I was a Silent Hill 2 remake skeptic until I played its first 3 hours

When Konami first announced that it was remaking the horror classic Silent Hill 2, I was an immediate skeptic.

The original game is one of those wholly unique creative visions that just felt impossible to replicate. How could a studio intentionally capture the stilted voice acting or jerky animations of the original, aesthetic decisions that gave that game an off-kilter unease that made it so special? I especially had reservations about The Medium developer Bloober Team taking up that task, as it’s a studio whose games have occasionally felt like they were trying a bit too hard to recreate an atmosphere born from PS2-era tech limitations.

After playing the first three hours of Bloober’s take on Silent Hill 2, my fears have melted away. It’s immediately clear that the studio understood the difficult assignment ahead of it. The remake keeps a firm handle on the visceral eeriness of one of the horror genre’s greatest games, all while expanding it in ways that are careful not to trounce on its signature mystique. While it’s sure to be divisive no matter what, the naysayers may be in for one heck of a surprise this October.

Return to Silent Hill

My lengthy demo covers a lot of ground, from the very opening scene through some puzzling in the unnerving Blue Creek Apartments complex. The similarities and differences are immediately clear from the first few minutes of that stretch. Its Unreal Engine 5 visual upgrade makes a splash right away as I get more nuance from James Sunderland’s tortured little face. It’s almost uncanny. When I make my way to the town cemetery and meet Angela, an iconic sequence from the original, it’s almost otherworldly. These hyper-detailed characters stand out in front of the cloud-like fog that billows behind them, like they’re floating in another universe.

I’m not sure what to make of it at first, but I’m slowly sold on it the deeper I get into the story. What makes those moments work is the remake’s new voice cast. Bloober Team worked with an