I may have posted a written review of Return To Silent Hill, but there were still other things that I wanted to expound upon that I did not feel were appropriate (or in the scope of) a simple movie review. So I decided to adapt my extended thoughts into a video critique. I was planning on doing after having seen the movie in theaters and writing the review, but things kept coming up, and I kept pushing it back until eventually it got to the point that the movie was already available on DVD and streaming.

I decided to split the critique up into 2 separate videos. The first video is already available on YouTube. It is specifically about the sexist and chauvinistic attitudes and biases that I felt underlined many of the creative decisions that went into butchering Silent Hill 2's stories. More specifically, I compared and contrasted how Christophe Gans chose to adapt the characters of Harry Mason (from the first game) and James, and how these adaptation decisions seem to reveal those underlying sexist attitudes and biases. I used this video to vent some long-standing frustrations that I had with the first Silent Hill movie, and its gender-swap of single father Harry into married mother Rose.

Obviously, I don't have a problem with gender or race-swapping in adaptations of media. But, as I explain in the video, I felt that the character of Harry Mason presented a golden opportunity to present a competent single father character in a medium that is largely devoid of such examples. The gender-swap from male-to-female, in this particular case, and the reasons that director Christophe Gans cites for having made the casting decision, only serve to reinforce out-dated gender stereotypes, while also missing out on an opportunity to present a particular demographic that is under-represented in popular media.

The second video is about the other characters in the movie, with an emphasis on Mary -- considering that she is basically the only other character in the movie.

I liked Tormented Souls well enough that I was curious to see if the sequel would fix the first game's flaws. It helped that the developers put out a free demo of the game on the PSN, which I downloaded and played. It was surprisingly long, covering most of the first full level of the game.

The demo also did show signs of improvement over the first game. Enough so that I was motivated to buy the full game when it released (though it still took a few months to actually get around to playing it). If the sequel could maintain the positive aspects of the first game, while fixing or improving on the first game's flaws, then we could have a true gem of a traditional survival horror game on our hands.

Modernization at the cost of frustration

Almost immediately, I started noticing quality of life and gameplay improvements over the first game. Caroline is more mobile. She can move while aiming a weapon. Perhaps best of all, there's a quick inventory. It's mapped to the right stick, which is a bit clunky and imprecise, but it's fine. It's still better than having to go into the inventory every time I need to switch between the nail gun and a melee weapon, and vice versa.

Caroline can move with her weapon drawn.

Cool! They fixed the biggest problems with the original game: the archaic-feeling controls! Right?

Well, not so fast. While these are strict improvements over the original, they do come with a catch. To offset Caroline's new mobility, enemies are much faster, more aggressive, and tankier. The ability to move with the weapon drawn helps, especially in long hallways and the rare open spaces. I can backpedal and shoot instead of having to go through a cumbersome process of aim, shoot, turn around to run away, and turn back around to aim and shoot again. I can even strafe! This works well in the relatively wide halls of the opening convent level, but it stops being useful basically as soon as you leave the convent, at which point the game ambushes the player with multiple enemies or gives them the ability to hit you from further away.

The problem is that there's rarely -- if ever -- enough room to maneuver with this newfound mobility. The arenas are cramped and cluttered, the enemies completely block narrow paths, they have huge hit boxes, and their hit tracking makes it almost impossible to run around them. The camera angles constantly hide enemies off-screen, making it impossible for me to judge distance or know if I have a clear shot until the enemy is right up in my face, and close enough for them to get a couple cheap shots in. Regardless of whether I was using "tank" controls or analog movement, if I did try moving around during combat, I was constantly running into tables and chairs in the middle of rooms, or I was getting stuck on geometry along the periphery of combat arenas (often at the edge of the screen). The small rooms mean that camera changes are frequent. Every time the camera changed, I would lose a step because the character would turn the wrong direction or run into another obstacle.

There rarely seems to be enough room to use Caroline's newfound mobility.

On top of all this, the game seems to be stingier with supplies (at least early on). The first boss ate through all of my remaining ammo after getting through the first level. I had to finish her off with melee in her final phase. This forced me to have to burn through all my healing items as well, since she has a close-range area-of-effect ground smash attack that I wasn't able to avoid at that close range.

Well, Bloober Team, you're officially off the hook. I was dragged against my will, by my partner and daughter, to see Return To Silent Hill in the theater, and now Bloober's remake of Silent Hill 2 looks like an absolutely masterful adaptation in comparison. And to be clear, I thought Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake was good to begin with. I had some serious issues with some of Bloober's creative liberties, but the game was overall good. But after seeing Return To Silent Hill, I almost wanted to replay the remake to remind myself of what a decent adaptation of the game could be.

The problems begin right from the opening frames of the movie, with James lighting up a joint while driving a Mustang convertible. James comes off as such an unlikeable douchebag throughout the entire movie. From the way he looks, to the way he acts, to the way he dresses, to the way that the movie completely misunderstands his character by apologizing and vindicating him for everything he does, I absolutely hated James from start to finish. The expectation that writer/director Christophe Gans would have this exact misogynist mis-reading of the game was so obviously what was going to happen right from the start. But I still honestly did not expect Gans to jerk off James this hard!

And nobody at Konami -- not even executive producer Akira Yamaoka (who really needs to stop lending his name and credibility to these things) -- thought to restrain this particular impulse.

One of my criticisms of Bloober's remake was how it made James look a little bit too guilty, by explicitly emphasizing things that the original game only briefly and indirectly implied. Things like James being an alcoholic, and maybe being emotionally or physically abusive. Gans overcompensates in the exact opposite direction. Oh, James is still an alcoholic in this movie, and he's still physically and emotionally abusive. But this movie completely vindicates and apologizes for all of these traits, and makes James out to be an innocent victim, complete with a happy fairy tale ending.

© Davis Films.

James is so profoundly unlikeable in this movie,
but the movie bends over backwards to apologize for him and vindicate him.

Just awful casting, awful writing, and awful direction.

I'm on the record as having said that I think From Software would've been a good candidate to develop a Silent Hill game (or a pure horror game in general). But I also said that I would not want such a game to be a "Souls-like". Instead, I think FromSoft is well suited to the Silent Hill IP because they make games that are rich in oppressive atmosphere, are good at developing rich mythologies, and which share many common themes with Silent Hill (such as corrupt religious authorities). Also, FromSoft makes games other than Souls-likes. They made Déraciné, which I loved! And which might actually be there 3rd or 4th best game.

Well, I didn't get a FromSoft Silent Hill game, but I did apparently get the "Silent Hill Souls-like" that I very explicitly did not want. Thankfully, it did not turn out as bad as I feared it would be.

Poorly-labeled difficulty options

Do yourself a favor, and do not try starting this game on the "Hard" difficulty! It's a shame that the developers chose to label the difficulty levels like they did: "Story" and "Hard". There's no "Normal" or "Medium" difficulty option. Typically, when I see a "Story" difficulty option, I assume that it's a mode that is stripped of all challenge and friction such as to allow the player to basically just walk through the game un-molested.

Don't get me wrong! I approve of games having accessible difficulty settings, even if I choose not to use them. Such stripped-down "Story Modes" are perfectly fine to include in an action or adventure game -- especially one that is narrative driven, like Silent Hill f is.

I gave up on the Hard mode after the first major boss.

This "Story" difficulty doesn't quite go to that extreme, but it is pretty easy (outside of a handful of tougher setpieces), and it renders many of the game's advanced mechanics moot. For example, you don't really have to manage Sanity or Focus at all in this difficulty level, as Sanity is automatically refilled at every save point. Stamina is still meaningful, but one-on-one encounters can almost always be defeated without depleting the sanity bar.

Almost all the consumable pick-ups, thus, can be safely ignored or sold at save points in exchange for permanent buffs (which just make the combat even easier!), since you'll rarely (if ever) need to use consumables on the Story difficulty. This has many knock-on effects for the rest of the game, such as making exploration largely pointless. Going out of your way to explore, only to find a reward of an extra item or 2 that recovers or buffs your Sanity simply has little-to-no value. Truly valuable rewards, such as inventory upgrades or a useful omamori, are few and far between. In fact, I often had to run back to a nearby save point to sell consumeables because my inventory would be too full to pick up any new ones.

Today, I posted a pair of new videos for my Patrons. These videos discuss what I consider to be the best and worst parts of Bloober's Silent Hill 2 Remake. Both videos can be viewed by Patrons by visiting the following link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-and-worst-2-131192586.

The first video is about the best thing about the remake. It will be a Patreon exclusive for about a week. At that point, I will release it to the public, and the second video will remain a Patreon exclusive for a couple weeks before it goes available to the public. Once both videos are publicly available, I will update this post to embed both videos for all my readers to be able to watch. In fact, I might even embed them here a little bit early, for all my loyal readers. It will really depend on how busy I am over the next few weeks (I will be very busy).

Of course, if you already read my full written review on this blog, then you probably have a good idea of what each video's topic will be.

As always, thanks to all of my Patrons, past, present, and future. Your support has meant a great deal to me, and has helped me offset some of the costs of maintaining this blog and of creating my YouTube content. I wish you all the best.