Silent Hill 2 Was Clumsy, Brutal and Brilliant

The survival horror masterpiece Silent Hill 2 features some of the most ungainly combat ever included in a video game. You play as James Sunderland, a grieving widower who has received a letter that purports to have been written by his wife. You must make your way through a mysterious fog-enshrouded town while fending off the monsters that inhabit it, and you are barely up to the task.

Your primary means of self-defense are a length of steel pipe and a flimsy wooden plank, both of which are awkward to wield. Winding up to swing takes an unreasonably long time. If you connect, you’re left defenseless while taking a moment to recover.

When you eventually find a gun, you have little ammunition, and aiming is so delicate that you almost always miss. There’s not even much incentive to fight: Vanquished foes don’t drop items or power-ups, and defeating them doesn’t earn you experience points. Faced with an enemy in the 2001 game, it’s nearly always better just to run away.

In its remake of Silent Hill 2 that was released for the PlayStation 5 and PC this week, the Polish developer Bloober Team has pointedly addressed this clumsiness.

A glowing review in IGN explains that the remake “smoothly polishes down the rough edges of the original game’s combat” by integrating an over-the-shoulder targeting system and dodge and parry movements that allow James “to nimbly sidestep around lurching enemies or the streams of acidic bile they spew.” In keeping with other modern horror games, the new Silent Hill 2 makes players feel quick, agile and powerful.

But this is not an improvement. In fact, it’s a betrayal of the original game and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what made it so compelling.