Gearing up to play the remake after playing and decidedly not liking PS2 version silent hill 2. Many reviewers and critics I respect really love this game, and I want some other takes on what I'm missing what I should focus on thematically or narratively in my remake playthrough. I want to give this one a decent second shot and I need some kind of grounding.
I have been rolling through survival horror games, having never played them as a very young kid for fear and religious parents but now I have fallen in love with the genre.
I recently finished resident evil 1 remake, the last I've played after playing every mainline re title and it's become my absolute peak I think no other game has gotten into my head like it. Signalis is another favorite of mine which has a ton of silent hill dna in it and I could tell that playing though 2 (PS2 version).
But despite this I really really could not fuckin get into silent hill 2. Everything felt very "2000s edgy". Is pyramid head supposed to be scary or just a foreboding metaphor? The nurses I kind of get and my first interaction with the crawling ones was the only legitimately frightening moment in my playthrough. I'm not all into survival horror just for scares, but I assume there will be something challenging or dangerous to contend with and pyramid head was the slowest least threatening "head boss" I've ever seen in a survival horror. All the serious metaphors and allusions to real domestic abuse clash with said "2000's edgy-ness". Gameplay was decent, I could have done without as much repetitive bat hitting but I elected to it to save resources so i can't totally blame that on the devs. The hallways get insanely repetitive and the puzzles, one of my favorite parts of signalis and the re games are largely unsatisfying and in some cases deliberately confusing. I've heard some people say "this is the point, it's supposed to be unsatisfying" but I think you really gotta stick the landing on using that as a device in your story and silent hill 2 didn't have the sauce for it. The atmosphere is a high point, and I like the surreal layouts, images and architecture as you dive deeper into endgame, but signalis pulled it off better for me.
Did you have to be there at the time? Re1 Remake I can see it would have blown my mind as a child and it does as an adult. I could see if silent hill 2 was your first survival horror experience how it could be incredibly formative, like re2 remake was for me.
What is the metaphor the story is going for, in your mind? What makes it a unique experience to other survival horror games? What should I be looking out for in the remake, narratively, metaphorically or otherwise?