Recent reviews by Nooth

I can't believe I'm saying this, but SH is back. Bloober proved they could respect the original and expand it in believable ways while making up for shortcomings of the original (particularly, voice acting and combat).

This remake demonstrates something I long suspected: the original would have been better had Team Silent used professional actors. I know the common cope is "it's supposed to be Lynchian," but having seen Lynch's work, there's a such a monumental difference between them, it's laughable. The truth is, all low-budget video games had similarly stilted acting in 2001.

The monsters feel like actual threats now. You can't just immediately lock on and mash x until they're dead, mindlessly. This adds more visceral fear to the sustained dread the original and remake are so good at.

The remake also handles ammo much better than the original. It was not unusual for me to end up with handgun bullets and shotgun shells in the triple digits by the time I reached Lakeview Hotel. I spent most of the remake with about 5-10 handgun bullets on me at a time. There's actual resource management.

In short, this is the definitive way to experience Silent Hill 2. It's faithful, it plays better, it's acted better (barring a single line from the OG during Mary's letter read-through), it's scarier, it's bigger, and it's more accessible. I encourage all people curious about the series to give it a try, then go back and play SH1-4. See how this series earned such a cult following.

10/10

This is fantastic. It's notoriously difficult to visually adapt Lovecraft's works, because so much of it exists within the mind of our protagonist. I think the developer may have found a way that is at least sufficient: a first-person, player character-narrated "point-and-click" game. I hesitate to use the term "game," as this really is more of an interactive movie. You can only control the camera and have very limited agency. However, I think this might be nearly 100% necessary to keep the story well focused on the text of Lovecraft's stories.

Moreover, movies are not typically shot from a first-person perspective (none come to mind minus that short segment in the 2005 Doom movie). This perspective is obviously well explored in video games. It allows us to hear the protagonists thoughts in a way that feels natural. This also allows us to see the more subtle signs of madness through visual effects that we have come to associate with madness in video games (i.e. Spec Ops: The Line, Amnesia: The Dark Descent).

On the other hand, the visuals did not quite resemble what I saw in my mind when I first read the story. This could be a drawback to a lot of Lovecraft fans and bookworms, but it was still a fairly believable visual take on the story. If you have reservations about that kind of thing, I think you should still give it a go if you're a fan. It's kind of neat to be able to have someone share what they imagined when they read the story.

That, and it's free and short. I think it might please more HPL fans than it will turn off. I'm excited for the prospect of other developers taking inspiration from this and perhaps adapting other Lovecraft stories to this medium.

Game good.