroyed.

The ending I had gotten was the “in water” ending, where James drives himself into Toluca Lake. Honestly I wasn’t playing with any specific ending in mind, with me accepting whatever I got. After the frustration from this game, I don’t plan on replaying it for a different ending, so it is what it is!

I have to stress, every single speaking character in this game is monotone besides Laura, who is the only character who can apparently show any sort of emotion. I can’t name one character I fully enjoyed and could say was a great character in this entire game. Even when they were showing emotion, they were still monotone and nasally. There was variety in personalities but at the same time there wasn’t. Every speaking character was just super bland.

I feel bad that I didn’t like it, even though I know I shouldn’t. I know James wasn’t supposed to be a good character, and that he did bad things and was internally fighting it. I know the rest of the adults that were brought to Silent Hill were all fighting something. I just didn’t like how any of this game was presented, besides the scenery. Also the fact that I remember loving Heather in Silent Hill 3, and completing the game from start to finish doesn’t help with how I feel towards SH2. It’s been so long since I played it, but I preferred Heather’s character and timid personality rather than James, because I feel like it’s more appropriate for a 17 year old rather than a full fledge adult. It also didn’t help that Matt was playing Resident Evil 2 Remake at the same time, and Leon Kennedy’s character is just so much more likeable and capable of holding his own instead of just awkwardly stumbling through everything (although I just recently found out Leon was not officially a cop, he was going through training during the events of RE2 so that’s interesting to me).

To close this out, I am happy I finally played SH2R, but I will never go back to this game ever again. I made it through it, and I am glad I didn’t stream it because of how incredibly frustrating this game was to play. I still want to give SHF a shot, and I would still love to replay SH3 and the other games in the series, but boy oh boy was this a rough one.