Silent Hill 2
By Matthew Smudz
Basic information
Platform: PC
Genre: Horror
Year: 2002 (now out of production)
Developer: Konami / Team Silent
Designer: Masashi Tsuboyama
Minimum hardware requirements:
Windows XP/ME/2000/98
700 MHz processor
64 MB RAM
DirectX 8.1 compliant 3D accelerator card w/32 MB VRAM
1.8 GB free disk space
4X CD-ROM
DirectX 8.1 compliant sound card
My setup: Windows 7,
2.10 GHz Pentium Dual-Core CPU, 2 GB RAM, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD.
Ran on full settings. Played without installing. The game occasionally froze, but no major bugs otherwise.
Game summary

Survival horror action/puzzle game
James Sunderland receives a letter from his dead wife Mary
telling him to meet her in Silent Hill, a town now full of bizarre
monsters. James realizes he euthanized Mary, who was
terminally ill, and must confront the guilt of murdering her.

The player controls James, and must explore the town to gather
clues and find Mary. Puzzles block the way, and James must avoid
or kill various monsters and bosses. Lots of exploration

Minimalist user interface: no HUD. Player manages a small
inventory.

Radio: static informs the player when they’re nearing a monster.
Greatly enhances tension

Scoring: the player is evaluated at the end of the game, though
this is an ancillary feature.

Audience
•
•
•
•
Adult
Seems to have a strong female fan-base
Gameplay is more than just shooting things
Does not hold the player’s hand. Not for the
easily frustrated
Artwork
Iconic
 Silent Hill is a darkly atmospheric environment.
Everything seems decayed and is covered in rust,
blood, and filth. The town and monsters model
the psychological breakdown of the characters
 The town is enshrouded in fog
 Layouts of some levels violate physical laws of
space
 The town is a metaphoric descent into hell.

Monster designs: Jungian shadows
Nurses: James’ demonization and possible sexualizing of the medical personnel who
attended his dying wife.
Monster designs
James’ objectification of women, or possibly his guilty desires while his wife was sick.
Monster designs
The “executioner” in James is turned against himself. Occasionally shown abusing or
dominating other monsters.
Story: Hemingway’s theory of
omission
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things
that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a
feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.”
–Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
• The story only hints at the complex tragedy of James and
Mary’s suffering
• Environment and monsters are used as well as cutscenes to
hint at James’ past
• The writing is lacking, but we still feel the story strongly
because the game is so effectively designed this way
Game strengths
• Atmosphere: frightening, suffocating
• Uniquely recognizable art style/aesthetics
• A great story is driven by the gameplay and not just the other
way around. The story is not just an excuse for the action;
rather, much of the design choices are motivated by the story
• Constant sense of mystery and progress (or descent?) keeps
pulling the player in
• Unusually impactful ending rarely seen in games
• Sound: extremely atmospheric, and a large source of scares
• One of the best soundtracks in any medium
Game weaknesses
• Contrived/obscure puzzles, typical of adventure games. The
solutions should require thought, but be more intuitive
• Frustrating camera angles; actually expose the player to
monsters, which is a poor challenge
• Inconsistent boss difficulty: some require you to simply run
away, while others take many repeated attempts
• Combat is clunky and should often be avoided (this also
makes the game scarier, though)
• Voice acting and dialogue are lacking
• Gameplay becomes repetitive: finding items, solving puzzles,
avoiding enemies…
Design mistakes
• Blatant inconsistency in boss difficulty
• Map system is too hard to navigate for a game
that often requires it
• Reloading guns from the menu is
instantaneous, but takes a long time in-game
• No HUD. This suits the game, but is a bad
interface because it forces you to open your
inventory to do things like checking ammo
and health
How does it compare?
• Contemporaries: Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, Doom…
• Shares “tank like” controls with Resident Evil
• Not just blasting away: player character is not experienced
with combat and has no weapons
• Threats are more psychological (Pyramid Head vs. zombies)
• More emotional and character-driven
• Hard to measure scares
• Not as action packed. More puzzle- and navigation-driven
• Atmosphere: creates a place
• Modern horror: more action-packed (Resident Evil 4, Dead
Space, Left 4 Dead)
Summary
• A scary, emotional, narratively complex game
with great music/art; an immersive horror
classic
• A dated camera system, poor voice
acting/writing, tank-like controls, and linear,
repetitive gameplay hold the game back from
perfection
• A little more variety and better writing would
have gone a long way
• Should be experienced by anyone interested
in story-driven games