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Silent Hill 2 (2024) is another remake where the term remake is to be taken loosely, since this game changes so many aspects of the original that it is better defined as a new game based on the identity of the classic it claims to remake.
Fixed camera angles and tank controls, key aspects of the original that go hand in hand, are no more. And frankly, despite being a huge fan of the original, in my opinion this is the one thing the remake does right. Tank controls were never an issue for me, but the constantly changing camera and lack of ability to see ahead in most scenes don't make for the best gameplay experience in the original. In contrast just walking around and exploring feels more natural and fun in the remake (although the interaction with objects being tied to the camera is really, really annoying on the other hand).
The combat however still remains a mixed bag. It's not uncommon to read complaints online about how awful the original's combat supposedly is. I find myself disagreeing with this notion: only melee combat is bad in the original, while shooting at enemies with guns works perfectly fine. And all that's missing is a means for James to quickly get out of harms way when an enemy is about to deliver an attack on him. Like... a dodge button, which is exactly what Bloober Team implemented in the remake. Unfortunately they also increased the hit points of enemies and made them more aggressive, so at the end of the day melee combat remains rather tedious. Actually, it's worse now because there are easily more than twice as many enemies to fight and trying to run past them is more dangerous. Generally if you're on your first playthrough and want to explore the game in peace you're pretty much forced to take out every enemy there is. A stark contrast to the original where it's easy to run past monsters lurking in corridors.
However combat in the remake gets much better when ranged weapons are involved. Staggering enemies by shooting weak spots and finishing them off with melee weapons feels very dynamic and fun. Unfortunately James' new dodge has too many invincibility frames and almost always cancel his attack animations: you end up feeling too powerful, almost entirely removing any tension from one-on-one encounters. Fans of the remake claim it's more difficult but I honestly barely felt that playing on normal mode. Resources are somewhat scarce early on, but the game later hands them out like candy just like the original did.
Fighting multiple monsters at once is as annoying as it was in the original. You can barely see anything because of how close the camera zooms in on enemies that James bashes on when going melee and the ridiculous tracking and auto targeting make it impossible to aim at more than one target. Not even the shotgun has spread damage to deal with multiple enemies directly in front of James (this is also a problem in the original, every ranged weapon is the same mechanically since they only differ in their damage and reload times). Long story short, combat in the remake is more fun if you got a gun and face only one enemy. Otherwise it's even more tedious than facing monsters in the original.
People mostly remember the original for it's strong atmosphere and great visual design ("for its time"), but it's got outstanding level design and pacing. If played with attention there's always a hint that nudges James in the right direction without railroading him too much. Dungeons feel terrifying, claustrophobic and oppressive, but only last for about an hour each. Enemies in town can easily be avoided, since there's nothing to explore anyways, so the town segments allow players to calm down and mentally prepare for the next dungeon. The remake on the other hand plays like a bad day at work that seems to find no end. Dungeons were massively expanded and now take at least two — not uncommonly three to five — hours each to explore with very little variety in the environment's design. The level design railroads James so much that it's impossible to get lost, both inside of dungeons and when exploring the town. Ultimately the horrendous amounts of padding make the remake a chore to play and cancel out every benefit one might have from the higher resolution visuals and improvements to combat and camera.
Bloober Team managed to get the atmosphere of later dungeons (from the Historical Society building onwards) right, but failed to hit many nuances that made even the apartments and Brookhaven incredibly terrifying at times. The first half of the remake feels like a waste of time, and the second half stresses you out from the neverending sense of dread. I try giving the game another chance with new game plus, but it's just not that fun and the memory of how long every dungeon is only makes me want to quit out all the time.
The adaptation of the original's story is surprisingly fine, although the characters were slightly rewritten and in some cases inappropriately changed in appearance. Cutscenes were also needlessly expanded, but it's not as bad as the endless slog of trotting through the game itself. There's nuances the remake ruins, but the main plot is intact and I feel like that's good enough for a remake (although definitely no appropriate replacement!). There's a famous cutscene in the labyrinth that was recreated terribly, but on average Bloober Team's cutscene team did a better job than I expected them to.
At least the remake largely manages to recreate the original's atmosphere and fear factor. In some places it's even scarier, but Bloober Team relies on many explicit tricks to unnerve you instead of relying on sound and visuals alone like the original does in many scenes. So unfortunately the subtle horror of the original is for the most part gone. For example the jumpscare in one of the prison's toilets genuinely scares me in the original, while the remake's adaptation almost makes me laugh because it's so overplayed.
There's potential here. Throw out all the new dungeons and put in the originals (with their puzzles, because the way Bloober stretched even those out by putting new layers on them is just silly), remove the i-frames from James' dodge, make enemies behave like they do in the original with their original hit points and I'm sure this would be a much more fun game to play. It would also be possible to optionally put the fixed camera angles back in because the lack of a dodge button was the only mechanical problem of the original's gameplay anyways. Then give James the means to damage more than one enemy with the shotgun to fix the annoyance in facing multiple enemies. Make resources scarcer so players can't just gun everything down willy-nilly and it should make for an acceptable difficulty level too. Silent Hill games were never about the survival challenge and always stood out for their excellent atmosphere and creative ways to make players feel afraid, there is no good reason to turn the games into run-off-the-mill action shooters.
Anways, maybe I'm making this remake sound worse than it is. For players that can't get used to the original's controls this is better than not experiencing Silent Hill 2 at all. And speaking for myself I enjoyed the challenge of pushing through the scarier parts of this game, if nothing else. Despite the heavier focus on action gameplay this release is a proper survival horror through and through.