Close Menu
Best in TechnologyBest in Technology
  • News
  • Phones
  • Laptops
  • Gadgets
  • Gaming
  • AI
  • Tips
  • More
    • Web Stories
    • Global
    • Press Release

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news and updates directly to your inbox.

What's On

Chrome OS Will Merge With Android and Sony Surprises With a New Camera

19 July 2025

At Least 750 US Hospitals Faced Disruptions During Last Year’s CrowdStrike Outage, Study Finds

19 July 2025

Security News This Week: China’s Salt Typhoon Hackers Breached the US National Guard for Nearly a Year

19 July 2025
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Just In
  • Chrome OS Will Merge With Android and Sony Surprises With a New Camera
  • At Least 750 US Hospitals Faced Disruptions During Last Year’s CrowdStrike Outage, Study Finds
  • Security News This Week: China’s Salt Typhoon Hackers Breached the US National Guard for Nearly a Year
  • Why It’s Taking LA So Long to Rebuild After the Wildfires
  • How to Get the Most Out of (or Into) Your Robot Vacuum
  • Review: Coway Airmega 50
  • How to Delete All of Your Social Media Accounts
  • The EVs We’ve Lost
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest Vimeo
Best in TechnologyBest in Technology
  • News
  • Phones
  • Laptops
  • Gadgets
  • Gaming
  • AI
  • Tips
  • More
    • Web Stories
    • Global
    • Press Release
Subscribe
Best in TechnologyBest in Technology
Home » Two Decades Later, Silent Hill 2 Is Still The Scariest Game Of All Time
Gaming

Two Decades Later, Silent Hill 2 Is Still The Scariest Game Of All Time

News RoomBy News Room27 December 20235 Mins Read
Share Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Reddit Telegram Email
Share
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

James Sunderland is not going to survive this.

By the end of his journey through Silent Hill, everything will be chaos – his mind and even the world around him, a violent cacophony of anguish.

But in the beginning, it’s silent. The kind of quiet that’s deafening, where you hear your pulse in your ears, and every tiny sound becomes the worst thing you can imagine.

Includes spoilers for Silent Hill 2


The opening hour of Silent Hill 2 is – without question – the scariest thing I have ever played. Which, taken at face value, might seem a bit ridiculous. Your goal is simply to navigate James through a dilapidated apartment building. At most, you’ll face 10 enemies throughout the building’s three floors, but they hardly pose a threat; they’re easily avoided or killed. Gameplay primarily consists of walking up to each door in the building and trying to enter; more often than not, they’re locked. There’s a boss battle at the end, but it’s on a timer; you can just run around until it ends. It’s tedious by design.

And yet, it’s that damn silence that wears on you as a player. The vacuum of sound leaves enough room that you start to imagine hearing things – or worse, the game has random sound effects that mess with you, such as whispers in rooms that may or may not play, depending on your playthrough.

Within this silence, I started to become my worst enemy. James’ footsteps sounded like anvils falling on the wooden floor. I imagined he was walking too loudly. That someone would hear him and come after us – a mechanic that does not actually exist in the game. In the moments Silent Hill 2 decides to break the silence – whether via the game’s score or, heaven forbid, a monster’s footsteps or cry- I was so on edge that I would often pause the game and then work to build up the courage to continue.

Visually, the game plays similar tricks. For one, the apartment is capital-D Dark. You have a flashlight, but beyond that narrow cone of illumination, the rest of the hallways might as well be the endless abyss of outer space. Seeing the faint movements of a monster right beyond the light’s cone of vision, just barely discernable, is enough to make my blood run cold. That this isn’t happening repeatedly – it’s a game with a lot of downtime compared to, say, Resident Evil – makes each time there is something in the dark all the scarier.

Of course, the apartments are full of very overt, graphic visual scares; for example, Silent Hill mainstay Pyramid Head’s introduction is here. The scene is so horrific that I can’t describe it in a family-friendly magazine. But the normalcy of these apartments is the scariest element of the entire game.

The best way to think about the gameplay in Silent Hill 2 is to understand that it is, in fact, the narrative; the world is a visual representation of James’ mental well-being or lack thereof. By the final third, the world has wholly fractured; the architecture and level layout no longer make sense, as it mirrors James’ guilt.

But in the beginning, in these apartments, James is still somewhat oblivious to why he’s in Silent Hill. As such, the apartment layout makes sense. It feels like an apartment building you lived in at some point. Architecturally, there are few surprises. But the lack of humanity makes the whole thing feel wrong.

Let’s return to the silence. Imagine walking down a hallway in any apartment building – what do you hear? Televisions, people talking, the sounds of moving around beyond the doors. You hear life. When you remove those sounds we’re accustomed to, when a place synonymous with being full of people suddenly has its humanity taken away, it no longer makes sense to our brains. You don’t need 100 monsters to make this apartment scary. All you need is the eerie void of humanity. It’s the same reason it’s scary to be inside your work office alone – this space wasn’t built to be empty. And when Silent Hill 2 finally decides to break that silence with an actual scare, your nerves are already so frayed that it barely has to do anything to break you completely.

It is, truly, a masterclass of horror, operating on multiple levels to put you, the player, on edge. Most importantly, it’s subtle. Many horror games – Dead Space and Resident Evil are prime examples – operate on excessiveness. That approach is only scary to a point. I’ve always thought the scariest parts of those games were the first 30 minutes and then no moment after. On the contrary, Silent Hill 2 makes you wallow in silence and dread so that by the time it finally breaks in its final third, and the whole thing becomes a cacophonous nightmare, the sound is overwhelming. It never gave you a moment to get used to its scares, so when it turns to excess, you’re not prepared, accustomed, or jaded by it.

Silent Hill 2 is largely inaccessible now – at least through legal means. You can play the HD remaster, but technical issues have caused the fanbase to largely disregard it. Original copies can cost upwards of $150. But I genuinely can’t recommend it enough if you can get your hands on it. There’s truly nothing else like it. Bloober Team, developer of Layers of Fear, The Medium, and so on, is developing a remake. There’s plenty of reason to be wary; the developer has a bad history of handling sensitive stories, and Silent Hill 2 is full of troubling themes that require a cautious hand. Nevertheless, whenever that’s released, hopefully, it can give new players a glimpse of the original’s horror.

Just don’t lose yourself in the silence.


This article originally appeared in Issue 360 of Game Informer

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleThe best video doorbells for 2023
Next Article The New York Times Asks Court to Destroy ChatGPT

Related Articles

Gaming

Donkey Kong Bananza And The Complicated Pac-Man Metroidvania | The Game Informer Show

19 July 2025
Gaming

Netflix Greenlights Live-Action Assassin’s Creed Series Led By Westworld, Halo Producers

18 July 2025
Gaming

Borderlands 4 Preview – Creative Director Discusses Designing The ‘Very Ambitious’ Endgame Content

18 July 2025
Gaming

UPDATE: Off The Grid, The Cyberpunk Battle Royale From District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp, Now Available On Steam

17 July 2025
Gaming

Hands On With The New Skate – Rolling Into A New Generation

17 July 2025
Gaming

Ghost Of Yōtei Directors Share Philosophy On Balancing Freedom With Story

17 July 2025
Demo
Top Articles

ChatGPT o1 vs. o1-mini vs. 4o: Which should you use?

15 December 2024101 Views

Costco partners with Electric Era to bring back EV charging in the U.S.

28 October 202495 Views

Oppo Reno 14, Reno 14 Pro India Launch Timeline and Colourways Leaked

27 May 202582 Views

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news and updates directly to your inbox.

Latest News
News

Review: Coway Airmega 50

News Room19 July 2025
News

How to Delete All of Your Social Media Accounts

News Room19 July 2025
News

The EVs We’ve Lost

News Room19 July 2025
Most Popular

The Spectacular Burnout of a Solar Panel Salesman

13 January 2025124 Views

ChatGPT o1 vs. o1-mini vs. 4o: Which should you use?

15 December 2024101 Views

Costco partners with Electric Era to bring back EV charging in the U.S.

28 October 202495 Views
Our Picks

Why It’s Taking LA So Long to Rebuild After the Wildfires

19 July 2025

How to Get the Most Out of (or Into) Your Robot Vacuum

19 July 2025

Review: Coway Airmega 50

19 July 2025

Subscribe to Updates

Get the latest tech news and updates directly to your inbox.

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
© 2025 Best in Technology. All Rights Reserved.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.