#The Labyrinth SH2

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[2-d-rogue]

I haven't the faintest what happened here.

[rin-hanarin]

I'm watching several Silent Hill 2 Remake playthroughs, and I realized that I miss Maria's over-exaggerated plasticine facial expressions the most. I like her design overall, but the way her face was moving and stretching in the OG was so weird and on brand for the FMVs of its time, yet her mocap actress in Remake barely emoted at all, so Maria was just kinda flat in both of her most important scenes.

[aether-friskets]

I have over 400 hours on vrchat and most of that was spent using the Silent Hill 2 map as a reference for my Minecraft recreation lmao

[la-horrorosa]

AAI2 Manosouta x SH2 AU

I made a super self-indulgent Manosouta AU because they're extremely perfect for it and I'll never be over SH.

Basically this AAI2/SH2 AU plays out months after the endgame, Simeon is just getting used to life in prison but he definitely isn’t making personal progress processing his guilt over what he did to Bronco

-Because the prison they’re in is going through renovations, prisoners are arranged to a temporal transfer to a different prison, and said prison is a pretty suspicious place with claims of being haunted, although nobody really cares, and nothing noteworthy happens for the first few days.

-Simeon is nervous, because he realizes he’s being observed by a young prison guard that bears a striking resemblance to Bronco. And then, slowly, he starts to notice weird things about the prison.

-He leans to Kanis for support, but the old man warns him about not letting his senses be fooled by what’s around him. He can sense that something about the prison is very odd.

-The mysterious prison guard decides to make small-talk with Simeon, and he introduces himself as Horacio, and even his voice is oddly familiar. Simeon tries to avoid him, but by that time, strange walls and new stairs and rooms begin to appears through the prison, making him get lost easily and making him get punished for ‘trying to sneak away’ from authorized zones.

(Content Warning: blood, minor gore, body horror.)

-The following day Kanis tells him that Helmut is scared, which is why he refuses to leave his cell. For days, Simeon tries to stay inside the prison cell with Kanis as much as possible, and for a while, things appear to stay relatively normal.

-However, during the nights, Simeon can almost swear that he hears a wet breathing near their cell’s door.

-One day, however, the guards tell Simeon that he’s got a phone call from outside prison, which he hesitantly goes to respond. The caller is Edgeworth, who is trying to confirm if he’s been transferred… but the phone call gets abruptly cut off by weird gurgling noises.

-When an unsettled Simeon leaves the phone behind to return to his cell, he finds the hall completely transformed and desolated. He gets lost again, but just when he thinks he finds someone other than him, he realizes that it’s not even a person.

-Simeon finds himself running around a labyrinth where monsters that look like monkeys are hunting him for sport. Just when he’s about to get slashed down, however, he is saved at the last minute by Horacio, the prison guard.

-Horacio seems oddly calm, but he himself acknowledges that while prison has been weird for a while, this was the first time he’s seen monsters. Reluctantly, Simeon decides to tag along with Horacio for a way out. When talking to Horacio to fill in the silence, he begins to realize that personality-wise, he’s very different from Bronco.

-At first, Simeon is hesitant to depend on Horacio, finding his earnest nature a bit fake and jarring, but the longer they stay together, the more it unsettles him how much this Horacio wants to put himself in harm’s way just to keep Simeon safe.

-They manage to find a prison wing where the supernatural hasn’t touched the inmates, and when Simeon goes to find Kanis and Helmut, Horacio has already gone his own separate way. Seemingly, the other prison guards and inmates have been completely unaware of the shifting architecture of the prison and the presence of monsters.

-Simeon attempts to explain what he’s been through, but all Kanis has to say is the same as before with other words. Kanis very sternly tells him that something that lives in this prison has taken hold of him, and only Simeon himself can pry himself out of it now. He gives him one of his bells as a charm before going to bed.

-The following day, Simeon wakes in his cell all alone. Not a single soul seems to be in the building.

-In his search for a way out, Simeon begins to encounter more monsters, increasingly impossible structures and turns in the prison… and surprisingly, Horacio. “So... I told the warden about the monsters, but they didn’t believe me.” “OF COURSE THEY WOULDN’T, YOU IDIOT!”

-In their new partnership, Simeon can’t stop thinking about how Horacio is increasingly less gentle, and the gap between him and Bronco seems to be closing.

-He reaches a point in which being near Horacio just makes Simeon physically him ill, which makes Horacio upset. Some of Bronco’s mannerisms are beginning to mesh into Horacio, sometimes for the worse. The longer it goes on, the more it messes with Simeon’s sanity and all the ugly feelings he has about Bronco.

-Horacio is beginning to say out loud things that he shouldn’t be able to know about Simeon, and in a quiet moment of realization, Horacio looks bothered and unsettled, because he knows he shouldn’t know.

-In a heated moment between them, a horse-head monster attacks them, wounding Horacio lethally… and Simeon finds himself uselessly watching him cry and babble as he bleeds out.

-Simeon spends a long time watching the corpse of Horacio, sometimes wondering if he’s not seeing Bronco’s body instead. When he finally has the energy to leave him behind, his sanity reaches its lowest point.

-Simeon gets lost again, but through the bell that Kanis gave him, he brute-forces himself to fight back the monsters he encounters in the labyrinth.

-… Until he finally enters a new room, with a familiar person behind a cell, waiting for him.

And... that's all what I got so far. You could say it follows the same beats SH2 does to a T, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. But I need to put these characters in situations, so it's okay!

I probably will drawa few more things related to this, in case anybody cares!

[goodlouse]

my thoughts on the two most recent games i've played (mouthwashing and silent hill 2 (2001)) which i've been thinking about alternately for the past few days for similar reasons

going to mention spoilers in here but this post will probably only be fully comprehensible to ppl who have experienced both games

not expecting many to read this but tumblr is quickly becoming my outlet for opinions that I can't rlly post on very public sites like tiktok where any criticism of a media means that I hate it and hate you for liking it. haterism be damned I actually got a net positive from playing both of these games!!

so I started playing silent hill 2 (original because I do not believe in/have the money to buy modern remakes) fresh off the back of silent hill 1 which is a game I REALLY enjoyed. I would EVEN say that sh1 is my number 1 cosiest game of the year.

sh2 is dirtier, bleaker and sleazier than sh1, and is lacking a lot of the occult aspects that I really liked. it's also like one of the most talked about games ever so like . i went into it with the knowledge of a few major plot beats and it took a long time playing to be able to take the game on its own terms.

i also took a little break halfway thru the game to stream mouthwashing for some curious friends. mouthwashing is a game thats very popular w streamers & youtubers and their audiences, so major plot points are also incredibly talked about. I mentioned this to a friend while setting up the game and he said I'll get something out of it anyway and then compared it to silent hill 2, which I kind of brushed off as a "psychological horror w unreliable narrator" thing (sorry choccy if you ever read this) but it turns out the two games are actually very similar in the way they draw my ire LOL

these things being: -sexual assault victim who doesn't have time in the plot to exist outside of her trauma. this is partially due to both plots being very tight and concise with no elements that don't serve a higher function BUT -this is then undermined by certain areas of gameplay dragging. for mouthwashing especially the last ~45 minutes felt very weirdly paced and unfortunately made me think of ppl who speedrun garten of banban in under 2hrs to get the steam refund, which resulted in later chapters being padded w drawn out segments.

The friends I was streaming for that have consumed more media than I have said that a lot of tropes in the game felt a bit derivative, but I don't know the things its deriding from BUT I wish mouthwashing would take more from the survival horrors its imitating in it's style. The gameplay between character interactions is limited to inputting codes you've read or corridors where there's only one correct route and everything else results in a reset - I think people that watched mouthwashing through a letsplayer might not truly get how understimulating that feels. Some more psychologically symbolic puzzles and riddles would not have gone amiss!

which brings me back around to silent hill 2, where I am legitimately just too stupid to do the 'collect and combine 3 items to progress' without a guide. because A) I don't intuitively clear out all rooms because I hate all combat encounters BECAUSE i am being too overly conservative with ammo so every enemy gets a fight to the death with melee weapons

i finished the game with a SURPLUS of ammo btw so that is partially on me for making myself struggle unnecessarily, but oh my goddd the prison/labyrinth section took so long!!

I also quite disliked eddie's plotline, which unfortunately literally just came down to his character design :/ his plot revolves around resentment over the way he's been treated for his appearance, but as a fat fuck myself my grievance was with the way he's been dressed by real world character designers that are falling on stereotypes. its juvenile in a way that betrays the subtlety of the rest of the game, and makes him seem infantile despite being so essential to james's arc. I genuinely think that a wardrobe change would have silenced my gut reaction of "what are they trying to say with this?", and its disappointing to see that the remake didn't take the opportunity when they did with maria

angela's plot was fascinating to me for depicting an abuse survivor with some imagery I've not really seen in other media! I think her character was written with a lot of respect, and her and eddie's plots feel like complimentary and cautionary tales to james, but it's very sad that ultimately her trauma was depicted as something that can't be lived with - this is something she shares with anya. I guess it's kind of disappointing that a womans struggle with sexual trauma ends in death in two games that are 20 years apart, I personally feel that theirs (and jimmy's suicide) is a bit of a tired trope

however. despite finishing extended periods of both sh2 and mouthwashing feeling annoyed and frustrated that they werent as tight as the rest of the game, but now that I've had days to process them my mind has been lingering on a few moments.

-pleasantly surprised by how legitimately startling pyramid heads introduction, really good use of unsettling imagery -sh's soundtracks always hit at the moments it counts -the last hour of sh2 had me in tears, mary's letter was bittersweet and I love how the tone completely changes depending on the ending. as someone that likes the occult stuff in the other sh games I loooove the implications of the rebirth ending but I appreciate it seems a bit left field in this standalone plot

-jim & curly's ladder conversation in the cockpit, I think that one stuck with me especially as the one defining moment in both of their outlooks, the wealth and status inequality that still leaves both of them wanting more out of their lives.. the guilt and resentment that can come of circumstantial success etc etc -similarly the dead pixel convo -swansea's honest monologue -the glitch effect after anya's suicide was REALLY cool visually, it felt like the one defining moment where mouthwashing really took advantage of its medium

TLDR I feel like I learned a bit about what I like and dislike in psychological horror by playing these two side by side, defintely interesting research while I'm drafting a horror comic with a dreamlike atmosphere... :)

[stick-or-treat]

SOME THINGS I LOVED ABOUT THE SH2 REMAKE PART 3 in no particular order, heavy spoilers

Those incredibly tense seconds of Pyramid Head absolutely looming in front of that closet door.

Damn dude why these syringes gotta be so nasty??

James stumbling into the scene with the twin Pyramid Heads looking 1000% done will live rent-free in my mind forever.

They tweaked the Leave ending so that James doesn't try to justify his behavior anymore, and that meant a lot to me.

FRANKLY JAMES SAYING "I'M SORRY" TO ANYONE, AT ANY POINT, MEANT A LOT TO ME, I have very complex feelings about James' behavior in the original so this fucked me up.

The Labyrinth has been changed to basically spell out James' emotional backstory and show through metaphor how he became the monster of his own story.

Still can't believe they took the extra Abstract Daddies out??

The last thing I was expecting was for a Closer to just KOOL-AID MAN INTO A FUCKING CONFERENCE ROOM.

The monsters that don't fight you back. :(

god that part where you turn around and head down a ladder and PYRAMID HEAD IS JUST STANDING THERE STARING AT YOU BECAUSE HE WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME AAAAHHHHH

[2x4plank]

Got a shameful confession to make.

I deleted SH2 from my PS5 in a moment of frustration. Surprised even myself, as a fool who loves ultra hard permadeath. But I was twice a fool, you see, I forgot that I only like the combat to be harder when I like the combat. I really could've started out on normal and fixed it before plunging in in all my hubris. But that's only a part of the problem.

I hated fighting in this game from the start. The enemies felt like bosses on their, where they felt like they needed to flesh each and every one of them out but didn't think about how everything else functions in tandem. How survival horror tends to encourage you to run and makes it novel when you're forced to fight something. When you choose to see if you can make it after killing all the enemies in an area and being rewarded with more opportunities to explore unimpeded. SO WHAT IS THIS!

Why do so many enemies launch themselves at you, take these strange unnatural strides to close the difference, and do weird lil combo attacks? While it was just little annoying for most of the game, I think it got frustrating towards the end in the labyrinth. Namely, the mandarins.

Okay, I get it. The mandarins in the OG were kinda forgettable. It was a rare sight for them to even flick their tongues and they just kinda added noises to make you more uneasy. That does not excuse whatever foul evil their roar is in the remake. I don't know what sicko thought it's funny to disable you during combat. It isn't always this bad, though. And I'm gonna surprise myself further: I'm gonna make a positive comparison to RE6.

There is a screamer (or shrieker or yeller or whatever) enemy that stuns you temporarily, but with two players, one of you can divvy up the load, kill the hoarde of zombies. Then the other can focus entirely on the screamer. The screamer is also an above-ground enemy that despite its running around is still easy to see and kill. My friend and I still fussed about it; however, we mostly found it funny.

The new mandarin, though, just keeps spamming roar. And I feel like this would be better if there was one per area, but there tends to be multiple. And it's so LOUD. I turned my controller all the way down, tampered with different audio settings, yet that thing is absolutely shooting a shorty directly into my ear canal every two seconds.

It's under you too, so the best bet tends to be smashing it until it falls. But then there's two of them, and with how fast things tend to move in this game, it's difficult to divide and conquer. In the rotten labyrinth, I was the MOUSE.

This is another thing that's a problem for me, and might not be for most other people. Migraines and vertigo be tearing me up. And that roar attack was absolutely not helping. Who am I fighting? The Warden?

I love the mannequins, but what is with this remake and making everything a spider? It's more funny than irritating.

Also, why can't I take health items from the main menu? Maybe it's different on lower difficulties but if not...you are not RE7 baby. You will never be RE7 despite putting bugs on everything.

I would say that I enjoy most of the remake bosses. Pyramid Head's first fight was real good. Abstract Daddy wasn't bad at all. The Flesh Lips, though...

When it dropped down and started crawling, it was comical. I remember going, "I think we lost the plot." The original ones were pretty freaky, what with them sliding around like they were on some rails. But it falling down and turning into a spider was so in your face. I hate to sound like an insane homophobe who goes, "WHERE'S THE SUBTLETY!" when a gay couple is just existing, but "WHERE'S THE SUBTLETY!"

Something similar happened with all the bugs in the labyrinth. The sheer amount of them was also incredibly funny. Are you afraid of bugs, little man? There will be so many bugs. Then you will be so many afraid.

Which brings me to my next point (that flowers out into fifty other points). Whenever they have something good, they seem to want to do a lot of it. Like everyone knows about the holes. It's literally Silent Hole 2.

But James hesitancy gets on my nerves after the first time. I think they were trying to make him seem really normal. Maybe for new players who don't know the twist. Because how could this NORMAL GUY kill his wife? He's so NORMAL! He is afraid of jumping down the hole. He is afraid of reaching in the hole. He is wearing a plain jacket..he is very obviously sad at this sad situation. He is so expressive instead of being flat.

JUST JUMP IN DA HOLE LIL BRO

You're supposed to be scared the first time. Like reaching in the hole, you don't know what's in there. It's gross hole. So gross. And James apparently doesn't like playing with slime; therefore, he's a little scared and retracts before going in again. Or he tries to see the bottom and briefly considers if he's really gonna do it. Then he does it, and it's over. And he's fallen so far down that he just does not care anymore.

So have your little scene of him being scared at first. Then don't make too much of a fuss every other time, because then you're just wasting time. Especially when you don't subvert it.

And boy, does this game waste time. The OG had flash in the pan animations. But a lot of the new cutscenes/action animations are a slog that don't add anything.

There's so much padding in-between I feel like if I hadn't played it before, I would've forgotten the entire story.

Why in the world does the labyrinth need many floors? I'm on the desolate one but I felt tired of it. I took a break from God of War Ragnarök to play this and now I'm that person who cheats on their partner then complains that their mistress/mantress isn't good to them.

Originally, I related to SH2 because of the great depiction of Major Depressive Disorder. Now, I relate to SH2 by it making me relive having fight in me to just saying, "Man, I make it through what I'm in right now? Who cares about the future."

They should replace those callbacks shots with the stupid EEEUUU sound with James commenting on everything too. I mean, I'll begrudgingly accept the over the shoulder camera rather than fixed despite the glitching/issues I faced when trying to pick up items. But I feel like James having something to say was nice as it added something to see his thoughts. Not to mention having nonspoken lines vs spoken lines was one of the things that stood out to me in the OG. It made sense for commenting on items, but sometimes James would silently observe things (like Laura passing by the hospital), and it was creepy when he said nothing. Now he talks too much, yet somehow doesn't say enough.

For the most part, I would say that I don't need everything from the OG to be in the remake. But I noticed that Eddie's character has been stripped down. I'm yet to fight him. I didn't see any football posters in his vomit room or other things that are indicative of his personal hell. As much as I'd love to hear, "I HATE bowling," that doesn't feel important to Maria's character. But what got Eddie in this mess IS important to his character, and if we want us to consider this as something that can stand on its own, I feel like I'd view him as a lacking character.

Also I do not like James new face when it makes all those...expression. I gagged at the part where Pyramid Head knocks you off the hospital roof. His frowns were like those 200% face rigs people mod RE2RE with. Scariest part of the remake hands down.

All in all?

Probably a 5.5/10. It would've been a 6.5/10 but then they made me put the plank away. :(

One whole plank point off.

As I haven't beat it yet though? That's a real shaky rating. After I beat it and replay it on different difficulties, I might change my mind. First impressions are overrated anyway lol

[lightcaughtinaprism]

Some thoughts about the SH2 Remake

I never really played any of the Silent Hill originals. I just watched my Mom play 1, 2 and 3 as a teen. Yeah, my mom is 64 now but she used to be a gamer and she still loves horror. I started SH2 like two years ago on Halloween (It was kind of a Halloween ritual to replay the Sh games and i wanted to try them at some point)but the damn controls are so clunky and i died to Pyramidhead like a 100 times because of always running against a wall due to locked camera lmao. I made it to the prison in the OG. I've been hyped for PT back then but it got canceled sadly. Then after complete radio silence SH2 remake comes out and omg this is just a great remake. I've played it twice in like a marathon now. I must say it's definitely more scary. The prison and labyrinth were the worst. I have extreme arachnophobia and even Skyrim scares me because of that. I hate that the manequins now crawl like spiders and attack out of nowhere. As someone who has very sensitive ears this remake has put me on absolute edge. The sound design deserves an award. I'll definitely do a third playthrough to get the last missing ending. Although I'm dreading the prison and labyrinth already again. I've played a few horror games before loke Layers of Fear, SOMA, Alien Isolation and Amnesia but damn. The SH2 Remake put me on edge more than these. I hope Bloober remakes SH1 and 3 as well. I probably won't survive 3 as a remake as I found SH3 always more creepy than SH2.

[xenobean]

Best of luck with your sh2 playthrough!!

Thank you so much! It’s nice to get responses from peopl. The atmosphere hits hard. I’m fine when playing but afterwards I shake (surprise surprise after being more or less in fight or flight mode for some hours at a time) and especially at night I almost dread to turn on the console. In a good way, if that makes sense. Only really felt this after the prison, the only part of the game I do not want to revisit. It was so opressive and the day I reached that point I started at the nightmare hotel and then ended at the labyrinth entrance so that was quite the rollercoaster.

[crimescrimson]

The Labyrinth in Silent Hill 2 (2024)

[eldritch-elrics]

things are getting exciting in sh2r!!

i made it out of dark south vale! the second half of that area was much calmer... so much nicer. REALLY interested in the new angela scene in the park also. we learn some important things, like that angela's losing hope of finding her mom. i really like the moment where james is like "let's get out of here" and angela is like "...out of where?" which, to me, implies that her otherworld has been following her beyond just silent hill. and god, james telling her that he's looking for a little girl and then not elaborating… poor angela, we all know how her brain construes that :(

i went back into the one room in the motel on a whim and i'm SO glad i did because omg. the silent hill 3 save symbol!!! the easter eggs in this remake are top notch for sure.

it was awesome to see more objects in the silent hill historical society, but i'm really sad to lose james's commentary on so many of the paintings and such:

also, the remake added this photo: i'm pretty sure it's a room somewhere in the game but i can't think what it is?

it was really interesting how they basically didn't change the tiny sewer section at all. except for making the well puzzle way easier (yippee!) and the stupid bug room a bit less stupid (you can kill the bugs now yaaay. i'm glad it's still a little stupid though).

anyway: toluca prison! it's organized so differently in the remake. very interesting. i liked the puzzle with the scales. i also think i accept the decision to move the prisoner-judging puzzle to be the climax of the prison segment? it fits more thematically here... but also idk. putting it in the labyrinth gives you this weird sense like the labyrinth might actually be part of the prison in some twisted way. also like, putting the prisoner puzzle directly after the abstract daddy fight (and while you're still looking for maria) creates some sort of a Vibe... while also giving the player some cool-down time between two fairly intense bosses. i also think the imagery used for the prisoner puzzle in the original game (with the two rooms and all) is far more striking.

i'm also sad they got rid of the tile puzzle with the seductress/glutton/oppressor or whatever the word choices were. it was just neat to see a puzzle that was so obviously referencing james/eddie/angela and their respective vulnerabilities - and having the parallels between them playing in your mind going into the labyrinth (and especially abstract daddy) is a good thing i think.

overall though i think i was a bit frustrated with the prison. they seriously overload you with enemies in some of the sections - i fear the game is starting to lose the plot on the whole "silent hill as a series is not primarily about fighting" thing. like, sure, you always have a choice between fighting and not fighting - up to you to decide what's worth it - but i think that the general enemy density throughout the game should be a bit lower? (the new mannequin behavior of climbing walls is pretty awful in an awesome way though.)

anyway i liked this bit. i enjoyed making james cause An Incident immediately afterwards.

glad they kept this room, and: is it just me or do some of the people look like they have pyramidy heads...?

also: URINAL SAVE POINT RETURNS YAY

finally: looking back through my sh2 ps2 screenshots and goddamn is the remake missing SO much good james dialogue. like. it is a crime that they could not include this.

really really looking forward to the labyrinth next time :D

[golvio]

I’m honestly really surprised how much I liked the SH2 remake (vicariously, as I have no PS5 and watched it on a VOD of a stream by someone whose opinions about the series I respect).

Sure, there are some things they changed that I wished they hadn’t, like Maria’s new intro cutscene & music laying it on a little too thick. However, I ended up really loving the new cutscenes and the way some of the old cutscenes were reworked. The new stuff really helped contextualize the characters & their relationships better and gave them more detail/depth in some areas that were left to interpretation/speculation in the original game. I loved how the “Heaven’s Night” cutscene showed a lot of the layers of the awkwardness and tension if James and Maria’s relationship, from James’ implied struggle to avoid relapsing into alcoholism to Maria’s increasingly desperate attempts to avoid being alone. The ending scene if James rejects Maria is also incredibly heartbreaking and makes her feel more like a victim of circumstance than a ruthless, manipulative demon.

I also think the stuff with Angela was really well done. I was incredibly nervous about how they’d handle the more sensitive parts of her story after the godawful handling of Lily’s story in The Medium, but I think they pilled it off (it helped that they mostly stuck to what was already there for her dialogue, with the extra scene added to better foreshadow what would come up during the Labyrinth sequence). Her VA sounded more like a depressed young adult with a post-nonstop-crying-jag rasp & emotional deadness, and her more manic lines didn’t sound like a grown woman babytalking but someone who was forced to grow up too fast emotionally regressing. I also liked how the Abstract Daddy fight was reworked to give us more insight into her psychology while also not revealing so much that it felt exploitative & voyeuristic. Making hiding in the closet from her father part of the game mechanics & sound design (the music cuts out when you’re in a “safe room”) was a really brilliant touch, as was having her own version of the “dead person radio dialogue” coming through the televisions she later smashes.

I also liked how the updated scenes with Angela and Eddie gave us clues that James wasn’t necessarily the squeaky-clean “good” person he tried to be at the beginning of the game. He’s hilariously unqualified for anything involving trauma or deescalation. He screws up with Angela because his internalized benevolent sexism causes him to ignore her boundaries to do things he thinks would be “comforting,” like reassuringly touching her arm, that trigger her into emotional flashbacks & panic attacks. And he was pretty passive-aggressive and condescending to Eddie even if he was never an outright jerk. I think Voidburger referred to it as “Minnesota Nice,” and I agree with her—it’s this archetypal WASPy polite avoidance of rocking the boat without ever actually being truly compassionate or addressing underlying issues festering under the surface that really fits Jimbo’s conflict-avoidance early in the game. James is bottling up a lot of negative emotions, and we only get to see hints of how ugly they can be from his aggression towards the monsters, though we’re initially primed to ignore it because the monsters are Not Real People. It becomes harder to ignore when it bleeds into his interactions with other humans. It also makes both Eddie and Angela’s callouts of him during the Labyrinth more reasonable and thematically relevant. It’s not just that both Eddie and James are murderers running from their pasts, but that James is also capable of great cruelty and anger. Angela’s accusation that he wanted Mary gone was a shot in the dark based on her own trauma, but it was close enough to the truth that it hit its mark, and we see evidence for that in James’ unexamined misogyny and bottled up anger even when he’s trying to be nice. Also, I loved that we actually got to see him Repress An Emotion and dissociate in real time when he starts sobbing over Maria’s body in the labyrinth, but then just…stops with this dead-eyed expression like the mom in Hereditary getting possessed by Paimon, then robotically gets up and leaves. That was absolutely nuts, but it explains so much about What James’ Problem Is in a way even first-time players can pick up on.

I really loved the reimagining of the monsters. Each type has individualized behaviors and their own distinct “personality.” The difficulty curve gets ramped up not by introducing reskinned versions of the same monster with more health & damage, but by completely changing their behavior so your idea if How Combat Is Supposed To Work is completely upended and you’re forced out of your comfort zone. And then at the very end, when the monsters “give up” as you approach the final boss fights…that was something special. It made me wonder just how sapient & capable of emotions the other “constructs” created by the town to test & torment James actually were. I felt awful for each of them—the Lying figure gave up on life & didn’t even try to defend itself or escape, the Nurse seemed exhausted like she couldn’t pretend to move like a human anymore, and the poor Mannequin looked terrified in an extremely recognizable and “human” way. They all had glimmers of humanity in there, with the only thing holding them back being that they were less “detailed” than Maria and weren’t designed to interact nonviolently with humans. And then whether you show them mercy or kill them with as little remorse as you would their more hostile counterparts influences which ending you get? That’s not something any of the other games have ever leaned into before, and I think it was a really brilliant touch.

I wasn’t a big fan of how Pyramid Head was reworked, though. He felt a little too “cool” in his introduction to be properly uncanny and frightening, and his first fight felt a little too cinematic. The only time he felt more like his OG self was during the last boss fight in the hotel.

The boss fights all got major glow-ups because now they’re not just you unloading your shotgun/rifle into a slowly encroaching Big Guy in a cramped room. They all felt pretty unique & memorable. Even Eddie’s fight got this amazing atmosphere and sense of being a cat-and-mouse game through expanding the space, adjusting the lighting, and designing the encounter around taking cover & limited visibility. Eddie’s way quicker and more dangerous than he looks, and you feel that in his fight, even though he also operates on Horror Protagonist Bullet Sponge Rules in a way that could break immersion in a player with less suspension of disbelief. The Mandarins being upgraded into a proper enemy instead of a one-off obstacle was really cool, too. IMO it made more sense for the Mandarins to replace the Abstract Daddies in the hotel, with the original A.D. being a unique, climactic enemy specific to Angela’s storyline.

[dulveyincident]

I finished SH2 remake!! I wasn’t going to play it until I heard that, somehow, it was actually good. The trailers looked bad, and I heard from fans that Bloober was not to be trusted, but wow. It was so good—I really, really enjoyed it. I’d have to say 8/10.

My biggest complaint is that it feels a bit bloated. The prison and labyrinth, and then getting out of the Lakeview hotel. I think these locations overstayed their welcome a bit. I wish leaving Lakeview did not involve the running around that it did. Prison and Labyrinth could have had some pieces just trimmed off. Remove a few fetch quests here and there.

Cutscenes transitions were clunky at times. The fades to white at the beginning of the game were annoying, at least make it black so I’m not getting flashbanged.

Some of the emotional beats were hindered by animations and facial expressions. Overall the awkwardness of the OG has been shed by the VAs, but Laura’s face after James watches the tape, and James falling to his knees after watching Maria die again stood out as 1) not expressive enough, and 2) too expressive, or just the wrong expression. His scream was too much and the pose was silly. Angela sometimes looked a bit odd, and Maria’s face didn’t look appropriately angry when she’s chewing James out for his “anyways, im glad youre alright” line

I wish the bossfights were more unique in terms of combat. I don’t like getting to a boss and just mag dumping a few times while doing the same dodging I’ve been doing all game—this is really mostly about PH and Maria/Mary. Abstract Daddy, Eddie, the thing in the cage Laura leaves you with all felt unique because they do something with the environment even though it was mechanically the same. I wish PH felt more ritualistic, maybe less shooting based. Feels silly that shooting them ends it—I would have been fine with that not even being a fight at all. And Maria needed something to help her stand out…besides the moth clouds.

The entire part where you’re with Angela dealing with Abstract Daddy was incredible. Actually scary and heartbreaking. I want everyone to play this part of the game.

I actually enjoyed the game’s combat, but I’ve seen a lot of complaints. The minimal variety in enemy types makes getting good at fighting them easier, which is important to do. I liked that you can’t just spam M1 with your pipe, you *have* to dodge. The enemies felt real and somewhat intelligent.

The VAs I think all did an amazing job. The delivery was very genuine 9 times out of 10, especially James.

It’s just scary. You’re scared to move around carelessly, you’re watching your step. There’s this sharp breath that plays sometimes, I’m not sure if it’s just a sound that plays or if it’s James, but it sounds like a woman and always made me turn around. The sounds, lighting, the atmosphere, all of it was so well done.

Most of the puzzles are fetch quests, which is fine, but sometimes you do actually have to like. Read a thing and figure something out, which I had a lot of fun doing. It felt good to do. Nothing is hard, but they’re not all completely clear at first blush and sometimes require two seconds of thought, so. Yippee!

Yay video games!

[vamprayers]

Here are few things from SH2 Remake that in my opinion, are bad:

"""Labyrinth""" level that for me is just a room with puzzles, there's nothing to do with the original Labyrinth level that is way more scarier.

The change in the classic pizza scene with James, Eddie and Laura at the bowling

How they unnecessary extended the game.

Ofc, there are more things but I will reach the words limit if I put everything here. Besides, I agree with the points you expressed in your previous reply to my ask. What about you? What are the things that you don't like about the Remake?

Oh shit I forgot about the pizza thing — blasphemy honestly, not sure why there was change to some of the most iconic moments…?! I agree entirely. I also, for some reason, wasn’t a fan of the fact they expanded a little on the environment.

While I would normally be a fan of that, I think for Silent Hill it feels creepier and more isolated to be less accessible in terms of where to go, and what to do. The objective is to find Mary after all, and I preferred the feeling of what the hell is going on around here and being left in the dark for most of the game.

I get that they wanted to bring a more polished experience and they certainly achieved that! But I preferred the vibe of the original where you feel like something is guiding you to each area, and there’s only so much you can explore and investigate which makes you feel a lot more afraid / alone.