Recent reviews by XXX_QUACKSCOPED_XXX

Silent Hill 2 Remake is a classic example of a 7/10 game, a very good game that is shy of greatness due to its relation to one of video gaming’s masterpieces. One can’t talk about SH2 Remake without comparison to the original, nor without taking note of the obvious inspirations it takes from the recent Resident Evil Remakes, so I’d like to do just so in the below. Full Disclaimer, I played the original Silent Hill 2, for the first time, just before playing the remake so I am not coming from a perspective of nostalgia.

Silent Hill 2 (2001) is one of the few games (maybe just 2 or 3) I would comfortably put forward as an example of video games as art, an absolute masterwork. It has the fantastic idea of telling its phenomenal, mature, dark, and morally complex story through the use of environments and enemy design. You are walking through this weird town and its hellish interior landscapes for the whole game, getting tidbits here and there of something deeper than what the game lets on, but only once you get the full picture at the end do you realize the genius of the romp through James Sunderland’s subconscious that the game has taken you on. It is also the absolute perfect level of ambiguity and vagueness. Is Silent Hill just a dream? Have our characters died and are passing through some kind of purgatory? Is it a real haunted town populated by some sort of eldritch god? Does Silent Hill want to help James? Does it want to hurt him? Does it not care at all and is it simply a complete reflection of James’ Subconscious, hurting and helping in equal measure? I know that the rest of the games have a deeper lore that delves into these questions, but SH2 as a standalone experience offers no clear answers and it lets the world linger in your head for so long afterward. The night after beating the original, the town haunted my restless dreams genuinely. It is the simplicity of the story and the fact that EVERYTHING ties back to James Sunderland that makes the environmental storytelling of Silent Hill so genius and work so much better than all the copycats that it inspired because once you learn about that final twist every single piece of the puzzle snaps right into place and you understand the emotional core of the game even if it’s supernatural elements continue to elude your understanding. This ambiguity makes Silent Hill one of the few, maybe the only franchise that benefits from low-fidelity graphics and crappy voice acting, as the two combined add to the dream-like nature of the game, both likely were simply limitations imposed on the game due to the time it was being developed but ended up adding so much not just to the eeriness of the town, but to its melancholy as well. One can’t talk about SH2 without bringing up the music as well, suffice it to say there is a reason that any Calm Horror Ambience Compilation on YouTube is at least half Silent Hill music, it’s unbelievably good. All of this adds up to a game that isn’t only interested in scaring you, but oddly at times looking to comfort you too, perfectly mirroring the ambivalent benevolence of the town itself. On the other hand, Silent Hill 2 (2001), is an atrocious video game to play. It uses tank controls and fixed camera angles. Now the fixed camera angles add such a unique vibe to the whole game and the cinematography is unlike anything seen before or since, just take the opening bathroom cinematic as we see the camera tilt switching focus between James and the Urinal. The camera knows how to squeeze the most amount of atmosphere from every shot in the game, but when you need to take shots in the game my goodness is it annoying. The tank controls are also a major pain in the ass, but they do a great job of creating tension in claustrophobic encounters… until you die a bunch and it just becomes frustrating. However, these criticisms are irrelevant, the game knows that it’s not a particularly engaging game to play and wisely is paced remarkably well clocking in at a maximum of 6 hours. It is at its core, a walking simulator for you to enjoy and soak in the atmosphere of Silent Hill, an atmosphere that doubles as a character study of James Sunderland. Even its puzzles (with the notable exception of the difficult coin puzzle) boil down to scavenger hunts as you look for codes and keys, not much is getting in the way of you and the story. Regardless of your thoughts on this remake, you NEED to play the original, and frankly, at the remake’s price point, it should have been included.

Silent Hill 2 (2024) to borrow from a comment I once saw under Mandalore Gaming’s Pathological 2 review, is a video game adaptation of Silent Hill 2 (2001) for better and for worse. I think from the start, the idea of giving Silent Hill 2 incredible graphics, highly detailed environments, an over-the-shoulder camera perspective, and fantastic voice acting will paradoxically always make it a worse experience. All these elements which are usually lauded in a game, here take away that ambiguity from the original. The game has now locked you into playing Silent Hill as the story of James Sunderland entering a haunted town, as everything is so crystal clear and “Hollywood” for lack of a better term, that a lot of hazy ambiguity from the original game is gone, as well as that strange sense of comfort since it’s hard to see it as anything other than a hostile haunted town. There are still a few moments that retain the classic atmosphere, most notably when you first enter the hospital and once you acquire the key to the Historical Society, moments that still feel beautiful. What the new graphics do a damn good job is making the game feel EPIC. You can especially see this in all the bosses which are now multi-phase with huge complicated arenas that tie nicely into their respective themes. The levels are huge in scope, and you often watch them deteriorate right in front of your eyes as walls crack open all around you, peeling away to show rust, dirt, and grime. The game wants to disgust and frighten you in a much more overt way than the original, one could rightly also call it a lack of subtlety, but you were always going to lose subtlety when you made Silent Hill look realistic, so I think it was the right call to lean into this to make the game work. It drew a lot of inspiration from the Resident Evil remakes it was when I was playing the Hosptial Level that I realized that I was able to navigate the level without checking the map and that I had begun to memorize enemy placements that it became clear just how similar it felt to play to Resident Evil 2 Remake (and from the back they made James look like Leon, I know some may disagree). Last year, I did something similar when I played Resident Evil 4 Orginal and Remake back to back. There I also felt that by increasing the graphical fidelity, it ended up losing a decent amount of its atmosphere and B-movie charm, but the key difference there is that people always played Resident Evil 4 for the gameplay above all else and the remake had refined on that gameplay to the point that I would say it’s my favorite shooter of all time (third or first person). Nobody is playing Silent Hill 2 (2001) for the gameplay, but Bloober turned it into a fun survival horror game, at the expense of what made it so special in the first place. The music here is pretty much the same as the original, but I just never felt like it fit the game unlike in the original. The game is epic, but the music is still melancholic. Bloober Team did the best job they could as I believe the idea of a Silent Hill 2 Remake is flawed at the outset, but Silent Hill (2024) manages to be it’s own thing while still respecting the original and being a fun game to play. All of which is pretty damn impressive, it’s just far more forgettable, feeling more like a Resident Evil game with worse gameplay, but an amazing story. I slept just fine after beating it. Not worth $70, but worth it once it goes on sale for $35 or less.

The Hotline Miami Duology is one of my favorite game series. Although I don’t think these games can be viewed separately because they are so deeply intertwined that they feel like two pieces of a whole, I think that Hotline Miami 2 is the superior game. Only recently did I realize the mixed reception this game received especially relative to the first game, and so I feel the need to add my two cents as to why I believe this game is a masterpiece.

Characters- The best part about this game is the characters. I love games with multiple protagonists and out of all I’ve played, Hotline Miami 2 does it the best. You control 13 characters across 25 levels plus a finale and a bonus level. It’s a lot but every character (even The Henchman, who only has 1 level), has such satisfying and interesting stories which range from genuinely hilarious to deeply tragic. What makes it work is that instead of focusing on telling several stories that slowly come together, all the stories are connected by their themes and focus on illuminating the world and story of Hotline Miami 1. It feels like every character is part of a vast tapestry and the entire picture is slowly revealed to you, which I find immensely satisfying.

Story - Hotline Miami has my favorite story in gaming (heck I wrote fan-fic for it). At a base level, it is the story of a mysterious organization that calls people threatening them until they commit attacks of violence against the Russian Mafia in Miami. Hotline Miami 2 has three timelines: The first takes place before HM1 providing backstory, the second takes place during HM1 providing a different perspective to the first game, and the third takes place after HM1 and shows the effects of the events of HM1. These timelines are presented non-chronologically, and again the focus is on an escalation of themes and emotions rather than a logical forward progression of time or events, which always keeps the story interesting and creates a constant barrage of hard-hitting moments. Much has been said of the game’s meta aspects, specifically how it opens a dialogue with the player regarding the nature of video game violence. Like many great video game sequels the developers took the “♥♥♥♥ You” approach (ala Metal Gear Solid 2), with the characters representing different sects of the Hotline Miami fanbase, the idea being to criticize the way people attached themselves to the first game and to play around with expectations from sequels. However, I think people tend to over-emphasize the meta-ness and forget that the story is great in and of itself. The world-building in this game adds so much depth to the first game that I was surprised when I replayed both, just how much it seems everything was fully thought out from the beginning. Having the first game's events anchor everything that happens in all three timelines helps things remain clear when they could become so convoluted. I also think showing these year-long ripple effects stem from what originally seemed like a small and self-contained story in the first game helps add such a feeling of scale to this world and this story. Simply, it’s epic. The ending is often criticized for being lazy and anti-climactic, and originally I agreed. However, after replaying it, I realized that it’s heavily foreshadowed, and the only logical ending from a thematic and plot perspective. I also love how much of a middle finger it is to the player in that the developers could not be any clearer that they will never make a Hotline Miami 3.

Gameplay - The first Hotline Miami was an intense top-down action game focused on fast and hectic improvisational gameplay. You could try to go in with a plan, but chances are you’d have to switch things up to beat the level. A vast array of masks with unique powers and a plethora of weapons always kept things fresh, giving the player a sense of freedom as to how they could tackle the level. It was a great example of creating a story through gameplay because no two players beat a level the same way. Hotline Miami 2 is not that. If you try to play HM2 the same way, you will get killed by an off-screen enemy. HM2 is a slower game with an emphasis on planning. The biggest criticism of this game, when it came out, was that there was a greater focus on gunplay and a heavily increased amount of windows (see-through walls that granted enemies line of sight). This made it so that the player’s freedom was constrained, now there was one correct way to beat a level and it was up to you to figure out what that was. While I miss that freedom, I also think that this allowed the developers to create more conceptual levels that do a fantastic job of putting you into the shoes of the character you are playing. What I mean by this is that the first game was a blur of tight hallways and closely packed rooms, you couldn’t tell what was going on besides mindless slaughter for the most part which honestly was great for putting you into the mindset of Jacket (the first game’s protagonist). The second game’s levels are more conceptual ranging from having you rob a bank, to fighting on a battlefield, and even escaping a prison. The levels are designed to force you into a specific playstyle with that playstyle reflecting the personality of the character you are playing. So while we do lose freedom we gain a lot of immersion. Sometimes, this can come at the expense of fun, especially in the levels where you play as “The Solider”. These levels have you playing as an elite soldier in a fictional war, and oh boy are those battlefields open, and you can not pick up any weapons except for the gun you start with. I love “The Soldier” and his story, he’s one of my favorite characters and arguably the true protagonist of the game, but man do I find those levels annoying they just go a little bit too far with the openness with enemies killing you from what feels like several screens away.

Music/UI - You don’t need me to tell you how amazing this game’s soundtrack is, you can just listen to it yourself, it’s an all-time great and I don’t think anybody would disagree. I like how the first game is just banger after banger, but this game takes a much more atmospheric approach to the music with each song matching its corresponding level. Some are chill, some are sad, and, of course, we still have the BANGERS. It’s another example of this game's commitment to immersion and atmosphere. The UI delivers as well, with its focus on VHS aesthetics. I love how the level select has you perusing through boxes of videotapes, I love the pixel art on each videotape, and I love that the pause menu is like pressing pause on a videotape. I love the UI, simple as.

Bugs- It’s a small criticism, but it’s still worth bringing up, for a game with such simple graphics, it can crash quite a bit, and since you can only replay levels from the beginning this can be pretty annoying. It’s too bad this hasn’t been fixed after all this time.

The Hotline Miami Duology is becoming a little forgotten although its influence can still be felt throughout the industry (even in movies like John Wick Chapter 4). However, it should remain in conversation as one of the greatest series of all time (especially in the indie genre) and it is still worth playing in 2024 and beyond. For only $25 (and way less on sale), it’s worth diving into this neon-soaked blood bath for yourself.