However, if you manage to solve puzzles yourself, the experience can end up being quite fulfilling.
On one hand, Silent Hill 2 often has cryptic and laughable puzzles but on the flip side, the game balances it out with unclear objectives and mysteries that leave players scratching their heads and end up searching for a decade-old guide on how to beat it. It requires players to solve riddles to unlock new areas of the town and progress further through the story. Fear is everywhere, but the tension and overwhelming paranoia can be easily replaced with a wave of sadness as themes become darker and more haunting depending on the way players choose to look at it.Īlongside the story, Silent Hill 2 has an interesting puzzle mechanic.
Rather, unlocking the full thought-provoking story requires an entire playthrough and time to actually reflect on Team Silent’s overall message. There is so much story in the game that cannot be discussed in just one article. What makes Silent Hill 2 so fascinating is its terrifying and ambiguous plot in combination with its cast of characters that paint this dream-like world into an absolute nightmare. Ultimately, Maria becomes a demon that forces James into a purgatory of guilt and distress. She tests James’ perception, culminating all the traits he wished Mary to possess and dying frequently only to come back to life. Maria, a manifestation of James’ wife, forces him to come to terms with these desires as well as his desperation to fill the void left by Mary’s death.
The mannequin and nurses are designed to exploit sexual desire, acting as a reminder for his repressed sexual feelings when he visited Mary in the hospital. His version of Silent Hill is designed to manipulate the guilt he feels over the death of his wife Mary. James goes through his own odyssey, his own walk through a personal hell.
Despite James’ attempts to alter Eddie’s and Angela’s fate, their destinies are set in stone. Eddie’s hatred of others causes him to go mad. Eddie, another character, never sees the monsters referenced in James’ version of Silent Hill. Her world is hot and engulfed in flames and her trauma eventually consumes her. In Silent Hill 2, the player takes control of James Sunderland but he encounters Angela, a young woman who experiences her own trauma of suicidality and sexual abuse from the male figures in her life. These characters experience the same world as one another, facing the same monsters and reality together. Along the way, he meets Cybil, a police officer, who attempts to help him find his daughter. In the previous game, the players take control of the everyday man, Harry Mason, who encounters monsters and a cult in an attempt to find his daughter, Cheryl. She died three years ago, so how could she be alive, waiting for him? Unlike the characters in the previous Silent Hill game, all of the characters in this story experience the horrors of the town as a rendition of their own nightmares. He is drawn to the town of Silent Hill by a letter he received from his deceased wife. Silent Hill 2 revolves around James Sunderland and his own nightmare.
We are forced into James’ consciousness as we live through the context of his obscured reality. The players must look at James, acknowledge his presence and major role in the story, and become him. The game begins with the protagonist, James Sunderland, an ordinary man who stares at his reflection through a filthy bathroom mirror. Rather than just focusing on a world of fog with monsters to kill, Team Silent (the developing team) adds a dream-like quality to the game so that nothing feels real from the start. The world of Silent Hill 2 differs greatly from its predecessors. Silent Hill 2 introduces a story that is intentionally ambiguous, causing us to fear what is to come but enticing us to explore.
Unlike most horror games developed for the last few generations of both consoles and PC gaming, what makes Silent Hill 2 critically acclaimed in the horror genre is neither the jumpscares nor the impressive graphics, but rather the plot and ambiguous atmosphere that unfolds from beginning to end.īefore we continue, I must warn you: minor spoilers lie ahead. For over 19 years, Silent Hill 2 has held critical acclaim and has been dubbed the grandfather of horror games.