#12: Silent Hill 2

If you had a time machine and warped back to 2022 and told me that the Bloober-developed Silent Hill 2 remake would be not only good, but one of the best games of the year upon its release, I’d laugh. (Well, first I would ask you about the time machine, then I would giggle.) Nobody outside of Bloober and Konami had any confidence in this project and yet, when it finally launched in 2024, it ended up being a triumphant, confident, interesting, and worthwhile adaptation of the original PS2-era release

In some ways the remake plays it safe, while in others it experiments with puzzles and pacing (not always successfully…), and the result is a remarkably faithful, sometimes predictable, but always engaging horror game that Silent Hill 2 veterans will enjoy. And even more impressively, newcomers to the franchise are likely to not only admire Silent Hill 2’s remake but walk away from it wanting to play the original version, too. And importantly, the Silent Hill 2 remake is fucking scary in a way other modern horror games sometimes aren’t. A remarkable game that will be talked about and played for years to come. — Zack Zwiezen