Silent Hill 2 review

Finished Silent Hill 2. It was something of a disappointment. The graphics are clearly better than the original, and the fog effects are lovely… but it relies heavily on the stalest of clichés and arbitrary restrictions to railroad you. Entire buildings gratuitously have all their windows boarded over so you have to wander around in the dark. I lost count of the number of times I had to jump into a pit, uncertain of what was at the bottom. As the game went on it became more and more linear, and the puzzles got worse too. (Was there any logic to the cube room? Who the hell buys light bulbs in tins?)

My guess is that it was a rush job. The monsters show a lack of variety, and the fire effect towards the end looks cheesy and unconvincing. I also have a bias against games that use the teleporting map trick, where if you walk through a door from A to B and then back the other way through the same door, you don’t end up at A; and the “objects appear in places you’ve already visited for no apparent reason” trick.

Verdict: Creepy fun, especially at the start; worth buying when it drops to $20, maybe not worth fighting all the way through to the end.