You know the Silent Hill 2 remake, the one that we learned at yesterday’s PlayStation State of Play is coming out on October 8, 2024? Well, alongside the release date trailer, Konami also shared 13 minutes of gameplay during the following Silent Hill Transmission that offered a slightly more in depth look at, well, gameplay, and our resident Silent Hill head’s now had a chance to digest it.
Yep, get ready Bloober Team, we’ve got someone on our team who eats horror stuff for breakfast, and she’s been kind enough to share some brief impressions of your little gameplay video with me. Obviously, if you’re reading this as a horror nut yourself, feel free to draw your own conclusions from the gameplay.
You can find said 13 minutes of gameplay below, by the way. Now, here’s what our guides writer – Kelsey – drew from it in brief. First of all, in general the game seems much brighter in comparision to the original, not as dirty, grainy, or dark as Kelsey remembers or might have ideally hoped. She does acknowledge that perhaps the original appearance of Silent Hill 2 was a product of the times we need to move past, but we’re not entirely convinced.
While they do welcome the shift in camera angle and various modernisations, Kelsey hopes that these won’t lead the game to maybe feel a bit more like Resident Evil than Silent Hill, though this is something the game’s difficulty could help dispel – though obviously how tricky or frustrating it is won’t really be known until it arrives.
Similarly, Kelsey thinks that – much like in the combat trailer for the game that dropped earlier this year – “James seems a little too powerful/badass compared to the original”. She worries that this might detract from “the scare factor that added to the original game, which is all about this ‘everyman’ dude and how, honestly, cowardly and desperate he is as a result of his experiences and guilt”. Finally, the appearances of the monsters get a thumbs up. Though, it would be difficult to go wrong with Masahiro Ito behind their designs.
So, there you go, lingering questions as to whether the scumminess and s**t-your-pants terrifiying vibes will live up to the task from our resident scum and pant-shitting terror expert. Let us know how you felt about this slice of gameplay from a title that’ll give you a mask of Mira the Shiba Inu to stick on James’ bonce if you pre-order its standard edition.