The wait for Bloober Team and Konami’s remake of Silent Hill 2 was a long one, but now that it’s finally here, it feels great to know that it is, at the very least, worth that long wait. Many will be diving into its nightmarish offerings as we speak, and while returning fans may be plenty familiar with how to go about their business, for newcomers, there’s a bit to get to grips with. To help you with that, here, we’ve prepared a few handy pointers to keep in mind as you start your hellish journey through the town of Silent Hill.
EXPLORE THOROUGHLY
A rule of thumb in any survival horror game, and always worth stressing. Silent Hill 2 is a game that encourages, and hell, even demands exploration. Much less combat-focused than many of its genre peers, the game asks you to explore the locations you visit to find not only key items needed for puzzles and progression, but also valuable resources with which you can ensure your survival. The game is also expanded over the original when it comes to a number of locations, so there’s even greater room for exploration.
COLLECTIBLES
Another thing to motivate you to explore as much as you can- the collectibles. More specifically, Silent Hill 2 notes and logs throughout its environments, offering tidbits of backstory, puzzle hints, and more. This is, of course, pretty standard fare for the genre (or, you know, for games in general), but there’s some good stuff waiting to be found in the town of Silent Hill in this arena, so make sure you keep an eye out.
BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR MAPS
Given how much the game emphasized exploration, and given how frequently you find yourself backtracking through areas you’ve previously visited, using maps to navigate the environments you find yourself in is crucial. As such, every time you enter a new area or building in Silent Hill 2, your first order of business should be to look for a map. Usually, that shouldn’t be any challenge whatsoever, because the game makes them pretty hard to miss.
MASTER THE DODGE
Though largely a pretty faithful remake, from a gameplay perspective, Silent Hill 2 does change things up from the 2001 original in some key ways. In combat, for instance, James now has a dodge move, and it’s crucial that you learn it. Silent Hill 2 emphasizes melee combat heavily, and when you get up close and personal with foes, paying attention to their attacks and dodging them in time is crucial, otherwise you’re not going to get far.
DON’T FIGHT EVERY ENEMY
Again, this is a pretty smart rule in most survival horror games, but you probably shouldn’t be fighting every enemy you see in Silent Hill 2. There’s multiple reasons for that. For starters, the plain and simple reason is that a lot of the enemies are pretty easy to just sprint away from, especially when you’re out in the open streets of the town. Running away from a fight is certainly smarter than risking taking damage and having to waste resources. Speaking of which, enemies also don’t drop resources, which means killing them isn’t always worth it.
BREAK WINDOWS
The game does teach you early on that you can use your melee attacks to shatter windows in buildings and glasses, but you should be doing it more often than you would initially think. Especially where car windows are concerned, you’ll often find resources and healing items inside, which means smashing as many windows as you can is definitely recommended.
BREAKABLE WALLS
Speaking of smashing things down, every so often, you’ll also run across breakable walls in Silent Hill 2, and our advice is to keep an eye out for those as well. Usually marked by broken white markings, you’ll find these walls hiding secret rooms, paths, areas, and what have you, offering further room to explore and items to seek out.
SAVE OFTEN
Save points in Silent Hill 2 are a precious commodity, as is the case in any survival horror game of its ilk. Just as we would in any other similar title, then, we’ll heartily recommend that you save every chance you get, and save often. Even more so than in many other games in the genre, Silent Hill 2 spaces its save points apart quite a bit, which means you might often hit long stretches where you don’t get the chance to save at all. So remember- save when you can.
AMBUSHES
Silent Hill 2 is capable of scaring players in many, many ways, and though some of its most effective methods are the more cerebral ones, the good old classics also work pretty well from time to time. Often, for instance, you’ll be taken by surprise by enemies that find unique ways to hide themselves in the environment, jumping out at you when you least expect it. Always staying on your toes is definitely a good idea.
RADIO STATE INDICATOR
Silent Hill 2 does give protagonist James a few tools to help him survive, like a radio that starts crackling with static every time enemies are in close vicinity to you. Interestingly enough, there are ways to make it even more useful. For instance, you can head into the settings menu and toggle on the radio state indicator setting, which adds an on-screen indicator to accompany your radio’s static with visual indicators. For those of you who want to be extra vigilant, this can be pretty handy.
DON’T ALWAYS TRUST THE RADIO
The radio is an extremely useful tool, as we’ve already gone over, but much like almost everything else in the town of Silent Hill, it cannot be fully trusted. Sometimes, the radio doesn’t work as intended. For instance, you’ll often be in rooms or corridors with nothing but beetles keeping you company, but reading said beetles as enemies, the radio will keep crackling with static (side note: you should smash those beetles). Meanwhile, sometimes, your radio will fail to produce any noise even when enemies are nearby- like with some of the aforementioned instances of ambushes from hidden enemies.
DOWNED FOES
Something else you shouldn’t trust fully in Silent Hill 2? What seems to be a dead enemy on the ground. Because though often those enemies are dead, sometimes, just sometimes, they aren’t. Even if an enemy has gone crashing to the ground then, our advice is to bash them a few more times just to make doubly sure.
SHOOT ENEMIES IN THE LEG
Enemies can take quite a few hits to go down, especially if you’re focusing on melee attacks in order to conserve ammo (which you should). There are tricks that you can use to make things a little quicker, however. Shoot an enemy in the leg, and they will instantly buckle, falling to their knees and being rendered temporarily immobile. In the window that follows, you can give them a couple of good whacks in their weakened state to finish them off.
MULTIPLE ENDINGS
Silent Hill veterans will be very familiar with how things work on this front, but for newcomers, it cannot be stressed enough how important it is that you pay attention to your actions throughout the game. There are eight different endings in the game, two of which are completely new, and which ending you get is impacted by a variety of factors, from which items you find to how much time you spend with certain characters to even how often you heal, among many other things.
CHAINSAW
A big part of the fun in repeat playthrough in survival horror games is running through the experience with overpowered weapons, and in Silent Hill 2, you get the chance to do so with a chainsaw on hand. How exactly do you get it? Well, you’ll have to finish the game once, with the weapon being available only in a New Game Plus playthrough. On a New Game Plus save, not long after you enter the town of Silent Hill, you’ll find a Chainsaw buried in a pile of wood, where you can claim it for yourself.