Shacknews Best Horror Game of 2024 - Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill 2 is legendary. For many fans of the franchise, that fandom began around 2001 when this game came out, delivering the heartbreaking story of a grief-stricken man trying to survive a town that preys on the evil within our hearts. Konami and Bloober Team taking on the task of reworking this game was a huge risk, but Silent Hill 2 also couldn’t just get away with a simple graphical brush-up. Its gameplay and voice-acting had aged like milk. But could Bloober Team pull off a remake that would sensibly improve upon the original while not removing what worked?

The answer is hell yes. The Silent Hill 2 remake is a Bloober Team masterpiece. It keeps the most important parts of the original game intact, making the town feel alive and the atmosphere thick and unsettling, and it recrafts the combat, voice-acting, and emotion of the game into a breathtaking experience. James Sunderland’s story takes on so much more weight here when you don’t have the robotic voice-acting and character animation of the original to weigh it down, but the graphics also do their job so well. James’ fear, discomfort, sadness, and anger are so much more palpable in this version of the game, and the other characters deliver similar quality and energy.

The environment is, once again, as much of a star of this show as it has ever been in the series. Running through the streets of Silent Hill was uncomfortable as you tried to navigate your maps and the fog of the town, and there are times where it straight-up feels like Silent Hill itself is a monster threatening to devour you. Getting inside is only a mild reprieve as you weather the claustrophobic halls of distorted monsters that make great use of the game’s incredible sound.

Silent Hill 2 is a sacred part of gaming history. We would implore folks that have access to the original to see what it’s about and what horror gaming was like back in 2001, but you don’t have to feel like you’re missing something if you just play the remake. Bloober Team not only hit the high notes of the original, but arguably pushed them to new heights, creating a rollercoaster of emotions, thrills, and terror as we navigated the deadly and mysterious town once again.

Be sure to read over the rest of the Shacknews Awards in our Year of the Games: 2024 feature.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on BlueSky @JohnnyChugs.