The debate of video games as art is also heavily impacted by preservation. The Silent Hill 2 Remake would likely have been more welcome as an alternate take if the original were easily available on modern hardware. At least Resident Evil 4 has that going for it.
I was thinking this as well. The classic RE trilogy finally got a re-release, although only on GOG and the ports are crappy without fan patches. SH4 managed to get a GOG release so SH2-3 should too.
@@lorenzotalk this is the thing. A lot of people are attacking the remakes because they think they have a negative effect on the preservation of the original pieces, but in reality what is affecting preservation is the lack of availability. If you can’t consume those pieces of art outside of their original medium of publication, they are destined to get lost.
@@mrrowwmeoww No. That's never been confirmed. It's mostly hijinx doing a horrible job porting the games due to the build konami gave them to work with and incompetence. Fans have already gotten the original PC ports working on modern machines so there's no real excuse not to sell them. The work is already done.
You play as James Hill, marine corps. Your mission? Infiltrate and eradicate the supernatural threat in Silent Hill™. Arm yourself to the teeth and battle waves of tough monsters such as the brutal Pyramid Head™. What horrific abominations await you in Silent Hill's deadly Fog of War™? Could this town be a secret base for military experiments gone wrong? Find out in Silent Hill 2: Blunt Force Trauma.
I actually completely disagree with the idea that old games graphics are objectively worse. That’s proven by the revival of 8bit, 16bit and PlayStation/n64 style games. The graphics are perfectly fine in a vacuum, we’ve just been conditioned as gaming consumers to see higher fidelity as better. I think the original titles will have much better staying power than the remakes in the years to come.
I think it's more accurate to say that older graphics *can* be worse. Many artstyles and themes benefit from lower fidelity but there are a lot of games that really feel limited by the technology of the time. Consider Shovel Knight, which emulates the NES aesthetic as well as it can but never would have been able to look like it does now if it were made for the NES simply due to the limits on colors the NES hardware had. A character driven emotional story like those of Silent Hill games really does benefit from better visuals and animations because it just feels stiff and unnatural otherwise. Most of the other gameplay and art can benefit from the lower fidelity just because it's a survival horror game but there's give and take here, not strictly better or worse except when the devs would prefer to not have the limitation.
Out of all game reviewers I’ve seen, none discuss things like atmosphere, aesthetic, sound design, or immersion quite like you. I really appreciate That because those are some of the most important parts of games to me. Great video as usual, and a perfect little video for Halloween.
There's this whole thing in mainstream gaming where gameplay is the practically only thing that matters and if it is good the game is good by extension. Really elitist perspective, and it makes some of the greatest game of all time bad by definition, SH2 included.
i sort of fundamentally disagree with the point you make in the beginning of the video in some ways. to me a lot of really ancient games like super mario bros and even something as polygonal and rough looking as metal gear solid 1 or half life 1 are essentially perfect for what they are. Im all for going for increased graphical fidelity, but at that point you are fundamentally altering the original art style of the games. to me those limitations earlier games faced were what gave them so much of their charm and personality. and the whole "are video games art?" argument has never been a real question to me. the answer is obviously yes edit: this isn't an argument against remakes btw, i really enjoy a lot of them. A lot of my favorite movies are remakes (the thing, the fly, invasion of the bodysnatchers etc)
I don't think his argument was so much on the art-style as it was the graphical limitations of games and hardware itself. Metal Gear Solid 1 looks objectively worse than Metal Gear Solid 2, which I believe realizes the art-style of the series in a fuller capacity than one. That isn't to say MSG1 looks "bad," but it is to say it is appreciated today for what it was, and enjoyed for being "retro," not for standing-up in today's graphical realm. A game like Super Mario Galaxy, despite being nearly twenty years old, still stands-up in today's graphical world, because it is not fighting against graphical limitations but instead embracing them.
Nerrel makes HD texture packs. He clearly thinks things have to be modernized or improved and can't be enjoyed as-is. Things are either good or bad. Good things don't need remakes.
Yeah exactly, no other medium really feels the need to patch over itself like games do. Imagine remaking the Mona Lisa using "modern painting techniques" or rewriting Shakespeare using modern lingo. Most artists are content to let their work exist as it was, because every aspect had intention behind it, even if it was a result of constraint. You have remasters of famous albums or movies, sure, but those are way less invasive and are more just an effort to preserve the original work so it can be experienced in modern formats, the content itself remains unchanged usually (unless you're George Lucas, who gets rightfully maligned for trying to modernize every aspect of his movies). For better or worse, the limitations defined the product as a piece of art. I wish gamers were more willing to meet older games halfway instead of immediately calling for remakes. You're going to inevitably lose something in the process when you remake something, it should never be a substitute for the original work.
Even though I love video games I’ve soured on the constant ‘video games are art’ idea over the years. Very, very few games have much to say or leave a lasting impression the way the best films or books do, but this doesn’t mean games are bad - they can have value as *games*, like how playing a darts or a good board game or something can be a good use of time. And I’d find it weird if someone really into darts kept repeating ‘darts is art’, it’s a defence that’s not necessary, as games have value. In short what I’m trying to say is video games are mostly just games or entertainment, and if they are art they are bad art (with some exceptions). And that’s fine because art isn’t the only thing worth spending time on
@@darkvoid1234567890 rewriting Shakespeare using modern lingo that one specifically would be more like a "de-evolution" to be honest, you'd lose all the beauty of the original language. but that honestly feels like a fairly apt metaphor for how some of the lesser remakes compare to their source material (something like the ratchet and clank remake)
I think the characterization of the original's camera work is a little incomplete -- Silent Hill 1 and 2 don't ALWAYS manipulate the camera on your behalf, but when they do, it leads to some of the coolest cinematic moments in survival horror history. I don't disagree that Silent Hill 2 remake's camera has its own charms, but glossing over the SH2 camera...idk king!!!! totally agree with you on music mix. def lacks the crunch of the OG great review as always, nobody I look to more for commentary on anything re: remakes
“Anyway what do you mean anyway!” performance from the PS2 made me stand out of my chair and straighten my back whereas new gen’s performance kept me slouched in my chair is alls I’m sayings here context: have not played both games just sharing how I reacted when I heard this scene the first time from watching this video. I am just a person sharing my thoughts that shouldn’t be taken seriously
I think the original performances being kind of weird most of the time also helps those moments of genuine extreme emotion stand out, Maria's anger and Mary's performance in the hallways and her letter are great examples of this. They're almost like vocal jumpscares. I wonder if they intentionally created that dissonance between more casual scenes and more emotional moments, or if those extreme emotions are just very universal so it even comes through even when it's American actors being directed by Japanese voice directors.
@@SleepyAdam The latter I think - it never ceases to amaze me how convuluted a lens it is communicating through a language barrier - and perhaps sometimes _because_ whether for one reason or another those distorsions mysteriously either get out of the way, just don't matter.
I hope modders can mod in and replace the new VA's with the old, Mary's original VA is still the peak of what's possible when it comes to line delivery
A work of art is the expression of certain individuals, within a certain place, within a certain time. And it is a reflection of that place and time. I really feel like you cannot "update" art and I don't see how "dated vs modern" graphics is that different from old vs new special/visual effects in movies. An artist creates the best work he can within certain limitations, and the limitations often serve the art. So remaking a game with a different set of people, from a different part of Earth, 20 years apart, is... fine if it's supposed to be a unique creation, but it's a bad thing if it's supposed to "update" the original. The Star Wars Special Edtitions come to mind, but these would have been even more artistically egregious if George Lucas wasn't even involved. I sadly observe that a lot of players, when wanting to try out an acclaimed game just go "oh I'll play the remake" or "I'll wait for a remake" because they don't want to deal with older graphics/controls or don't want to bother with emulators or patches. Giving the remake the exact same title as the original also doesn't help. I almost wonder if some will hear that "Silent Hill 2 is one of the best games ever" then play the remake on Steam without even realizing that it's a remake?
I'm very sympathetic to this point of view. And the issue of remakes and special editions is an old one. Just the other day I was choosing between a Penguin Classics and Vintage edition of 'Frankenstein' and I went with the Penguin because it was the original 1818 text and not Shelley's 1831 revised edition, in which she softened some of the content (due in part to the 1818 edition having been published anonymously and the new edition under her own name). There is a tension within any remake as the reason an artist would want to remake their work is fundamentally opposed to why a publisher would allow it to happen. In the publisher/audience's view, the original work is good enough to allow for a new version; in the author's view the work is deficient enough to require a new version.
I can perfectly imagine the scenario of someone playing SH2 because they read that it is a very iconic game, but they end up playing the remake. The same balance could apply with RE2, many people will have no idea that the RE2 that is on Steam is not the original. I wish more people thought like you, instead of the majority of people who only see all video games as toys.
Well said. That's why I don't mind the RE4 remake, which doesn't feel like an update and more like an homage, since the original is so readily available. I think the availability is a much bigger hurdle than the old graphics/controls. If SH2 was easily available I'd think of this remake as a fun project, but with the situation like it is, I'm just grossed out.
this is how i feel about people playing persona 3 reload and skipping the original because it's "outdated and old" just to hear how awful the new voice acting and the remade soundtrack is and how everything is way brighter than it should be.
The problem with implying games are distinct from other mediums because they can easily be updated is that the same logic can be applied to every artistic medium. Games have many successful remakes, but so do movies. More than people would like to admit. Possibly more than games. There's an ergonomics to every medium. Films get upscaled in higher resolutions, music gets remastered in higher quality, comics get reprinted and recolored/inked. Better tech can make the creative and technical process. There is no medium out there that isnt prone to some level of being "dated" An illustrater or painter can go back to a previous work of his and out do his original drawing with the newer iteration. Showcasing his improved skills. Is visual art somehow not art because it can techniclaly be improved upon. Theatre plays and musicals are perfomed countless times iver with different actors in different places with different sets with different affectations. Is theatre struggling to prove itself as an artistic medium because there's no definitive version? Viewing games as a purely ergonomic process neglects so much of the flaws and quirks that made people fall in love with something. The things that make something ART
Wouldn't the example of films getting a higher quality picture and higher audio quality be consireded as a remaster and not a remake? An example of a remake would be the og trilogy of the star wars movies getting re-released and having more cgi characters on screen and changing the original context of the og scenes. It might be consireded an technical upgrade but yet star wars fans prefer the original release bc adding new scenes or new sfx feels redundant. Movies get more recognition for og releases. That being said, there are moments in which some re-releases are the definitive way to watch the movies, for example, robocop and blade runner, so it really is a case by case thing, instead of a general thing. I do wish though that there would have been an official remastered collection of the SH quadrology and be given justice as they're a prime example of games being art and yet they don't get that respect.
I think it all comes down to intent of the original artist. Few directors would complain that a tasteful remaster for new screens ruins their picture, because the art is in the shots, the writing, and the performances. So the question is, what was the intent of the original developers of Silent Hill 2 and similar era games? If better technology was available, would they have made their games with high fidelity graphics or did they want their games to look blocky and aliased?
12:50 That Jack O'Lantern carving is a piece of art that I'd love to put on my front yard. Happy Halloween Nerrel and thanks for the well thought perspectives and takes! 🧡🎃💚
The game really does have too much padding in it; the run from the hospital and historical society goes on for too long, and it's so bombastic and loud when compared to how eerie it was in the original. If you trim off about 4 hours from the game, I would find it much more palatable.
I agree. Cuts out all of the tension when you reach the point where you're more annoyed than anything at having to deal with your 500th mannequin and you would rather just turn the game off than deal with more of them. I think there's room in games to be annoying to the player as a way of making you empathize with the events of the narrative. But this just feels like bloat. Especially if you play it on harder difficulty and you die and have to restart at some point. There's just entirely too much of this repetitive combat to support the game.
Yeah, and the enemies lose their effect really quickly when you bump into the same one every 15 feet. It stops being "there could be something around that corner" dread and becomes "there's something around every corner" dread, which isn't really how Silent Hill is supposed to make you feel.
I cant see how a game having "outdated" gameplay is bad. Ive played old games with "outdated" gameplay and I just get used to it in like an hour or so. Ive dropped far more newer games for having shitty and uninspired gameplay too.
It's possible for something to be bad without being a dealbreaker or the worst thing possible. My favourite game of all time is from 2004 and man, that gameplay is outdated. It's still a lot of fun, but it would be more fun if it weren't so clunky. That's all it means.
@greatsaiyaguy8868 knights of the old republic 2. Kotor is notorious for putting off new players with it's gameplay. It's not because it's turn based DnD gameplay, it's not like the fundamental concept is outdated, it's rather just an old implementation. Baldur's Gate 3 feels a lot nicer to play despite being fundamentally very similar.
I kind of find "dated" Gameplay to be a bit of a misnomer. It's not aged it's just different. Especially because elements of older titles can deliberately be imitated to achieve certain effects. For example a limited lives system might seem like a relic from the arcade days, but put that in a horror title and suddenly the tension goes through the roof. Just because the modern audiences have come to different expectations doesn't mean the mechanics themselves have aged. Just how people perceive them. A lot of modern design trends focus on babying players through almost every aspect of Games these days and tbh I think that's rubbed off.
Kinda hate how much the more recent generations of gamers find any sort of gameplay that doesn't 100% fit the convention to be "dated", "clunky" and "janky". Even if it's just a small hurdle that only takes five minutes to get used to, or demands patience from the player, it's just dismissed as unplayable jank that needs a remake to "modernize" it. And half the time, "janky", "clunky" or "dated" aren't even a proper critique. It's just a buzzword to vaguely describe the game as being bad, without elaborating at all, and tends to conflate "being old" with "being bad", like the developers were just clueless, or that the hardware was too limited to accomplish this, which is only getting more ridiculous when it's being said about the PS2.
To me considering that games age poorly as an objective norm instead of finding enjoyment in the learning to use the tools that they gave you just feels like a lack of curiosity and impatience. I’m done with playing over the shoulder third person shooters, I don’t care how good they might make them, I disagree that all games should feel super intuitive and comfortable, genres are not meant to be polished into a single monolithic control setup and style. And I won’t give a cent to bloober team after their gleeful patent shenanigans, they can go to hell.
Im with you here . Im fed up too with remaking every horror-game into a third-person shooter with dodge-mechanics . As if people are suddenly incompetent to learn new or different forms of gameplay that had its own merits and approaches . . SH2 didnt needed a remake but still got one and a generic one at best . People easily dismiss gameplay approaches as "outdated" or "clunky" when it has a reason why it is how it is . This homogenicising of games is one of the worst parts that kills gaming the most . People dont want and deserved other genres overall because they are not competent enough to approaches of gameplay .
I'm glad someone said this. I agree completely. Seeing all the REmakes from the last 5 years and SH2 using the same over the shoulder camera just makes me think, "are all modern, non indie, horror games just going to be homogenized at this point, and anything outside of this mold will be seen as lesser or said be developed based on a lack of resources?" Like, the fact that I've seen people say RE1 needs ANOTHER remake in the style of the RE2-4 because of REmake's fixed camera angles and tank controls is mind-boggling to me.
To be fair, we have an absolute wealth of indie games in the horror scene that are doing their own thing these days and are significantly cheaper. So whilst I'm not going to argue that it's oversaturated or not, because in the AAA scene, it definitely is, I'm also not gonna pretend that there isn't an absolute wealth of other options still being made by talented, aspiring indie devs, to balance out against fatigue. In my opinion, horror fans of all walks of life have been eating good these past 5 or so years - we all getting some new stuff. Bloober grievances though? That's not something I can comment on: I've never played or heard much on a Bloober game before this remake. So I'll just assume you have legitimate reasons to not trust them, as many others seem not to. That's fair game for sure. But yeah, the over-the-shoulder "fatigue" feels really forced. I can't even charitably say that the indie games are "obscure" at this point, because if you're watching channels like Nerrel's, you've almost certainly come across one of the many great horror game channels that talk about a bunch of indie horrors and rate the hell out of 'em, so you'd have to be actively ignoring that to feel like there isn't a healthy balance of other styles of horror games. Again, horror fans have been eating really good these past 5 years. Genre has had one hell of a resurgence in popularity and honestly, it's mostly thanks to AAA walking sims and OtS games doing so well just before that, that horror gaming became so popular again to begin with, so it's not all bad 🤷♂️. It just seems like the most non-problem ever that I see everywhere for these types of games these days.
Seriously miss when gaming conventions hadn’t all been “figured out.” I wish devs were still bold enough to create things that moved, controlled and felt different. Control schemes being borderline identical really sucked out the novelty and discovery.
The original Silent Hill 2 camerawork is just as deliberately crafted and artistic as the fixed camera RE games, just in a different way. I always liked that it felt like a weird detached Lakitu camera, it made the game feel even more dissonant. I don't think I was supposed to see every detail of Silent Hill from James' perspective in the first place.
I can somewhat agree with that, but the remake does show a Dutch angle here and there... Mechanically it was an artifact of the notion of tank controls, which gameplay wise is a fairly dead concept, like a single joystick game pad. And the last point, yeah, you were supposed to see it from James' perspective, outside of the Labyrinth. That's why only the Pyramid Head James can see carries Angela's knife, but only when Maria isn't there... And when he no longer needs Pyramid Head, he can suddenly see them both - Maria's and his own. Then you were supposed to play Born From A Wish, and hopefully realize which character that title actually refers to...
@@philippeamon7271 I personally like tank controls and I know I’m not the only one I don’t think it’s a dead concept even though I can understand people not liking it
@@panetierbread3510 Only in the design document. But that was before Ito went with two Pyramid Heads boss fight instead. And they didn't bother redesigning the found location, because they could still use the idea of severing (e.g. an umbillical cord). In the release it was always Great Knife, and the shape of the weapon proves it is not a sheer anymore.
Completely disagree with the Pyramid Head scene being changed. I don't mind making changes to it but now it is just lacking impact. It doesn't have that unsettling "what the hell did I just witness?" feel of the original, it is just seeing a scary monster cutscene like in many other games. Not awful but clearly not as effective.
"Old graphics are objectively worse." This from the guy who got famous because everything about Majoras Mask 3D made him go nuclear INCLUDING the greater fidelity in graphics. Huh.
@@Xeakerr Honestly this does feel like a review from Bizarro Nerrel sometimes. He criticized RE2R for changing the camera perspective and having too many dark areas that require a flashlight, but here both of those aspects are praised when SH2R does them. If nothing else this is definitely the most SURPRISING review he's ever done.
Does he have brain damage from Covid or something? I can’t believe this is the same guy, this entire video is on the level of something that me and my friends would send to each other to laugh at
@@QuintessentialWalrus I disagree with him on countless things, but his demeanour, nuanced analysis, and level of knowledge is why he's the only reviewer I watch.
@@QuintessentialWalrus I think it is pretty simple: he likes OG RE2 too much. If anyone tampers with HIS favourite game, it is bad. But if the game is not his favourite, just something he likes in general, then changes are welcome.
5:54 I’m not sure I would classify this removed content as censorship either, but I think it’s fair to argue that for the most memorable enemy, they should’ve maintained everything.
a good amount of silent hill fans still think pyramid head was sexually assaulting those mannequins, which was never what the devs were going for. this might not even be a bloober team initiated change.
Can't wait for them to Remake the Mona Lisa with updated paint creation technology and modern brushes.. You see it wasn't the original artist who created the painting with his unique motor skills and vision for how the paint should be used to create this unique look to his painting. Anyone could do it.
@@philippeamon7271 Are you talking about the fact that it was over painted on in multiple layers? I chose her as the most extreme example how people actually treat art compared to how we look at videogames. I think it still gets my point across. But you could choose any painting or book for that matter. Before the piece was finished ther might have been numerous corrections or redrafts. But at some point it became the "finished" piece that became the legendary painting. And I put finished in quotation marks because what does finished in that case even mean. For many paintings there wasn't even a concept of a release back in history.
@@Goramann I meant, your example of great art was a very poor choice, given that it would have remained in obscurity forever, outside of some artificial shenanigans. Related to how art now primarily exists as a money laundering scheme. And also, I guess, because Moore's law doesn't apply to how paint dries. And artists are only human - sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes they work by instincts, but the author is not really the authority on their work - simply because it only exists in a wider "hivemind" context that a single human cannot hope to compass, even if they are exceptionally intelligent, premeditated, and deliberate. In the 90s, we were trying to explain how it's okay for guitar gods to grape underage fangirls, because "it's completely impossible to play guitar, only God's chosen few are born with guitar, no one knows how to guitar better than Donald Trump, it's okay when he does it, not me, or you, or a girl"... And that's a very generally harmful way of dealing with your inadequacies, trying to deify other human beings, just because they pooped in the shape of a dino nugget.
2:00 I personally found the removal of the "cinematic" camera angles a huge loss in the demake. Already at the very beginning, the run from the parking lot to the town lost a chunk of its atmosphere, since the camera never switched to those off-limits perspectives, implying something preying you from the woods. The greatly toned down audio effects further watered down the impact. Also, just like in the RE2-3 demakes, many of the originally actually striking, memorable indoor rooms and scenes took a massive hit because of the restrictive OTS camera. Everything's just that tiny bit more generic, cramped and "artificial", with so many copies of the cool setpieces now having been altered to take place in front of the chase-camera, else players would miss them. This also brought in the other cancer: all the button prompts and other artificial handholding, since no more the devs could just highlight key elements with changing camera-angles. The final nail shot by this new design is the very action-oriented new gameplay, that is legit almost 1:1 copy of the behated SH Homecoming; attack combo + dodge loops, repeated ad nausea, in tiny "combat arena" rooms filled with chest-high walls to jump over, shelves and cabinets lied down in a messy fashion to allow Mannequins to jump on you. It's a far cry from the original's actually pretty darn realistic floor plan, which also necessitated the RE1 style exploration and finding keys / solutions to locks / puzzles all across the map, necessiting back travel and exposure to threats old and new. Now the keys to the next area are often sitting right next to the road block, while the "dungeons" often restrict your access to many parts of the map both before and after solving riddles / finding the next key items.
I also completely forgot: I seriously miss the environment EXAMINATION function of the old RE1-4 and SH1-4. I've seen many younger players criticize the "spam X at everything", but I actually loved hearing the character's "inner thoughts". Especially in SH3, where Heather had some of the best remarks on everything, acting like a Y2K emo girl at everything. It also helped me to get to know the PLAYABLE CHARACTER better; I have no need to play as a blank slate in order to relate and immerse with the game, I actually prefer immersing into the mood and tone of the game's world itself, traveling WITH the character, than literally "being the character". While at it, I might as well mention that many of the "otherworld" changes were for the worse. James' mental hell now resembles the SH1/3/Movie style rusty, burned down landscapes a bit too much, where as the original's tone and theme was more moist, moldy, hues of blue and green.
couldnt agree with what you commented more. just a general overarching removal of the things that made the original original, across every surface of the game. silent hill 2 is no longer a horrible unknowable thing but now instead a pretty decent game.
@@GugureSux My god someone finally mention the changes to the otherworld! Thank you! I dislike the homogenization they did in this remake to make it look more like SH1/3 but I know why they did it. It's obvious they're going to remake SH1 next and they're just going to reuse a bunch of assets for that game. Sadly thanks to this much of the OG identity was sacrificed in the process of making this game.
1:01 I'd argue all games should be regarded as complete works of art as they are, regardless of when they were released or the degree to which an individual game is perceived as "artistic". Decades of marketing intended to sell consoles has conditioned people into believing that more tech = better art. A lot of people in both the audience and on remake teams often seem to assume that something was a certain way in an older game because it couldn't be "better", or even because the original creators didn't know what they were doing, or were stupid. It's an extremely myopic attitude. Nobody in the art world would remake a Rembrandt with a Wacom painting tablet and Photoshop under complete assurance that it'll be better because the tech is newer, but here we are in video games! Every component of older games adds value to their construction as artworks, including the low resolution, low polygon counts, hand-animated characters, and so on. Final Fantasy 7, in particular, I'd argue is a much more effective artwork in its original form. I wouldn't call anything about its world-class environment art, chunky character aesthetic, timeless music composition, or abstracted animations "crude", nor "benefitting immensely" from new hardware. The remake is a completely different set of assets creating a completely different experience -- one that could be said to have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the original -- and you can argue its comparative effectiveness as an artwork. But I'd reject completely the notion that extra gigaflops have the capability of turning PSX Final Fantasy 7 into Better Final Fantasy 7. I personally like to play Majora's Mask in the higher resolution, but even that I couldn't say is objectively a superior aesthetic. On the other hand, I don't like to play the "Rebirth" versions of the Resident Evil games which smooth everything out and remove all the crunch and grain from the world. Are circles better than squares? Is vector art better than pixel art??? Anyway, SH2R is pretty good
It's not a meaningful comparison, when Moore's Law cannot be applied to how paint works. In a way it's cool how processor distribution created the foundational gameplay mechanic of Space Invaders, where the aliens move faster and faster, the fewer sprites that are left on screen. But if you could get "Kaptajn Kaper" to run on your PC today, you'd need to use a CPU choker, or you'd instantly smash into the pier, if you sailed into any harbor. Such simplistic mechanics are just typically not enough to carry any kind of gameplay anymore. As for Final Fantasy, most entries, such as 7 and especially 10, relied heavily on a bishie aesthetic, as such, they could always benefit from improved graphics. But a remake couldn't be financially viable, if we pretend there'd be any significant audience for the traditional turn-based combat mechanics. Maybe when it somehow becomes more viable to play that kind of game for either minutes while waiting for the bus, or several hours, on a smartphone, and also equally meaningful by design. It's not better art, but contemporary and contextual. I want to make a game, that's similar to Shadowgate (remake) and Cryptmaster. It's core concept is roll a (situational die) and (randomly generated result) happens. The point of the game is primarily to die in a spectacular, gruesome, and rare kind of way. It needs graphics, that are good enough to convey an emotional impact to your choices panning out in misfortune, to add motivational value, and sense of achievement, to the less likely successful outcome of those same choices. Technically, it could just be a black screen, that outputs 'alive result' until it outputs 'dead result', that would be the same game, and would have looked that way in the early 80s. But that's not very impactful or addictive these days.
ff7 original aged terribly in terms of graphics and gameplay. It's the worst type of early 3d graphics, I don't think I've played a game with graphics that aged worse than that. It's probably just your nostalgia speaking.
@@BrovarSpirytus I was born after FF7 came out and played it last year (in its original resolution with a CRT filter) and thought it looked gorgeous. Where's your "nostalgia" argument now?
@@Forthelemon well if you consider those goofy 3d models taken straight out of "money for nothing" video slapped onto 2d backgrounds gorgeous then idk what to tell you
@@BrovarSpirytus FF7 is one of the best looking games ever made, and remains better looking than most games today! The reason for that is simply that they had amazing concept artists on the creative team. In the following years, the unfortunate commodification of the field of concept art as the entertainment industry became a billion-dollar business led to artists being trained in a homogenized, assembly-line way of thinking. While still skilled people, it is now basically encouraged that they suppress their creativity in favor of a genericism that will fit them easily into a production pipeline on Sci-Fi Game X or Fantasy Game Y. They also have little say as to the look of anything, with a style being dictated from the top, after 50 layers of approvals from corporate boards and focus groups. But in 1997, especially with smaller and more autonomous teams, it was more common that an individual artist's virtuosic skill and unique imagination was able to shape the visual identity and character of an entire project, such as Yasuyuki Honne on Chrono Cross, Hideo Minaba on Final Fantasy 9, or Yusuke Naora on Final Fantasy 7. I'd encourage you to look at the pencil drawing designs for the world in FF7, as well as stills or GIFs of the prerendered backgrounds, especially iconic shots such as the streets of Junon or the Loveless theater in Midgar. Stunning, timeless work from the masters. As for the gameplay, I can't imagine how it can be said to have aged terribly. It's very quick, intuitive, and tactical. I'd take it any day over the remake's foregone conclusion battles demanding you smack the enemy with whatever "break" effect the game dictates to you in a braindead game of Simon Says disguised with billions of particle effect explosions. Funny how al the computing power in the world wasn't able to make them better game designers or artists!
The game's visuals work in its favor considering how many people love milking the retro PS1 style in indie games and other stuff. I kinda wanna see them do 4, as it's the game I actually feel like would benefit from a remake with more changes and content. Henry is a boring, nothing character and the games' scares don't really work because of the constant use of stock sound effects. After that they could do 1 and 3
@Vandreand SM has nothing to do with the original game besides character names and the inciting incident. To me, it's what they wanted from the Cold Heart pitch but malformed to get Konami to greenlight the game. I think it's disingenuous at this point to claim SM as a remake. Especially how they had to keep saying it's a "reimagining" because they knew it was just a smoke screen to do what they wanted. Which I have respect for Climax, Konami was just playing too safe so Climax had no choice than to make it a "reimagining."
That's what remakes used to be: you wouldn't remake a game that was already perfect because there was nothing to change. The purpose of a remake is to take a good game and make it better by fixing some of the issues it had. But game companies know it makes more money to pander to nostalgia with pointless remakes of games that don't need any improvements, so we get shit like this.
At this point I've simply come to disagree with remakes existing at all. Modern gamedev is slow enough that some series are lucky to get 2 games in the same decade. Then the remake craze just sells you a counterfeit of a game you already played in place of something more original. And the games remade are never piles of shit that never lived up to their potential like DMC 2. It's always games that are already good and almost always playable on modern hardware. Remakes also invite division among the communities, guaranteeing that all discussion of either version will invite comparison shitstink that just stifles discourse. Stop buying remakes and just play games.
The only "remakes" I like is Resident Evil GCN, Super Mario All-Stars, and Earthworm Jim XBLA. Link's Awakening came up short. Everything else has been a joke. Either noticeable details are missing in the port, the art style is radically changed, or lately the gameplay is completely altered like Resident Evil 2. I'm constantly comparing the new with the old when playing. It's not the same GAME anymore when you drastically alter how the game handles. The other problem is I have already played most of these remakes so I know at least 50% of the map and the story beats having played it only once 10 years ago. Remakes should be sharpening and enhancing detail without replacing the visuals of ultra low texture/resolution games and targeting games with severe frame rate and input issues first from NES, SNES, PS1, GBA/NDS era games like Earthbound, MS-DOS MechWarrior and Alone in the Dark, and early RPG stuff to higher animation framerates and taking advantage of 4k displays. Can't wait for the remake of Tetris where it's 3rd person over the shoulder to fight S and Z blocks hiding around corners.
In most ways I'd consider it a downgrade. I am and always have been in the camp that thinks the weird voice acting in the original improves the game. Everyone but Maria and Mary sound like freaks and it's great. The James from PS2 is so insanely awkward that I completely believe he'd go to Silent Hill and stick his hand in a toilet. Even barring memes, Guy Cihi's James had an emotional range and talked beyond a gravelly drone. Luke Roberts imo is very dry in comparison; technically more professional, but very boring and lacks emotion except in certain instances. Gameplay like you said it technically more involved, but it does indeed become more of a hindrance the further you go into the game. I also prefer the camera in the original game as well; effort was put into placing the camera in specific places or giving specific angles that I think really works, and if you didn't like it a simple tap of L2 swung it over to where you're facing so no biggie. Remake is a generic over-the-shoulder perspective. This isn't bad in general, but I feel Silent Hill really benefits from a more cinematic camera. That being said, it would require bringing tank controls back, and that would be too awesome for anyone to actually consider because the devs are COWARDS.
Thank you, I thought I was the only one who really didn't like the new voices. The original cast just knocked it out of the park in a way that felt uniquely fitting for the game's themes and narrative, whereas the remake's cast are all technically compotent, but in a way that completely misses the point of these characters to begin with (examples being how Angela in the remake is pretty much immediately more hostile to James compared to how her act of cordiality eroded in the original and how remake Eddie instantly went from seemingly normal to unhinged whereas, again, the original showed that change more gradually).
To be honest, you don't need tank controls to give the game a more relaxed, cinematic camera. Just varying up the distance between the camera and James depending on the scene, and allowing it to swing around his body more without being locked to his back, would do a lot to make the game feel different from its contemporaries. A rigid shoulder camera is good for when you're aiming your gun, but I don't know why so many modern games keep the camera equally rigid when you're just exploring.
As someone who gave the game a chance and played through the whole thing, I still dislike it--and honestly, a bit baffled by Nerrel's take on it. I find this whole 'product review' format of video game opinion having is cheap--especially for a game which, we all agree, stands as art. I'm disappointed with how many critics seem to gloss over so many elements of the original as faults, rather than charms, only to then pat themselves on the back as fans of the original; it feels like people have this really insincere performance of respect for the original, when in reality, the strangeness which gives it value--and influences so many others in the field--is seen as disposable compared to higher fidelity, Hollywood-style acting, and Sony 'cinematic' gameplay. I don't blame Nerrel for having a positive review of the game--that's not what I'm trying to say. But I do think that people significantly under-value the original, or fail to appreciate its best qualities, if they think the remake's only sins are that it's 'a little padded out', like... It's over twice the length, and it does not fill that empty space with anything of significant value--that alone is tragic for a horror game; a genre known to rely on tight pacing that keeps the player from getting bored, and thus distracted from the experience. The original *had* interesting camera angles. It had better pacing, and stronger performances, and less tedious puzzle design, and less obvious storytelling approaches. It was completely original--to the degree that it defined the indie genre as a whole with its influence--yet it's been dissolved into the individual contributions of a fraction of the original game's staff: music and art direction. Cutscene direction? Throw it out. Script writing? Toss that too. Game design? Hardly know her! This soft-ball take on Silent Hill 2 Remake (of course, inspired by the *justified* and, so far, delivered expectations of people used to Bloober Team's work--and you know Nerrel is aware of this and including it in much of his take on the game, considering he mentions it like 3 times) is going to age like milk. Edit: I'm including this little tid bit not as a response to any comment I've gotten, but more a clarification to prevent any kind of strawmanning of my point: *I don't have Bloober Team.* I *always* thought the outrage specifically at Bloober was overblown, not because people weren't right to expect a bad game, but because they expected a disfunctional game--which is not what they make. Bloober Team make boring, predictable games--and that is exactly what Silent Hill 2 is; a boring and predictable rehash of a more interesting original game. I don't think Bloober Team (which I'm sure has experienced its deluge of staff turn-over) is incapable of making a good horror game, and I look forward to when enough leadership turns over, so that a fresh-faced, actually inspired game and narrative director takes the wheel, and finally makes their first actually decent video game.
trust me many of us have been there. This is what I felt like when the Demons Souls remake released. The whole souls community waved off the egregious changes they made to everything and to this day it is considered an amazing remake. Any criticism can only sound like something along he lines of: "Yea some things are a bit worse than the original but it is overall an amazing way to experience Demons Souls". I cannot put into words what hearing a sentence like that does to my brain.
@@sjgrfnc Yea, I am totally with you there. The best way to look at it is really to see videogames as fleeting as any piece of art. I mean even though i can relate that it can be really off putting hearing people disregard the originals merits, it is probably best to remember that most pieces of art in history have been lost to time anyways as these will be. Therefore these creations are only for us to enjoy. Meaning the few people that live during this timeline of human life and also that there is a minority of gaming purists out there who will never trust in a remake blindly. And I also think over time more like us will appear as they remake more and more games, turning parts of those communities disillusioned with remakes. I played Final Fantasy 7 about 4 or 5 years ago. Was it old? Absolutely. Are the graphics goofy looking by modern standards? Sure. Is the Active Time Battle system a weird way to play a Turn based game for someone like me. Of course. Did any of it prevent me from enjoying my experience with it? I want to be fully honest here. I am not a fan of Turn based Combat games in general if they lack a movement dimension and therefore it was one of the least enjoayble parts for me. But this unique experience: Flaws and all was an amazing experience. I will never forget it. I was floored how much they did with such limited technology. Even the goofy looking character models turned from an outdated 3d Model into a charming representation of a character you perceived as a real person, due to the writing, music and presentation. But even if any of these things put me off enough to make me stop the game. That is also ok. In which case it just wasnt for me. Like any book or painting. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There doesn't need to be a watered down or changed version so I am able to enjoy it more. Final Fantasy 7 Remake will NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS be a "replacement" for experiencing this game. It by the definition cannot. It is a great piece of fan service to the original fans and a way for new audiences to experience the world of Final Fantasy 7 in its very own way. But it will never "replace" what that original game was.
It feels like it's a over corrective narrative from game journalist and gamers alike that mostly expected a trash fire but got something competent instead and because of that everyone is glossing over the remakes lack of soul in favour of over praising it's skin deep aesthetics and technical prowess
I don't think that I agree that technology makes video games "better", at least not when we're arguing if video games are art. Stronger hardware and better software can lead to tighter gameplay, higher quality visuals, and can increase the scope of what is possible, and subjectively that make them more effective or enjoyable, but a painting is just as much the craft as it is the materials. An oil painting is not lesser than a digital drawing because the artist was more limited in their use of colour. A great remake should not exist in substitute of the original. It's a cover of a song. Johnny Cash covering Hurt didn't invalidate the original Nine Inch Nails song, even if a lot of people prefer it, and Bloober's SH2 doesn't invalidate Team Silent's original. It's just a different take and what is achieved within those original limitations is just as valuable as what can be achieved without them. You mentioned Silent Hill 1 being in far more desperate need of an overhaul and as somebody who played it for the first time this month, I don't agree. Sure, it'd be nice but I'm more upset that it's only available through unofficial means. Art is defined by the limitations of its medium and Silent HIll 1 is an exceptional use of those limitations. That opening segment in the alley is incredible.
I kinda don't appreciate you dunking on the visuals of the original with the "more immersion argument"...maybe part of the appeal of the original is that it looked surreal, infact I'd argue the more realistic look of the characters took alot of that away. Also at 9:14 I MASSIVELY disagree...the game is an action game, even if it's not an action "shooter"....you spend most of the time in this remake fighting and killing enemies than you do anything else.
I disagree with a lot of your points. I don’t think the original is janky or clumsy. You made that point while showing James fighting two nurses at the same time. That’s generally not something you should even do in the og. Fighting more than one enemy at a time is risky because James is not a character who’s good at fighting. Most of the best strategy is to run and juke enemies, which adds to the intensity. Especially when returning to areas and you know those enemies are in there waiting for you. That fear is gone now because James is an action hero now. Second, it’s not as rusty and bleak as it needed to be. The original was much muckier and much bleaker. There have been plenty of side by side comparisons that have confirmed the remake is much cleaner looking than the original. The lights are too bright, and you make another point that the original apartment rooms all blend together…that’s kind of the point. It’s like getting lost in a haunted house and you don’t know if you’ve already been in a room. That’s terrifying. The remake made every room unique, that removes a lot of scariness and unease. Third, I disagree on the removal of scenes. I don’t think because of higher fidelity of other bosses excuses the developers of changing things that were iconic, especially the scene of pyramid head. That was a shocking scene and it’s removal downplays how the player should feel about him. He’s a regular boss now. I think the additional content comes off as padding and is annoying. The original was a tight package, the remake drags on way way too long. They should have made more variety with the enemies if they were going to include more areas.
It is telling when fixed camera and combat are described as something clunky. I don't agree with generic action combat being an improvement by any stretch of the imagination. The flow of combat is just hit, hit, dodge, repeat ad nauseum. You genuinely have less ways to deal with crowds because there is in fact no hit stun in the game (only visual feedback of it, no actual hitstun). Fixed camera was used effectively in a lot of cases, easiest example is the opening run through the woods and how it made you feel watched. There is also a lot of apartment rooms that benefited from specific camera angles. Addition of new scenes does in fact not justify removal of others. What is it if it isn't censorship? Just a weird decision overall. Changing of design of otherworld to SH1-3 makes no sense if you truly appreciate the original direction. No, it isn't supposed to be the same design, it never was, the design was character specific and it is lost in remake. I don't think that SH2 Remake is a bad game, mediocre but not bad; It is a bad SH2 remake though.
talk about looking through rose tinted glasses. There's nothing risky about combat in the original when you can literally stop time mid enemy attack, fully heal and reload your weapons. In the remake the combat is much more tense and actually requires some skill. "that the original apartment rooms all blend together…that’s kind of the point" lmao what a cope
@@DandyBrains yes, the need to aim with limited amunition when fighting enemies that move in unnatural way and timing dodge correctly is a skill. clicking one button to use a weapon in the original is not.
What the hell is risky about fighing enemies in the original? Are you for real? You can literally pause the game, heal, reload all your guns, and blast all the enemies. They posses no threat at all. They also stagger with every single shot. The game gives you so much ammo, is literally impossible to run out unless you stare into a wall and just drain your guns. You can run past them, you don't even have to fight them. I love the original, but the mental gymnastics some fans go through to say "Oh yeah, Team Silent actually meant it to be that way!!!" is concerning. Specially when the devs have gone out to say they love the remake and does some things better than the OG.
really dont agree on a fair amount of the points here in regards to the look. i feel the characters are mostly worse, the animations painfully generic and the orignial not as bads as you make it sound.
Take off the nostalgia goggles. The original is a piece of art, but the remake improves on it in mostly every way, except for a few flaws i.e. Maria delivery. Other than that all the characters are improved, and the animations are generic because they want to keep it janky like the original. If it was realistic like re4r, the SH fan base will complain endlessly till they crap their gooner diapers.
@@fruitslicer ''Improves on it on almost every way'' , Yeah those things that were ''improved'' aren't the reasons we fell in love with the original anyway, so you can stick it. The game didn't need a remake, and there shouldn't have been one. End of story. You can enjoy your ''MoDErn'' RE clone as much as you want.
@@Al-ji4gd So, don't play it? The original will always be there. You complaining does absolutely nothing to the commercial success, and fan acceptance of the remake. "End of story" talk about being an entitled and childish prick.
The problems with Bloober weren't just about the quality of the work. There's a ton of controversy on them besides. Plagiarism, using AI art, and I'm sure there was particular controversy around one staff member who'd left a while before Silent Hill 2 was released. It's neither here nor there so long as it's not in the Remake itself, but there is more to the resistance to this game.
Every time a new remake comes out I wonder if we're undermining the idea of games as art by ignoring the notion of treating each game as an individual piece of art that's representative of its time, flaws and all. And, that maybe by constantly remaking games we're relegating them to nothing more than disposable trash that naysayers dismiss them as if we feel the need to discard them every time there's a new leap in technology. Or maybe I'm just a big dummy.
The question to me would be who "we" is? I didn't have any control over Konami remaking this, and I doubt Konami remade it as some sort of artistic statement. They wanted to make money off of something that people who used to work there made.
Remakes have existed in other media for far longer, and can be perfectly as valid as the original. They don't invalidate what came before, but tastes change and it's easier to get into the newer version usually. Often this becomes a gateway for fans of the new to check out the old. We just need Konami to do the right thing and make the Silent Hill 2 HD Project official.
@@MrSnaztastic You're right, but from a corporate standpoint I have a feeling that Konami will treat SH 2 R as a sort of replacement since there's no easily available port of the originals available.
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 In my hypothetical the "we" would stand for the average consumer who buys this sort of product. But, you're also correct about this being a cash grab.
I can’t believe how quickly he glazed over that completely meaningless nonsensical claim as if it was just common sense. Art is anything but timeless. One of the most valued aspects to art at large is its ability to reflect the time and place during which it was created.
Yeah there’s too much bloat. You feel it in the first play through, but you REALLY start to notice it in the repeat runs. The labyrinth is awful, especially the gamey 3 room combat section. What a chore.
But here's the thing: the score is NOT mostly intact. Why am I hearing the sound of Pyramid Head dragging his massive metal sword along the floor of the 3rd floor apartment building in the original game now being played outside, in the middle of the street, before I even get to the apartment complex in the remake? Even this misuse of the soundtrack does a massive disservice to the original, which disappoints me greatly, because I expected better from Yamaoka.
@@M.sami12Ok, then, genius. You explain to us why the sound of Pyramid Head dragging his massive metal blade along the floor on the third floor of the apartment is being heard over and over again outside in the middle of the town? I'll wait.
This remake would be a decent 6/10 horror game by itself, but it doesn't do Silent Hill 2, a game I consider a 10/10 for what it set out to do with its story and atmosphere, justice when it comes to translating the same mood and emotion. I'll always prefer the original over it.
There's something about the remake that just feels...sterile. A pale imitation that completely misses the point of the original and destroys what made it special.
I bought the original on release day, I was 19. Ive been a constant replayed ever since. For me, the remake lovingly captured the feeling of playing the original when it was new. Can't say I agree. SH2Remake feels like playing the original did, like playing a Resident Evil clone with better atmosphere and story.
"Completely misses the point". They couldn't have nailed it harder. Speaking as a massive fan of the original, this is the best you could ever hope for from a Silent Hill 2 remake.
The new voice acting and soundtrack are huge downgrades. Why on earth did they change Mary’s letter at the end of the game? It feels like I’m taking crazy pills that people just shrug off these massive changes like it’s not important.
The remake in itself is already a completely different game, it has nothing to do with the original, it is just a mere copy without soul. Why don't people complain? because they just want to play the new trendy game, nothing more, nobody cares about SH2 OG.
@@Kirisu__Mafuyu I'm 3 hrs into the game and I'm seriously just bored. I don't remember it being so lifeless. Is it even worth finishing, does it get better?
The original has a point-and-click adventure game feel to it which is what gives it an artistic feel to it. This remake is basically turning it into The Last of Us with that style of combat and camera. Sure it makes it more fun, but I play Silent Hill to be disturbed, not have fun. It's definitely less artistic, less disturbing, less focused on the point. It's like turning on the lights in a haunted house so that you can see better.
@@energeticyellow1637 I had the complete opposite experience. The original never scared me, and Ive been playing it since release. Im actually too scared to continue playing the remake.
@@Johnspartan296 i played the original and its not that scary but...is very disturbing....did you find the remake as disturbing or more than the original?
@@Johnspartan296I felt too competent in the remake, like I could take on anything that came my way due to the more fluid combat and dodge button that gives you an entire second of i-frames. The og's stiffness and clunkiness really amplified the atmosphere and made James feel a lot more like an every-man.
@@energeticyellow1637 The combat in the original was way too easy. For me, it wasnt scary or tense when fighting monsters because you could just stand still and bonk them on the head repeatedly and they couldnt do anything. That was boring. The combat in the remake is actually scary and tense because it was actually challenging. Yes, you have i-frames with the dodge but its not like you can spam it constantly. And the enemies are unpredictable. I dread seeing enemies in the remake because combat actually adds to the horror factor instead of detracts, like in the original.
The shader compiling thing has nothing to do with the specific stutter SH2R is facing. This has nothing to do with compilation, it's a side effect of UE5's World Partition system, something a lot of devs don't use. Bloober decided to use it to break up the town into chunks for loading instead of streaming assets. I guess their logic was that the fog could hide the massive chunk loads visually so it works better than it generally does in wide open worlds. The problem is World Partition has and always will cause a frametime spike, because you can't preload PSOs from unloaded WP chunks, they must all be loaded and processed simultaneously when the chunk loads. This is why the stutters are 100% consistent, they will always happen in the exact same spots in the world with 100% consistency, because that's where the load trigger for the chunks are. I highly doubt this will ever be fixed in UE5. Epic has barely touched the WP system since it was added years ago, it's a borderline abandoned feature. The single most glaring issue with UE5 is that Epic doesn't really care about adding or fixing features unless it's relevant to Fortnite. There is a serious flaw with the Lumen GI system that has been present since day 1 and they don't fix it because Fortnite has that feature disabled.
Unfortunately the game engine is reaching monopoly status, almost everyone glazes this game engine to no end while 90% of PC gamers just have to deal with the horrid thing
@@at0micl0bster It was Lynchian when it worked, but Ray Wise being weird and psycho in Twin Peaks is an entirely different kind of weird from the actually bad acting that SH2OG has at times. Sometimes the OG nails it perfectly, like with Mary, Angela's trauma, & the letter reading, but there is a ton that does not hit
one thing that I dislike a lot is that you encounter the same enemies so often that it stops being scary or tense, and since the game definitely has far more focus on combat it means that they stop being monsters to hide or run away from but they become nuisances to dealth with repeatedly, I'd much prefer a remake where ammo was so sparse that you had to only use it in life or death situations and with that obviously less spam of said enemies (mannequins) I still prefer the Ps2 version, this remake feels generic like it was made to appeal to all masses which brought all the issues that I dislike the most, in the end if I wanna play RE I'll play RE but I wont sit down to play poor man's version of RE here yet it also doesn't feel precisely like OG SH2
I do want to mention that the puzzles are pretty excellent (so far, I only just beat the hospital), reaching that perfect mix of making you feel clever without ever needing to reach for a walkthrough. They still have that pacing problem but they do a great job of snaking you through through the environment with a mix a beautiful environments and creepy story telling.
"Some of the most disturbing pyramidhead scenes have been trimmed or even removed but I wouldn't call it censorship, the higher level of fidelity makes some of the other creatures more horrifying than ever before" What? That's a totally disjointed and wack argument, sounds like that ex-ign employee saying giving everything a 7 is good because they need to reserve the 3 to 0 score for games that they don't even bother to review. This reeks of that time gmanlives callled starfield a masterpiece.
Those are some serious mental gymnastics indeed. Watering down explicit imagery IS censorship. The presentation is also very bland. OG had much more interesting camera work and color pallette. This remake is basically a Hollywood adaptation of a great Japanese horror: safe and digestible
Using remakes as an argument against videogames being art is weird in the age of 4K AI-upscaled re-releases of beloved 80s movies (something you also made a video on)
There's a moment where Silent Hill 2 used its camera in a Resident Evil 1/2 style way I'm shocked you didn't comment on. It's the part where James and Maria are being chased by Pyramid Head. In the original the camera is fixed and when the camera angle changes James and Maria go from wandering through a corridor to being chased. In the sequel this part is made way worse and it feels far less iconic. They also shaved down a lot of the original's rough edges down for the worse. Like James is far less of a flawed protagonist. Where in the original he was kind of a lecherous functional alcoholic who was mostly out to lunch. The sequel makes it feel like they wanted a very specific interpretation in mind where he feels like he cares more about the people around him. You can see this sort of thing with most of the other characters. Like Eddie feels like a much less subtle character. It reminds me of the changes made in the Demon's Souls remake where they exaggerated a lot of the art direction and made its world feel like they were spoonfeeding everything to you.
This 100% When I saw Eddy the first thing I thought was "demon souls remake". He looks like a grotesque abomination now. In the og he is just a fat guy that could be a side bully character in tons of movies of that time. Just proves once again how hollow and artificial our cultural products have become. Convejor belt slop.
@@Senumunu I genuinely would've preferred if they remade one of the less good Silent Hill games. Like the post Team Silent ones. I think there's far more value in remaking something that's bad compared to remaking something a lot of people like.
I feel like the original version was a bit too unsubtle in it's slapstick "this idiot keeps running face first into brick walls" narration. The remake's "everything explodes now for no reason" is definitely a different, more cocomelon kind of take. But to blind players, it does work better to convey a sense of fear, that has just taken a hit from Pyramid Head/Valtiel's helpfulness, and it lasts at least until the Desolate Area of the Labyrinth, making Pyramid Head feel more natural/less confusing in that scenario. In the original James was also Angela/Eddie's Pyramid Head - too little, too late. The remake makes that more clear, by having James literally punch Eddie in the face - and Eddie is not really surprised, or even particularly angry about it. It's just James being James, at that point.
What i like about James is that he is supposed to be simple but there are hints which make you question and doubt, and after the ending everything connects. Then it's the replay/replays which is the true sh2 experience Edit: Also I don't like how the new sh looks, the lighting is just not right for this, everything looks too clean and the monster designs are a genuine downgrade
I'm sorry but the more people hype up this remake while calling the original outdated, the less I'm inclined to give it a chance. Fact is, they took a masterpiece of a game that pushed the medium forward and made it just like every other triple A slop. Silent Hill 1 does *not* deserve an overhaul, certainly not by Bloober.
@sjgrfnc My God, thank you! I've been screaming this for years now. All this trend of remaking games has done is let this mentality fester into such a monster that it seems like whenever game exists, we gotta remake it, and no matter what the remakes come out with the reception of "new is good! modern is better!" It's as if the craft, historical merit and reception of the originals suddenly doesn't matter anymore because now we have IMPROVED versions. This is what everyone gave Spielberg and George Lucas shit for back when they were modernising their films and now it's like people froth at the mouth for it with games
I absolutely hate that remakes are essentially erasing the past. We need access to the originals. The grainy textures are a huge part of the charm. Emulating an era is far more interesting to me than having a modernized updated version. Remakes are new games. I want the old games.
gotta say this silent hill 5 remake left a lot to be desired. action hero james sunderland got old after 5 minutes, the "extra content" (padding) added nothing to the game, the samey hub area designs of the levels make everything drag on forever, and I found myself just sprinting around and mindlessly killing everything in my path until I reached the end of a level. the only time I had to go in and out of the map to chart my path was all the way down in the Labyrinth with the annoying floor/ceiling walkers that force you to wait 5 seconds to move each time you come across them by screaming at you. the atmosphere is totally gone because of the new VAs, the generic sound design, the overly bright lighting, the cleaned-up environments, the slow as balls pacing (despite the nonstop mind-numbing action), and the music of all things, which is a big surprise since they brought Akira Yomaoka for this one. I don't agree that this game is worth trying, in fact, it might serve to poison someone against the original since it is so generic. throughout this game are references to the original, you can see items, puzzles, and hear lines of dialogues they cut out for being too silly. it really made me want to replay the original, because it was a far better experience.
That most people at the end of their run have killed more than 300 enemies seems like a bad joke to me, just with that you realize that this is not Silent Hill.
@@animalbancho1726 the gameplay is straight out of sh5. it was an odd choice to bring the combat from the most hated silent hill game to the most beloved.
I have sad new for you, right now there are still people in their late 20s and 30s that truly believe all video games are for 12 year olds or younger kids.
Art doesn't need to be remade yet apparently videogames do. When even videogames from as late as the sixth gen, which itself was considered a great graphical and mechanical jump from previous generations, get dismissed by most gamers janky unplayable messes in need of being remade, that's a pretty bad sign.
@@vibri_ there's remastered versions of movies all the time, although they can be hit or miss. Songs get remasters and covers. Heck even paintings need restoration from time to time. So no video games are not the only medium that gets remasters and remakes.
@@PleasantLeech the difference is that nobody considers most remakes of old movies or remasters of music to supersede or replace the originals, whereas with videogames that is often the norm.
After agreeing with just about every point you make about Resident Evil I expected your insight to follow through to SH2 but I really disagree with what you say about the remake in this video. The camera, controls, acting all add wonderfully to the lightning in a bottle experience. It isn't scary to have full control over Silent Hill. Nor does flipping a light switch every now and then add anything to atmosphere. It's very cheap horror cliche that shows, among dozens of other things, that Blooper still doesn't have a grasp on horror and should have stayed far away from this game.
That's 100% your rose tinted glasses. And I say this as someone who's favorite game of all time is SH2. This remake was wonderfully done and the vast majority of people who've played it understand why.
@@pikachufrankie I can't say anything to help OP. Like what does "full control over SH" even mean as a criticism? It actually has a camera you can control and not fixed angles? And what the hell is "flipping a light switch every now and then"? I agree that the OG tank controls, fixed camera angles, and VA are huge parts of its charm, but they don't define the game. People like OP would have hated on the remake regardless of the final product unless it was literally the exact same game as the OG, but with HD textures. Even then they'd probably complain that it looks "too clean" lmao
@@pikachufrankie Is kinda hard to give a rebuttal to someone that clearly doesn't wanna hear it. Even if you were to give someone the most detailed response, they would still complain about the game being "too modern" or "too clean" people like the original comment need to stay away from modern games, and just play PS1 and PS2 games, cause that's what they want, clunky games, low resolution, or a certain graphical style.
The original was the first game my girlfriend and I played together. For our 3rd anniversary, we bought the remake and haven't finished it yet. The game is really good, and I agree with everything you said. I feel that bigger isn't always better. The expansions almost always were a detriment to the pacing and I'm so glad to see you mention getting to the Hospital in an hour. We felt the exact same way. Love you, Nerrel. Happy Halloween!!! 🎃🦇
Whether or not it was intentional the limitations of the PS2 and style of the time were integral to the original. Now it looks like an RE mod and can get lost of any aggregate list of horror games. And I only played the original a few years back. And making more combat makes no sense to me artistically. I barely died in the original and was still uneasy and unnerved bc the threat of danger and unknown was more effective. Now that you have to fight more often it makes it feel like you have too much control and feels more gamey. Which works for other horror games (e.g Dead Space) but not Silent Hill. It also homogenizes the enemies. Something I've seen criticized by new players is the lack of enemy variety. That wasn't an issue in the original bc they weren't combat fodder, what they implied narratively and atmospherically mattered more. No matter how good the tech is now it just doesn't have the same impact and I have barely seen any new fans from this remake loving it like the original did to people.
None of the "remakes" are remakes. They are all reinterpretations in modern technology. I don't connect any of the to the original games. No matter what they claim.
I disagree with you regarding the first few minutes talking about the camera and the way you portrayed the combat of the original. For the combat, you don't need to just stand there and swing like a moron, this is a rookie mistake that I know how to avoid. Also I will argue the farther away camera is actually better than being too up close to the action, the original camera showed a sense of scale and made your character look smaller in comparison to the town, making you look weaker and insignificat to it.
This entire video feels like a huge miss. The fact that genuine arguments being made here are "good graphics = good game" and "muh clunky controls" is disappointing.
I guess he just decided to be less picky this time around. Personally I think a product like this deserves all the cynicism that it can get. If the combat, graphics, and overall direction is so great here why bother making a remake? Why not make a new game?
Wouldnt call that censorship? Then what is IT. Is not only that but maría and the way she opens that door and the way James look is not the same. And wtf hapened to Angelas face. Disregarding the OG as cllunky? Bro of coruse is not a modern slop with ultra graphics but it doesnt need to. I can play a lot of Ps2 games without caring a bit for the graphics because thats pretty much what ruined gaming. So much focus on how everything looks and not how it feels to play Just like what hapenned to 343 bungie and the halo saga
kinda weird to talk about how better the immersion is in the new game because of the big graphics but also praising James fucking Sunderland doing Leon Kennedy type takedowns at 8:50
At the end of the day, if it doesn't capture the same unique feel the original did, it's likely a waste of time. Visual overhauls like Metroid Prime and Ocarina of Time 3D worked so much better because they didn't risk changing the gameplay, only perfecting what the visuals wanted to be, but originally couldn't. Whilst that's still rocky terrain- as it removes the original graphical achievments, you then have the Remastered LucasArts games and the Halo collection which let you revert the graphics instantaneously at the click of a button, which is about as perfect as it gets, with all that's arguably left is having to tack on an hour of behind the scenes footage to have to explain and compare why the original visuals worked at the time and so on and so forth.
those other games likely had finished code to work with when doing their visual remasters (konami threw out the finished code for most of their old shit, the HD collection is the result of that)
Sounds to me like you weren't really a fan of silent hill 2, nor understand what the devs were going for in the original. I'm a bit surprised you are defending the unnecessary changes and censorship, too.
Over the shoulder camera is aggravating when you're trying to figure out where the last piece of the puzzle is, only to realize it was in a super tiny drawer you looked at the wrong angle. Fixed cameras could point you in the right direction by highlighting the actual setpiece, while in OTS you're scrambling for the icons.
Great video, I'd have to disagree on the fact that graphics from older gens are inherently inferior, there's a lot of technical and historical value on seeing games like say, Vagrant Story on PS1, on original hardware and original resolution, parsing all the know how and techniques used to get such results on the hardware, and that goes for many other games as well on other systems. I feel like it is very detrimental to the status of games as art that they're made to be technically disposable, unlike other forms of historical tech. The basic fact that the actual PS2 original version of SH2 isn't available for official purchase anywhere today says it all.
If you wouldn't call it censorship, what would you call it then? the new scenes are so vague that they completely miss the point. When they remove and censor something it's censorship, you know what isn't censorship? Queen Dizzy, she's got a bunch of clothes now showing less skin than a nun but it fits the story and her character development, how does trimming and removing pyramidhead's scenes not quality as censorship?
When will youtubers and reviewers realise that tank controls and unresponsive in early horror game titles is what made them unique, fun and scary. You’re not suppose to feel comfortable while controlling your characters especially in scary and dire situations, how are you going to feel the horror and challenge as the situation intended for you if you can easily weave and dodge around what is represented as scary and life threatening enemies? It trivialises the whole encounter to nothing but an inconvenience without the limited movement implemented by tank controls.
"Tank controls" and fixed camera angles are one of the biggest idiot filters in gaming ever. It's the easiest thing to wrap your head around if you can imagine a 3D apple rotating in your head.
I agree which is why I play these games with a controller even on PC BUT I ultimately prefer third person for the added immersion, fixed camera always felt to me like a cinematic choice that makes a clear delineation between the character and the player. It's a pick your poison type of thing and I am sorry that your preferred poison is being left behind when it's equally valid.
correct. the boss encounter with pyramid head in the small room is so memorable because of how terrifying it is because of your general lack of control and options in the moment. of course the remake ruins this and just makes it a giant room because well it needs to be like resident evil now.
@a lot of it was not a limitation, but a lack of options. The PS1 didn’t have twin sticks and it took until Resident Evil 4 for video games to grasp the full potential of the 3rd person perspective for non adventure/platformer games. Surprisingly Silent Hill one plays much better than Resident evil original does because of the non fixed camera. What makes them truly age is the abundance of load-screens between each room (with load screens being slow and quiet, to the point of feeling wasteful of time), the pre rendered raise/drop in quality, script reads and archaic puzzles or game logic. Theres also ease of access, and the fact that so many claim these need to be played on original hardware (controllers, consoles, and crts being not easily available) with Screens also being vastly different than they ever were (HDR, OLED, 8k, 16:9, and capable of being over 80 inches). With how beloved and replayed the Original SH2 is people have praised even the smallest or unintentional things as being part of the charm, which isn’t a bad thing, but is not the reality of its intent. With a story like Silent Hill 2, giving it a remake makes it current and makes people remember that the story is the important aspect of what makes it special. Both games try to make the environmental storytelling aspects of it along with character choice and decisions tie together the interactive elements of what a game is and can achieve, thus reinforcing yes this is a medium that can be seen as art. Video games can age and be a detractor to them. The concept of memory cards made most games better by not having to write down laundry list codes, but even old games have these quiet slog you go through to save. And before it gets nitpicked, that is a reasonable claim with how often the PS3 and early PS4 save screens were clowned on with how immersion breaking they are.
Removing/altering the pyramid head scene was 100% censorship. That being said, it's up to the individual how much this matters. It's a horror game, and what Pyramid head was doing was without a shadow of a doubt horrific. Removing it was deliberately to avoid offending modern sensibilities.
@mistermista2927 you're misquoting it. he intended for it to be sexual. He's stated as such. My guess is he's downplaying it because as he also states. People declaring it a r**e scene landed him with rejection from women. I can see why he wants to distance himself, but if you watch the scene you can clearly see the implications. Secondly the mannequin scene as you can see in this video was entirely edited out. No mannequins are there now. Meaning the intent of it being a sexual grotesque scene was removed entirely and the censorship still stands.
I don't know. Ito expressed some frustration with Pyramid Head being too cool a design (and thus aspected into contexts beyond their manifestor's influence), and he wasn't really supposed to be . And he said, it's a helmet - if anything, his purpose is to humiliate "Pyramid Heads" in the real world. So given that Born From A Wish leans into Maria's suicidal ideation (a very irrational thing for James to desire in his fantasy Mary replacement) and the fact that her boyfriend is a closed door, I get the impression that Pussy Head and the other 2nd circle monsters Mannequins and Nurses, are all a lie - it's just much easier and less embarrassing for James to pretend, that he hates Mary because of no sex. So he can still feel machismo-correct. And just from the positioning of limbs in that sequence, and James being in the closet, it's still a Blue Velvet reference, which fulfils Valtiel's intended purpose - the reason why James is tasked to witness it. You weren't really supposed to one-hand game it, not to kink shame you, but... it's a weird point of criticism, though.
@@RewindTHEsunset Dude, you haven't even seen it. He is still abusing a mannequin in the remake, it just doesn't look so specifically like he's raping it. You wrote a whole paragraph about a cutscene you imagined when you could have taken ten seconds to look for it on the website you're commenting on
@philippeamon7271 you're entire comment proves why the scene is great. Everything you said is conjecture. That scene is also conjecture and the point is as an art form that's the point. To remove the scene and give less points of contention and alter the original idea is the critism. It's valid not weird.
Give it a couple years before people come around on this remake. The same incredible story but now the actual game part is no longer unbearable. The original was always a bad game with incredible atmosphere and a great story. Now it's a good game with the same great story and (mostly) the same great atmosphere. The "demake" is the way to go.
@@philippeamon7271 so there's a really bad broken version. So screw the OG?? . I have the PS2 disc but it's expensive and basically a collectors item. I know you never played the OG and don't care about game preservation. But some people do.
How can you claim removing scenes isn't censorship just because some totally unrelated and unspecified thing has higher fidelity? What a bizarre statement.
6:38 From what I have been told the stuttering is an issue with the Unreal Engine 5. Looking online I have seen some projects for a universal fix for games that use it.
@@TheVisualNovel its also significantly more annoying and tedious to play older games since many of them are not available legally outside of their original platform. So you have to either fork over like $200-300 for a PS1 and a working SH1 disc or you have to set up a less than legal emulation setup on your PC (if you have one) which many typical gamers are not willing to do. So the people who do jump through these hoops to get them, or have had them since they came out, as a removed group from the community for being so dedicated to the nostalgia of the old games or as the types to view games in a more artistic or academic sense.
That whole argument whether games should be considered art is kinda played out. At the end of the day, would anyone here enjoy the games any less if it wasn't considered “art”? Would it prevent developers from making things as interesting and unique as Silent Hill 2? “Art” is a construct. It isn’t a universal law nor concept. It isn't inherent in nature. It’s manufactured, created or spawned from creative people and based on (among many factors) societal norms. The purpose differs from person to person. If arts' purpose to you is to simply elicit emotion, congratulations, games are now art. If art is supposed to elicit emotion based solely on its own merit without any required input or participation from the audience, it gets trickier to justify that label. I do find it troubling when so many people obsess whether games should be considered art - as if the games would be considered any less meaningful without that label? It just plays straight into the hands of elitists, strengthening the label and feeds into the authoritarian idea whether a certain clique should get to decide the inherent worth of things we enjoy.
This video perfectly shows why this "remake" should've never existed! 12:40 And no, Silent Hill 1 doesn't need to be touched either. It's perfect the way it is.
No. Over the shoulder camera is just terrible and cheap. All atmosphere is lost for "What is around the corner???So scary!" But it's the perfect remake for the unthinking, "forget about it next week" world we live in now
If this were an original Silent Hill game, a new story, I'd be way more inclined to forgive its small flaws. Given that it's a remake of one of my favorite games of all time, it just didn't have a chance to make much of an impression on me other than a brief novelty. Seems like they did it some justice, which is great, and I'm happy for Bloober and Konami. I hope we get some new games soon that aren't remakes and don't suck.
The issues I had with this remake was the voices, mannequins and gameplay. Other than that the game was pretty good. The combat sadly does take away the replay value for me. Some areas overstayed their welcome like the otherworld and even if we had the knife and hyper spray, i would still feel like the game lacked weapons. SH1 had a whole arsenal, and I know theres only like 3 OP ones but I like the variety still. If Bloober does remake the others, they really need to work on the combat and VAs.
The debate of video games as art is also heavily impacted by preservation. The Silent Hill 2 Remake would likely have been more welcome as an alternate take if the original were easily available on modern hardware. At least Resident Evil 4 has that going for it.
I was thinking this as well. The classic RE trilogy finally got a re-release, although only on GOG and the ports are crappy without fan patches. SH4 managed to get a GOG release so SH2-3 should too.
@@RaikenTB isnt the source code of sh2 lost though?
@@lorenzotalk this is the thing. A lot of people are attacking the remakes because they think they have a negative effect on the preservation of the original pieces, but in reality what is affecting preservation is the lack of availability. If you can’t consume those pieces of art outside of their original medium of publication, they are destined to get lost.
Install the enhanced esition on pc
@@mrrowwmeoww No. That's never been confirmed. It's mostly hijinx doing a horrible job porting the games due to the build konami gave them to work with and incompetence. Fans have already gotten the original PC ports working on modern machines so there's no real excuse not to sell them. The work is already done.
I’ve come from the future! We never get a good Zelda port but get annual Horizon and TLOU remakes!! YOU STILL
HAVE TIME TO CHANGE THIS!!!
He's right you know. Forbidden West Remastered and tLoU Part 2 Remastered.
how is LoUS part 1 VR?
The future is now, old man
I don't think we can change this
Autism.
You play as James Hill, marine corps. Your mission? Infiltrate and eradicate the supernatural threat in Silent Hill™. Arm yourself to the teeth and battle waves of tough monsters such as the brutal Pyramid Head™. What horrific abominations await you in Silent Hill's deadly Fog of War™? Could this town be a secret base for military experiments gone wrong? Find out in Silent Hill 2: Blunt Force Trauma.
You forgot to mention that he is formerly a member of the elite marine corps unit "Silent".
That's the third game's UFO ending!
The Hill is silent.
melpert...
@@pengomode7442 My DEAREST Melpert...
I actually completely disagree with the idea that old games graphics are objectively worse. That’s proven by the revival of 8bit, 16bit and PlayStation/n64 style games. The graphics are perfectly fine in a vacuum, we’ve just been conditioned as gaming consumers to see higher fidelity as better. I think the original titles will have much better staying power than the remakes in the years to come.
I think it's more accurate to say that older graphics *can* be worse. Many artstyles and themes benefit from lower fidelity but there are a lot of games that really feel limited by the technology of the time. Consider Shovel Knight, which emulates the NES aesthetic as well as it can but never would have been able to look like it does now if it were made for the NES simply due to the limits on colors the NES hardware had. A character driven emotional story like those of Silent Hill games really does benefit from better visuals and animations because it just feels stiff and unnatural otherwise. Most of the other gameplay and art can benefit from the lower fidelity just because it's a survival horror game but there's give and take here, not strictly better or worse except when the devs would prefer to not have the limitation.
yeah I couldn't believe this guy could have such a dumb take, I expected better from him. This video almost feels like a parody for the most part
100%. I had to rewind and rewatch it when he said that because I thought I must have misheard him, but nope... 🤦♂
maybe for you. the original is genuinely unplayable to me, but this remake is now my fav game oat.
Resident Evil 1 Remake looks better than pretty much any modern game.
Out of all game reviewers I’ve seen, none discuss things like atmosphere, aesthetic, sound design, or immersion quite like you. I really appreciate That because those are some of the most important parts of games to me. Great video as usual, and a perfect little video for Halloween.
What kinda reviews are you watching 💀
@@ShikiRyougi05 to be fair, the good reviewers are harder to find!
There's this whole thing in mainstream gaming where gameplay is the practically only thing that matters and if it is good the game is good by extension. Really elitist perspective, and it makes some of the greatest game of all time bad by definition, SH2 included.
check out ross's game dungeon (not that he does current games)
From what I've seen, the ones that do are more critical of the game overall.
i sort of fundamentally disagree with the point you make in the beginning of the video in some ways. to me a lot of really ancient games like super mario bros and even something as polygonal and rough looking as metal gear solid 1 or half life 1 are essentially perfect for what they are. Im all for going for increased graphical fidelity, but at that point you are fundamentally altering the original art style of the games. to me those limitations earlier games faced were what gave them so much of their charm and personality.
and the whole "are video games art?" argument has never been a real question to me. the answer is obviously yes
edit: this isn't an argument against remakes btw, i really enjoy a lot of them. A lot of my favorite movies are remakes (the thing, the fly, invasion of the bodysnatchers etc)
I don't think his argument was so much on the art-style as it was the graphical limitations of games and hardware itself. Metal Gear Solid 1 looks objectively worse than Metal Gear Solid 2, which I believe realizes the art-style of the series in a fuller capacity than one. That isn't to say MSG1 looks "bad," but it is to say it is appreciated today for what it was, and enjoyed for being "retro," not for standing-up in today's graphical realm.
A game like Super Mario Galaxy, despite being nearly twenty years old, still stands-up in today's graphical world, because it is not fighting against graphical limitations but instead embracing them.
Nerrel makes HD texture packs. He clearly thinks things have to be modernized or improved and can't be enjoyed as-is.
Things are either good or bad.
Good things don't need remakes.
Yeah exactly, no other medium really feels the need to patch over itself like games do. Imagine remaking the Mona Lisa using "modern painting techniques" or rewriting Shakespeare using modern lingo. Most artists are content to let their work exist as it was, because every aspect had intention behind it, even if it was a result of constraint. You have remasters of famous albums or movies, sure, but those are way less invasive and are more just an effort to preserve the original work so it can be experienced in modern formats, the content itself remains unchanged usually (unless you're George Lucas, who gets rightfully maligned for trying to modernize every aspect of his movies).
For better or worse, the limitations defined the product as a piece of art. I wish gamers were more willing to meet older games halfway instead of immediately calling for remakes. You're going to inevitably lose something in the process when you remake something, it should never be a substitute for the original work.
Even though I love video games I’ve soured on the constant ‘video games are art’ idea over the years. Very, very few games have much to say or leave a lasting impression the way the best films or books do, but this doesn’t mean games are bad - they can have value as *games*, like how playing a darts or a good board game or something can be a good use of time. And I’d find it weird if someone really into darts kept repeating ‘darts is art’, it’s a defence that’s not necessary, as games have value.
In short what I’m trying to say is video games are mostly just games or entertainment, and if they are art they are bad art (with some exceptions). And that’s fine because art isn’t the only thing worth spending time on
@@darkvoid1234567890 rewriting Shakespeare using modern lingo that one specifically would be more like a "de-evolution" to be honest, you'd lose all the beauty of the original language. but that honestly feels like a fairly apt metaphor for how some of the lesser remakes compare to their source material (something like the ratchet and clank remake)
I think the characterization of the original's camera work is a little incomplete -- Silent Hill 1 and 2 don't ALWAYS manipulate the camera on your behalf, but when they do, it leads to some of the coolest cinematic moments in survival horror history. I don't disagree that Silent Hill 2 remake's camera has its own charms, but glossing over the SH2 camera...idk king!!!!
totally agree with you on music mix. def lacks the crunch of the OG
great review as always, nobody I look to more for commentary on anything re: remakes
One question I wish nerrel would have answered is should you play the remake or original.
SH1 used its camera much more effectively than SH2
@@helloguy8934 you play both because they are both good
@@mashymyre I agree with you
@@rustyshacklefordposter what if I have to pick one
“Anyway what do you mean anyway!” performance from the PS2 made me stand out of my chair and straighten my back whereas new gen’s performance kept me slouched in my chair is alls I’m sayings here
context: have not played both games just sharing how I reacted when I heard this scene the first time from watching this video. I am just a person sharing my thoughts that shouldn’t be taken seriously
The new actress is really good overall, but in that scene she's really giving karen yelling at the subway employee cuz they put mayo on her sandwich.
@ context: have not played both games just sharing how I reacted when I heard this scene the first time from watching this video
I think the original performances being kind of weird most of the time also helps those moments of genuine extreme emotion stand out, Maria's anger and Mary's performance in the hallways and her letter are great examples of this. They're almost like vocal jumpscares. I wonder if they intentionally created that dissonance between more casual scenes and more emotional moments, or if those extreme emotions are just very universal so it even comes through even when it's American actors being directed by Japanese voice directors.
@@SleepyAdam The latter I think - it never ceases to amaze me how convuluted a lens it is communicating through a language barrier - and perhaps sometimes _because_ whether for one reason or another those distorsions mysteriously either get out of the way, just don't matter.
I hope modders can mod in and replace the new VA's with the old, Mary's original VA is still the peak of what's possible when it comes to line delivery
A work of art is the expression of certain individuals, within a certain place, within a certain time. And it is a reflection of that place and time.
I really feel like you cannot "update" art and I don't see how "dated vs modern" graphics is that different from old vs new special/visual effects in movies. An artist creates the best work he can within certain limitations, and the limitations often serve the art.
So remaking a game with a different set of people, from a different part of Earth, 20 years apart, is... fine if it's supposed to be a unique creation, but it's a bad thing if it's supposed to "update" the original. The Star Wars Special Edtitions come to mind, but these would have been even more artistically egregious if George Lucas wasn't even involved.
I sadly observe that a lot of players, when wanting to try out an acclaimed game just go "oh I'll play the remake" or "I'll wait for a remake" because they don't want to deal with older graphics/controls or don't want to bother with emulators or patches. Giving the remake the exact same title as the original also doesn't help. I almost wonder if some will hear that "Silent Hill 2 is one of the best games ever" then play the remake on Steam without even realizing that it's a remake?
Tbf George Lucas had about as much involvement in Empire as Team Silent had with this and he still fucked with it but still
I'm very sympathetic to this point of view. And the issue of remakes and special editions is an old one. Just the other day I was choosing between a Penguin Classics and Vintage edition of 'Frankenstein' and I went with the Penguin because it was the original 1818 text and not Shelley's 1831 revised edition, in which she softened some of the content (due in part to the 1818 edition having been published anonymously and the new edition under her own name).
There is a tension within any remake as the reason an artist would want to remake their work is fundamentally opposed to why a publisher would allow it to happen. In the publisher/audience's view, the original work is good enough to allow for a new version; in the author's view the work is deficient enough to require a new version.
I can perfectly imagine the scenario of someone playing SH2 because they read that it is a very iconic game, but they end up playing the remake. The same balance could apply with RE2, many people will have no idea that the RE2 that is on Steam is not the original. I wish more people thought like you, instead of the majority of people who only see all video games as toys.
Well said. That's why I don't mind the RE4 remake, which doesn't feel like an update and more like an homage, since the original is so readily available. I think the availability is a much bigger hurdle than the old graphics/controls. If SH2 was easily available I'd think of this remake as a fun project, but with the situation like it is, I'm just grossed out.
this is how i feel about people playing persona 3 reload and skipping the original because it's "outdated and old" just to hear how awful the new voice acting and the remade soundtrack is and how everything is way brighter than it should be.
The problem with implying games are distinct from other mediums because they can easily be updated is that the same logic can be applied to every artistic medium. Games have many successful remakes, but so do movies. More than people would like to admit. Possibly more than games.
There's an ergonomics to every medium. Films get upscaled in higher resolutions, music gets remastered in higher quality, comics get reprinted and recolored/inked. Better tech can make the creative and technical process. There is no medium out there that isnt prone to some level of being "dated"
An illustrater or painter can go back to a previous work of his and out do his original drawing with the newer iteration. Showcasing his improved skills. Is visual art somehow not art because it can techniclaly be improved upon.
Theatre plays and musicals are perfomed countless times iver with different actors in different places with different sets with different affectations. Is theatre struggling to prove itself as an artistic medium because there's no definitive version?
Viewing games as a purely ergonomic process neglects so much of the flaws and quirks that made people fall in love with something. The things that make something ART
Games don't age.
@pyrodontcutoffsoldiershand2746 how many years old is Super Mario Bros then?
@@pyrodontcutoffsoldiershand2746 age is one thing getting obsolete is another
Wouldn't the example of films getting a higher quality picture and higher audio quality be consireded as a remaster and not a remake?
An example of a remake would be the og trilogy of the star wars movies getting re-released and having more cgi characters on screen and changing the original context of the og scenes. It might be consireded an technical upgrade but yet star wars fans prefer the original release bc adding new scenes or new sfx feels redundant.
Movies get more recognition for og releases. That being said, there are moments in which some re-releases are the definitive way to watch the movies, for example, robocop and blade runner, so it really is a case by case thing, instead of a general thing. I do wish though that there would have been an official remastered collection of the SH quadrology and be given justice as they're a prime example of games being art and yet they don't get that respect.
I think it all comes down to intent of the original artist. Few directors would complain that a tasteful remaster for new screens ruins their picture, because the art is in the shots, the writing, and the performances. So the question is, what was the intent of the original developers of Silent Hill 2 and similar era games? If better technology was available, would they have made their games with high fidelity graphics or did they want their games to look blocky and aliased?
12:50 That Jack O'Lantern carving is a piece of art that I'd love to put on my front yard. Happy Halloween Nerrel and thanks for the well thought perspectives and takes! 🧡🎃💚
How is Nerrel's carving game always so good
@@CheesecakeMilitiaNerrel is truly a modern day renaissance man
@@CheesecakeMilitia If you can 'shop a texture pack, you can carve a pumpkin!
The game really does have too much padding in it; the run from the hospital and historical society goes on for too long, and it's so bombastic and loud when compared to how eerie it was in the original. If you trim off about 4 hours from the game, I would find it much more palatable.
I agree. Cuts out all of the tension when you reach the point where you're more annoyed than anything at having to deal with your 500th mannequin and you would rather just turn the game off than deal with more of them.
I think there's room in games to be annoying to the player as a way of making you empathize with the events of the narrative. But this just feels like bloat. Especially if you play it on harder difficulty and you die and have to restart at some point. There's just entirely too much of this repetitive combat to support the game.
And there are way too many forced tight corridor combat encounters
Yeah, and the enemies lose their effect really quickly when you bump into the same one every 15 feet. It stops being "there could be something around that corner" dread and becomes "there's something around every corner" dread, which isn't really how Silent Hill is supposed to make you feel.
9:41 The Comic Sans was an excellent touch
I cant see how a game having "outdated" gameplay is bad. Ive played old games with "outdated" gameplay and I just get used to it in like an hour or so. Ive dropped far more newer games for having shitty and uninspired gameplay too.
It's possible for something to be bad without being a dealbreaker or the worst thing possible.
My favourite game of all time is from 2004 and man, that gameplay is outdated. It's still a lot of fun, but it would be more fun if it weren't so clunky. That's all it means.
@@existentialselkath1264 what game?
@greatsaiyaguy8868 knights of the old republic 2.
Kotor is notorious for putting off new players with it's gameplay. It's not because it's turn based DnD gameplay, it's not like the fundamental concept is outdated, it's rather just an old implementation. Baldur's Gate 3 feels a lot nicer to play despite being fundamentally very similar.
I kind of find "dated" Gameplay to be a bit of a misnomer. It's not aged it's just different. Especially because elements of older titles can deliberately be imitated to achieve certain effects. For example a limited lives system might seem like a relic from the arcade days, but put that in a horror title and suddenly the tension goes through the roof. Just because the modern audiences have come to different expectations doesn't mean the mechanics themselves have aged. Just how people perceive them. A lot of modern design trends focus on babying players through almost every aspect of Games these days and tbh I think that's rubbed off.
Kinda hate how much the more recent generations of gamers find any sort of gameplay that doesn't 100% fit the convention to be "dated", "clunky" and "janky".
Even if it's just a small hurdle that only takes five minutes to get used to, or demands patience from the player, it's just dismissed as unplayable jank that needs a remake to "modernize" it.
And half the time, "janky", "clunky" or "dated" aren't even a proper critique. It's just a buzzword to vaguely describe the game as being bad, without elaborating at all, and tends to conflate "being old" with "being bad", like the developers were just clueless, or that the hardware was too limited to accomplish this, which is only getting more ridiculous when it's being said about the PS2.
To me considering that games age poorly as an objective norm instead of finding enjoyment in the learning to use the tools that they gave you just feels like a lack of curiosity and impatience. I’m done with playing over the shoulder third person shooters, I don’t care how good they might make them, I disagree that all games should feel super intuitive and comfortable, genres are not meant to be polished into a single monolithic control setup and style.
And I won’t give a cent to bloober team after their gleeful patent shenanigans, they can go to hell.
Bump
Im with you here .
Im fed up too with remaking every horror-game into a third-person shooter with dodge-mechanics .
As if people are suddenly incompetent to learn new or different forms of gameplay that had its own merits and approaches . .
SH2 didnt needed a remake but still got one and a generic one at best .
People easily dismiss gameplay approaches as "outdated" or "clunky" when it has a reason why it is how it is .
This homogenicising of games is one of the worst parts that kills gaming the most . People dont want and deserved other genres overall because they are not competent enough to approaches of gameplay .
I'm glad someone said this. I agree completely.
Seeing all the REmakes from the last 5 years and SH2 using the same over the shoulder camera just makes me think, "are all modern, non indie, horror games just going to be homogenized at this point, and anything outside of this mold will be seen as lesser or said be developed based on a lack of resources?"
Like, the fact that I've seen people say RE1 needs ANOTHER remake in the style of the RE2-4 because of REmake's fixed camera angles and tank controls is mind-boggling to me.
To be fair, we have an absolute wealth of indie games in the horror scene that are doing their own thing these days and are significantly cheaper. So whilst I'm not going to argue that it's oversaturated or not, because in the AAA scene, it definitely is, I'm also not gonna pretend that there isn't an absolute wealth of other options still being made by talented, aspiring indie devs, to balance out against fatigue. In my opinion, horror fans of all walks of life have been eating good these past 5 or so years - we all getting some new stuff.
Bloober grievances though? That's not something I can comment on: I've never played or heard much on a Bloober game before this remake. So I'll just assume you have legitimate reasons to not trust them, as many others seem not to. That's fair game for sure.
But yeah, the over-the-shoulder "fatigue" feels really forced. I can't even charitably say that the indie games are "obscure" at this point, because if you're watching channels like Nerrel's, you've almost certainly come across one of the many great horror game channels that talk about a bunch of indie horrors and rate the hell out of 'em, so you'd have to be actively ignoring that to feel like there isn't a healthy balance of other styles of horror games.
Again, horror fans have been eating really good these past 5 years. Genre has had one hell of a resurgence in popularity and honestly, it's mostly thanks to AAA walking sims and OtS games doing so well just before that, that horror gaming became so popular again to begin with, so it's not all bad 🤷♂️.
It just seems like the most non-problem ever that I see everywhere for these types of games these days.
Seriously miss when gaming conventions hadn’t all been “figured out.” I wish devs were still bold enough to create things that moved, controlled and felt different. Control schemes being borderline identical really sucked out the novelty and discovery.
The original Silent Hill 2 camerawork is just as deliberately crafted and artistic as the fixed camera RE games, just in a different way. I always liked that it felt like a weird detached Lakitu camera, it made the game feel even more dissonant. I don't think I was supposed to see every detail of Silent Hill from James' perspective in the first place.
I can somewhat agree with that, but the remake does show a Dutch angle here and there... Mechanically it was an artifact of the notion of tank controls, which gameplay wise is a fairly dead concept, like a single joystick game pad. And the last point, yeah, you were supposed to see it from James' perspective, outside of the Labyrinth. That's why only the Pyramid Head James can see carries Angela's knife, but only when Maria isn't there... And when he no longer needs Pyramid Head, he can suddenly see them both - Maria's and his own. Then you were supposed to play Born From A Wish, and hopefully realize which character that title actually refers to...
@@philippeamon7271 I personally like tank controls and I know I’m not the only one
I don’t think it’s a dead concept even though I can understand people not liking it
@@philippeamon7271 there's a lot of things wrong with this comment, pyramid head doesn't carry a knife first of all, it's a half of a pair of shears.
@@panetierbread3510 Only in the design document. But that was before Ito went with two Pyramid Heads boss fight instead. And they didn't bother redesigning the found location, because they could still use the idea of severing (e.g. an umbillical cord). In the release it was always Great Knife, and the shape of the weapon proves it is not a sheer anymore.
Exactly, you were being WATCHED, the camera didn't feel like it was a part of James
Completely disagree with the Pyramid Head scene being changed. I don't mind making changes to it but now it is just lacking impact. It doesn't have that unsettling "what the hell did I just witness?" feel of the original, it is just seeing a scary monster cutscene like in many other games. Not awful but clearly not as effective.
On the bright side, its boss fight is no longer a joke that you can simply walk away from (slowly, even)
they fucking familyfriendly-fied pyramid head
I think that's your age and nostalgia talking. To a new player its exactly that unsettling what did I just witness...
@@DichotomousRex The new player definitely isn't as unsettled as I was when I first played the OG, I'll tell you that.
Elipses using mf make their own point moot.
We know you won't keep writting, quit that bs
"Old graphics are objectively worse."
This from the guy who got famous because everything about Majoras Mask 3D made him go nuclear INCLUDING the greater fidelity in graphics.
Huh.
He must have had amnesia or something, makes no sense.
@@Xeakerr Honestly this does feel like a review from Bizarro Nerrel sometimes. He criticized RE2R for changing the camera perspective and having too many dark areas that require a flashlight, but here both of those aspects are praised when SH2R does them. If nothing else this is definitely the most SURPRISING review he's ever done.
Does he have brain damage from Covid or something? I can’t believe this is the same guy, this entire video is on the level of something that me and my friends would send to each other to laugh at
@@QuintessentialWalrus I disagree with him on countless things, but his demeanour, nuanced analysis, and level of knowledge is why he's the only reviewer I watch.
@@QuintessentialWalrus I think it is pretty simple: he likes OG RE2 too much. If anyone tampers with HIS favourite game, it is bad. But if the game is not his favourite, just something he likes in general, then changes are welcome.
5:54 I’m not sure I would classify this removed content as censorship either, but I think it’s fair to argue that for the most memorable enemy, they should’ve maintained everything.
It's almost disappointing they felt the need to tone his actions down.
a good amount of silent hill fans still think pyramid head was sexually assaulting those mannequins, which was never what the devs were going for. this might not even be a bloober team initiated change.
@@yurifairy2969 wait, I think that’d be more metal. That would make PyramidHead far more deranged and awesome as an evil character
@@jacksonlovesnintendo
But that's not what happened though, and it makes no sense considering that isn't something James did.
@@yurifairy2969 It's almost certainly meant to hint at SA even if it isn't literally SA, so what are you on about?
Your “dozens of us” gag @8:00 completely caught me off guard and had me in stitches. But you’re right.
Can't wait for them to Remake the Mona Lisa with updated paint creation technology and modern brushes.. You see it wasn't the original artist who created the painting with his unique motor skills and vision for how the paint should be used to create this unique look to his painting. Anyone could do it.
Somebody doesn't know the history of the Mona Lisa...
@@philippeamon7271 Are you talking about the fact that it was over painted on in multiple layers?
I chose her as the most extreme example how people actually treat art compared to how we look at videogames. I think it still gets my point across. But you could choose any painting or book for that matter. Before the piece was finished ther might have been numerous corrections or redrafts. But at some point it became the "finished" piece that became the legendary painting. And I put finished in quotation marks because what does finished in that case even mean. For many paintings there wasn't even a concept of a release back in history.
the shakespeare remasters with actual female casting were good though
@@Goramann I meant, your example of great art was a very poor choice, given that it would have remained in obscurity forever, outside of some artificial shenanigans. Related to how art now primarily exists as a money laundering scheme. And also, I guess, because Moore's law doesn't apply to how paint dries.
And artists are only human - sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes they work by instincts, but the author is not really the authority on their work - simply because it only exists in a wider "hivemind" context that a single human cannot hope to compass, even if they are exceptionally intelligent, premeditated, and deliberate.
In the 90s, we were trying to explain how it's okay for guitar gods to grape underage fangirls, because "it's completely impossible to play guitar, only God's chosen few are born with guitar, no one knows how to guitar better than Donald Trump, it's okay when he does it, not me, or you, or a girl"... And that's a very generally harmful way of dealing with your inadequacies, trying to deify other human beings, just because they pooped in the shape of a dino nugget.
@@SpungleGrundle I don't know, I prefer the original drag cast, they seemed like they were having a lot of fun.
2:00 I personally found the removal of the "cinematic" camera angles a huge loss in the demake. Already at the very beginning, the run from the parking lot to the town lost a chunk of its atmosphere, since the camera never switched to those off-limits perspectives, implying something preying you from the woods. The greatly toned down audio effects further watered down the impact. Also, just like in the RE2-3 demakes, many of the originally actually striking, memorable indoor rooms and scenes took a massive hit because of the restrictive OTS camera. Everything's just that tiny bit more generic, cramped and "artificial", with so many copies of the cool setpieces now having been altered to take place in front of the chase-camera, else players would miss them. This also brought in the other cancer: all the button prompts and other artificial handholding, since no more the devs could just highlight key elements with changing camera-angles.
The final nail shot by this new design is the very action-oriented new gameplay, that is legit almost 1:1 copy of the behated SH Homecoming; attack combo + dodge loops, repeated ad nausea, in tiny "combat arena" rooms filled with chest-high walls to jump over, shelves and cabinets lied down in a messy fashion to allow Mannequins to jump on you. It's a far cry from the original's actually pretty darn realistic floor plan, which also necessitated the RE1 style exploration and finding keys / solutions to locks / puzzles all across the map, necessiting back travel and exposure to threats old and new. Now the keys to the next area are often sitting right next to the road block, while the "dungeons" often restrict your access to many parts of the map both before and after solving riddles / finding the next key items.
I also completely forgot: I seriously miss the environment EXAMINATION function of the old RE1-4 and SH1-4.
I've seen many younger players criticize the "spam X at everything", but I actually loved hearing the character's "inner thoughts". Especially in SH3, where Heather had some of the best remarks on everything, acting like a Y2K emo girl at everything. It also helped me to get to know the PLAYABLE CHARACTER better; I have no need to play as a blank slate in order to relate and immerse with the game, I actually prefer immersing into the mood and tone of the game's world itself, traveling WITH the character, than literally "being the character".
While at it, I might as well mention that many of the "otherworld" changes were for the worse. James' mental hell now resembles the SH1/3/Movie style rusty, burned down landscapes a bit too much, where as the original's tone and theme was more moist, moldy, hues of blue and green.
Whole lotta yappin
couldnt agree with what you commented more. just a general overarching removal of the things that made the original original, across every surface of the game. silent hill 2 is no longer a horrible unknowable thing but now instead a pretty decent game.
@@danbeucler3029 It's only yapping cause you don't agree with it.
@@GugureSux My god someone finally mention the changes to the otherworld! Thank you!
I dislike the homogenization they did in this remake to make it look more like SH1/3 but I know why they did it. It's obvious they're going to remake SH1 next and they're just going to reuse a bunch of assets for that game. Sadly thanks to this much of the OG identity was sacrificed in the process of making this game.
1:01 I'd argue all games should be regarded as complete works of art as they are, regardless of when they were released or the degree to which an individual game is perceived as "artistic".
Decades of marketing intended to sell consoles has conditioned people into believing that more tech = better art. A lot of people in both the audience and on remake teams often seem to assume that something was a certain way in an older game because it couldn't be "better", or even because the original creators didn't know what they were doing, or were stupid. It's an extremely myopic attitude.
Nobody in the art world would remake a Rembrandt with a Wacom painting tablet and Photoshop under complete assurance that it'll be better because the tech is newer, but here we are in video games! Every component of older games adds value to their construction as artworks, including the low resolution, low polygon counts, hand-animated characters, and so on.
Final Fantasy 7, in particular, I'd argue is a much more effective artwork in its original form. I wouldn't call anything about its world-class environment art, chunky character aesthetic, timeless music composition, or abstracted animations "crude", nor "benefitting immensely" from new hardware.
The remake is a completely different set of assets creating a completely different experience -- one that could be said to have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the original -- and you can argue its comparative effectiveness as an artwork. But I'd reject completely the notion that extra gigaflops have the capability of turning PSX Final Fantasy 7 into Better Final Fantasy 7.
I personally like to play Majora's Mask in the higher resolution, but even that I couldn't say is objectively a superior aesthetic. On the other hand, I don't like to play the "Rebirth" versions of the Resident Evil games which smooth everything out and remove all the crunch and grain from the world. Are circles better than squares? Is vector art better than pixel art???
Anyway, SH2R is pretty good
It's not a meaningful comparison, when Moore's Law cannot be applied to how paint works.
In a way it's cool how processor distribution created the foundational gameplay mechanic of Space Invaders, where the aliens move faster and faster, the fewer sprites that are left on screen. But if you could get "Kaptajn Kaper" to run on your PC today, you'd need to use a CPU choker, or you'd instantly smash into the pier, if you sailed into any harbor.
Such simplistic mechanics are just typically not enough to carry any kind of gameplay anymore. As for Final Fantasy, most entries, such as 7 and especially 10, relied heavily on a bishie aesthetic, as such, they could always benefit from improved graphics. But a remake couldn't be financially viable, if we pretend there'd be any significant audience for the traditional turn-based combat mechanics. Maybe when it somehow becomes more viable to play that kind of game for either minutes while waiting for the bus, or several hours, on a smartphone, and also equally meaningful by design.
It's not better art, but contemporary and contextual. I want to make a game, that's similar to Shadowgate (remake) and Cryptmaster. It's core concept is roll a (situational die) and (randomly generated result) happens. The point of the game is primarily to die in a spectacular, gruesome, and rare kind of way. It needs graphics, that are good enough to convey an emotional impact to your choices panning out in misfortune, to add motivational value, and sense of achievement, to the less likely successful outcome of those same choices. Technically, it could just be a black screen, that outputs 'alive result' until it outputs 'dead result', that would be the same game, and would have looked that way in the early 80s. But that's not very impactful or addictive these days.
ff7 original aged terribly in terms of graphics and gameplay. It's the worst type of early 3d graphics, I don't think I've played a game with graphics that aged worse than that. It's probably just your nostalgia speaking.
@@BrovarSpirytus I was born after FF7 came out and played it last year (in its original resolution with a CRT filter) and thought it looked gorgeous. Where's your "nostalgia" argument now?
@@Forthelemon well if you consider those goofy 3d models taken straight out of "money for nothing" video slapped onto 2d backgrounds gorgeous then idk what to tell you
@@BrovarSpirytus FF7 is one of the best looking games ever made, and remains better looking than most games today!
The reason for that is simply that they had amazing concept artists on the creative team. In the following years, the unfortunate commodification of the field of concept art as the entertainment industry became a billion-dollar business led to artists being trained in a homogenized, assembly-line way of thinking. While still skilled people, it is now basically encouraged that they suppress their creativity in favor of a genericism that will fit them easily into a production pipeline on Sci-Fi Game X or Fantasy Game Y. They also have little say as to the look of anything, with a style being dictated from the top, after 50 layers of approvals from corporate boards and focus groups.
But in 1997, especially with smaller and more autonomous teams, it was more common that an individual artist's virtuosic skill and unique imagination was able to shape the visual identity and character of an entire project, such as Yasuyuki Honne on Chrono Cross, Hideo Minaba on Final Fantasy 9, or Yusuke Naora on Final Fantasy 7. I'd encourage you to look at the pencil drawing designs for the world in FF7, as well as stills or GIFs of the prerendered backgrounds, especially iconic shots such as the streets of Junon or the Loveless theater in Midgar. Stunning, timeless work from the masters.
As for the gameplay, I can't imagine how it can be said to have aged terribly. It's very quick, intuitive, and tactical. I'd take it any day over the remake's foregone conclusion battles demanding you smack the enemy with whatever "break" effect the game dictates to you in a braindead game of Simon Says disguised with billions of particle effect explosions.
Funny how al the computing power in the world wasn't able to make them better game designers or artists!
Nerrel would've given this game a higher score if he hadn't been called a Fart Face by pretty much everyone.😔
I would've rather seen a remake of the first game, I feel like that one had much more to gain from a remake.
Technically speaking that remake is shattered memories for the wii.
The game's visuals work in its favor considering how many people love milking the retro PS1 style in indie games and other stuff. I kinda wanna see them do 4, as it's the game I actually feel like would benefit from a remake with more changes and content. Henry is a boring, nothing character and the games' scares don't really work because of the constant use of stock sound effects. After that they could do 1 and 3
@@MrPyroCrab Why does that one need a remake? It's amazing the way it is
@Vandreand SM has nothing to do with the original game besides character names and the inciting incident. To me, it's what they wanted from the Cold Heart pitch but malformed to get Konami to greenlight the game. I think it's disingenuous at this point to claim SM as a remake. Especially how they had to keep saying it's a "reimagining" because they knew it was just a smoke screen to do what they wanted.
Which I have respect for Climax, Konami was just playing too safe so Climax had no choice than to make it a "reimagining."
That's what remakes used to be: you wouldn't remake a game that was already perfect because there was nothing to change. The purpose of a remake is to take a good game and make it better by fixing some of the issues it had. But game companies know it makes more money to pander to nostalgia with pointless remakes of games that don't need any improvements, so we get shit like this.
At this point I've simply come to disagree with remakes existing at all. Modern gamedev is slow enough that some series are lucky to get 2 games in the same decade. Then the remake craze just sells you a counterfeit of a game you already played in place of something more original.
And the games remade are never piles of shit that never lived up to their potential like DMC 2. It's always games that are already good and almost always playable on modern hardware. Remakes also invite division among the communities, guaranteeing that all discussion of either version will invite comparison shitstink that just stifles discourse.
Stop buying remakes and just play games.
The only "remakes" I like is Resident Evil GCN, Super Mario All-Stars, and Earthworm Jim XBLA. Link's Awakening came up short. Everything else has been a joke. Either noticeable details are missing in the port, the art style is radically changed, or lately the gameplay is completely altered like Resident Evil 2. I'm constantly comparing the new with the old when playing. It's not the same GAME anymore when you drastically alter how the game handles. The other problem is I have already played most of these remakes so I know at least 50% of the map and the story beats having played it only once 10 years ago. Remakes should be sharpening and enhancing detail without replacing the visuals of ultra low texture/resolution games and targeting games with severe frame rate and input issues first from NES, SNES, PS1, GBA/NDS era games like Earthbound, MS-DOS MechWarrior and Alone in the Dark, and early RPG stuff to higher animation framerates and taking advantage of 4k displays.
Can't wait for the remake of Tetris where it's 3rd person over the shoulder to fight S and Z blocks hiding around corners.
In most ways I'd consider it a downgrade. I am and always have been in the camp that thinks the weird voice acting in the original improves the game. Everyone but Maria and Mary sound like freaks and it's great. The James from PS2 is so insanely awkward that I completely believe he'd go to Silent Hill and stick his hand in a toilet. Even barring memes, Guy Cihi's James had an emotional range and talked beyond a gravelly drone. Luke Roberts imo is very dry in comparison; technically more professional, but very boring and lacks emotion except in certain instances.
Gameplay like you said it technically more involved, but it does indeed become more of a hindrance the further you go into the game. I also prefer the camera in the original game as well; effort was put into placing the camera in specific places or giving specific angles that I think really works, and if you didn't like it a simple tap of L2 swung it over to where you're facing so no biggie. Remake is a generic over-the-shoulder perspective. This isn't bad in general, but I feel Silent Hill really benefits from a more cinematic camera. That being said, it would require bringing tank controls back, and that would be too awesome for anyone to actually consider because the devs are COWARDS.
Thank you, I thought I was the only one who really didn't like the new voices. The original cast just knocked it out of the park in a way that felt uniquely fitting for the game's themes and narrative, whereas the remake's cast are all technically compotent, but in a way that completely misses the point of these characters to begin with (examples being how Angela in the remake is pretty much immediately more hostile to James compared to how her act of cordiality eroded in the original and how remake Eddie instantly went from seemingly normal to unhinged whereas, again, the original showed that change more gradually).
Based Jotaro
Seeing people praise the stuff that made them go up in arms against Homecoming and The HD collection is like straight out of Twilight zone
To be honest, you don't need tank controls to give the game a more relaxed, cinematic camera. Just varying up the distance between the camera and James depending on the scene, and allowing it to swing around his body more without being locked to his back, would do a lot to make the game feel different from its contemporaries. A rigid shoulder camera is good for when you're aiming your gun, but I don't know why so many modern games keep the camera equally rigid when you're just exploring.
As someone who gave the game a chance and played through the whole thing, I still dislike it--and honestly, a bit baffled by Nerrel's take on it. I find this whole 'product review' format of video game opinion having is cheap--especially for a game which, we all agree, stands as art.
I'm disappointed with how many critics seem to gloss over so many elements of the original as faults, rather than charms, only to then pat themselves on the back as fans of the original; it feels like people have this really insincere performance of respect for the original, when in reality, the strangeness which gives it value--and influences so many others in the field--is seen as disposable compared to higher fidelity, Hollywood-style acting, and Sony 'cinematic' gameplay.
I don't blame Nerrel for having a positive review of the game--that's not what I'm trying to say. But I do think that people significantly under-value the original, or fail to appreciate its best qualities, if they think the remake's only sins are that it's 'a little padded out', like... It's over twice the length, and it does not fill that empty space with anything of significant value--that alone is tragic for a horror game; a genre known to rely on tight pacing that keeps the player from getting bored, and thus distracted from the experience.
The original *had* interesting camera angles. It had better pacing, and stronger performances, and less tedious puzzle design, and less obvious storytelling approaches. It was completely original--to the degree that it defined the indie genre as a whole with its influence--yet it's been dissolved into the individual contributions of a fraction of the original game's staff: music and art direction. Cutscene direction? Throw it out. Script writing? Toss that too. Game design? Hardly know her!
This soft-ball take on Silent Hill 2 Remake (of course, inspired by the *justified* and, so far, delivered expectations of people used to Bloober Team's work--and you know Nerrel is aware of this and including it in much of his take on the game, considering he mentions it like 3 times) is going to age like milk.
Edit: I'm including this little tid bit not as a response to any comment I've gotten, but more a clarification to prevent any kind of strawmanning of my point: *I don't have Bloober Team.* I *always* thought the outrage specifically at Bloober was overblown, not because people weren't right to expect a bad game, but because they expected a disfunctional game--which is not what they make. Bloober Team make boring, predictable games--and that is exactly what Silent Hill 2 is; a boring and predictable rehash of a more interesting original game.
I don't think Bloober Team (which I'm sure has experienced its deluge of staff turn-over) is incapable of making a good horror game, and I look forward to when enough leadership turns over, so that a fresh-faced, actually inspired game and narrative director takes the wheel, and finally makes their first actually decent video game.
trust me many of us have been there. This is what I felt like when the Demons Souls remake released. The whole souls community waved off the egregious changes they made to everything and to this day it is considered an amazing remake. Any criticism can only sound like something along he lines of: "Yea some things are a bit worse than the original but it is overall an amazing way to experience Demons Souls". I cannot put into words what hearing a sentence like that does to my brain.
@@sjgrfnc Yea, I am totally with you there. The best way to look at it is really to see videogames as fleeting as any piece of art. I mean even though i can relate that it can be really off putting hearing people disregard the originals merits, it is probably best to remember that most pieces of art in history have been lost to time anyways as these will be. Therefore these creations are only for us to enjoy. Meaning the few people that live during this timeline of human life and also that there is a minority of gaming purists out there who will never trust in a remake blindly. And I also think over time more like us will appear as they remake more and more games, turning parts of those communities disillusioned with remakes.
I played Final Fantasy 7 about 4 or 5 years ago. Was it old? Absolutely. Are the graphics goofy looking by modern standards? Sure. Is the Active Time Battle system a weird way to play a Turn based game for someone like me. Of course. Did any of it prevent me from enjoying my experience with it? I want to be fully honest here. I am not a fan of Turn based Combat games in general if they lack a movement dimension and therefore it was one of the least enjoayble parts for me. But this unique experience: Flaws and all was an amazing experience. I will never forget it. I was floored how much they did with such limited technology. Even the goofy looking character models turned from an outdated 3d Model into a charming representation of a character you perceived as a real person, due to the writing, music and presentation. But even if any of these things put me off enough to make me stop the game. That is also ok. In which case it just wasnt for me. Like any book or painting. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There doesn't need to be a watered down or changed version so I am able to enjoy it more.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake will NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS be a "replacement" for experiencing this game. It by the definition cannot. It is a great piece of fan service to the original fans and a way for new audiences to experience the world of Final Fantasy 7 in its very own way. But it will never "replace" what that original game was.
It feels like it's a over corrective narrative from game journalist and gamers alike that mostly expected a trash fire but got something competent instead and because of that everyone is glossing over the remakes lack of soul in favour of over praising it's skin deep aesthetics and technical prowess
I don't think that I agree that technology makes video games "better", at least not when we're arguing if video games are art. Stronger hardware and better software can lead to tighter gameplay, higher quality visuals, and can increase the scope of what is possible, and subjectively that make them more effective or enjoyable, but a painting is just as much the craft as it is the materials. An oil painting is not lesser than a digital drawing because the artist was more limited in their use of colour.
A great remake should not exist in substitute of the original. It's a cover of a song. Johnny Cash covering Hurt didn't invalidate the original Nine Inch Nails song, even if a lot of people prefer it, and Bloober's SH2 doesn't invalidate Team Silent's original. It's just a different take and what is achieved within those original limitations is just as valuable as what can be achieved without them.
You mentioned Silent Hill 1 being in far more desperate need of an overhaul and as somebody who played it for the first time this month, I don't agree. Sure, it'd be nice but I'm more upset that it's only available through unofficial means. Art is defined by the limitations of its medium and Silent HIll 1 is an exceptional use of those limitations. That opening segment in the alley is incredible.
I kinda don't appreciate you dunking on the visuals of the original with the "more immersion argument"...maybe part of the appeal of the original is that it looked surreal, infact I'd argue the more realistic look of the characters took alot of that away.
Also at 9:14 I MASSIVELY disagree...the game is an action game, even if it's not an action "shooter"....you spend most of the time in this remake fighting and killing enemies than you do anything else.
I love the pumpkins you do at the end of Halloween videos and hope to see it continue in the future!
I disagree with a lot of your points. I don’t think the original is janky or clumsy. You made that point while showing James fighting two nurses at the same time. That’s generally not something you should even do in the og. Fighting more than one enemy at a time is risky because James is not a character who’s good at fighting. Most of the best strategy is to run and juke enemies, which adds to the intensity. Especially when returning to areas and you know those enemies are in there waiting for you. That fear is gone now because James is an action hero now.
Second, it’s not as rusty and bleak as it needed to be. The original was much muckier and much bleaker. There have been plenty of side by side comparisons that have confirmed the remake is much cleaner looking than the original. The lights are too bright, and you make another point that the original apartment rooms all blend together…that’s kind of the point. It’s like getting lost in a haunted house and you don’t know if you’ve already been in a room. That’s terrifying. The remake made every room unique, that removes a lot of scariness and unease.
Third, I disagree on the removal of scenes. I don’t think because of higher fidelity of other bosses excuses the developers of changing things that were iconic, especially the scene of pyramid head. That was a shocking scene and it’s removal downplays how the player should feel about him. He’s a regular boss now.
I think the additional content comes off as padding and is annoying. The original was a tight package, the remake drags on way way too long. They should have made more variety with the enemies if they were going to include more areas.
It is telling when fixed camera and combat are described as something clunky. I don't agree with generic action combat being an improvement by any stretch of the imagination. The flow of combat is just hit, hit, dodge, repeat ad nauseum. You genuinely have less ways to deal with crowds because there is in fact no hit stun in the game (only visual feedback of it, no actual hitstun).
Fixed camera was used effectively in a lot of cases, easiest example is the opening run through the woods and how it made you feel watched. There is also a lot of apartment rooms that benefited from specific camera angles.
Addition of new scenes does in fact not justify removal of others. What is it if it isn't censorship? Just a weird decision overall.
Changing of design of otherworld to SH1-3 makes no sense if you truly appreciate the original direction. No, it isn't supposed to be the same design, it never was, the design was character specific and it is lost in remake.
I don't think that SH2 Remake is a bad game, mediocre but not bad; It is a bad SH2 remake though.
talk about looking through rose tinted glasses. There's nothing risky about combat in the original when you can literally stop time mid enemy attack, fully heal and reload your weapons. In the remake the combat is much more tense and actually requires some skill.
"that the original apartment rooms all blend together…that’s kind of the point" lmao what a cope
@@BrovarSpirytus Yes, skill. The same watered down RE4 skillset that's been in every action horror game for the last 20 years. Yes much skill indeed.
@@DandyBrains yes, the need to aim with limited amunition when fighting enemies that move in unnatural way and timing dodge correctly is a skill. clicking one button to use a weapon in the original is not.
What the hell is risky about fighing enemies in the original? Are you for real? You can literally pause the game, heal, reload all your guns, and blast all the enemies. They posses no threat at all. They also stagger with every single shot. The game gives you so much ammo, is literally impossible to run out unless you stare into a wall and just drain your guns. You can run past them, you don't even have to fight them. I love the original, but the mental gymnastics some fans go through to say "Oh yeah, Team Silent actually meant it to be that way!!!" is concerning. Specially when the devs have gone out to say they love the remake and does some things better than the OG.
really dont agree on a fair amount of the points here in regards to the look. i feel the characters are mostly worse, the animations painfully generic and the orignial not as bads as you make it sound.
Take off the nostalgia goggles. The original is a piece of art, but the remake improves on it in mostly every way, except for a few flaws i.e. Maria delivery. Other than that all the characters are improved, and the animations are generic because they want to keep it janky like the original. If it was realistic like re4r, the SH fan base will complain endlessly till they crap their gooner diapers.
@@fruitslicer ''Improves on it on almost every way'' , Yeah those things that were ''improved'' aren't the reasons we fell in love with the original anyway, so you can stick it. The game didn't need a remake, and there shouldn't have been one. End of story. You can enjoy your ''MoDErn'' RE clone as much as you want.
@@fruitslicer They already complain endlessly. SH fans will find anything to complain. Look above for a live demonstration.
@@Al-ji4gd So, don't play it? The original will always be there. You complaining does absolutely nothing to the commercial success, and fan acceptance of the remake. "End of story" talk about being an entitled and childish prick.
Thank you for making captions
The problems with Bloober weren't just about the quality of the work. There's a ton of controversy on them besides. Plagiarism, using AI art, and I'm sure there was particular controversy around one staff member who'd left a while before Silent Hill 2 was released. It's neither here nor there so long as it's not in the Remake itself, but there is more to the resistance to this game.
And the apparent moral of the Medium, lest we forget
hello shay
I interrupted my sexy time with my cute Goth GF just to watch the new Nerrel video
Dump her, devote all time to consuming content
nerrel fans dont have gfs dumbass
please dont lie, nerrel fans cant talk to women
@@dialga236 yes we can, i talk to myself all the time!
I bet she goes to a different school.
Every time a new remake comes out I wonder if we're undermining the idea of games as art by ignoring the notion of treating each game as an individual piece of art that's representative of its time, flaws and all. And, that maybe by constantly remaking games we're relegating them to nothing more than disposable trash that naysayers dismiss them as if we feel the need to discard them every time there's a new leap in technology. Or maybe I'm just a big dummy.
The question to me would be who "we" is? I didn't have any control over Konami remaking this, and I doubt Konami remade it as some sort of artistic statement. They wanted to make money off of something that people who used to work there made.
Remakes have existed in other media for far longer, and can be perfectly as valid as the original. They don't invalidate what came before, but tastes change and it's easier to get into the newer version usually. Often this becomes a gateway for fans of the new to check out the old. We just need Konami to do the right thing and make the Silent Hill 2 HD Project official.
@@MrSnaztastic You're right, but from a corporate standpoint I have a feeling that Konami will treat SH 2 R as a sort of replacement since there's no easily available port of the originals available.
@@noneofyourbusiness4616 In my hypothetical the "we" would stand for the average consumer who buys this sort of product. But, you're also correct about this being a cash grab.
"Art is supposed to be timeless" says who? Some artists even make art that purposefully degrades over time, or evolve over time.
I can’t believe how quickly he glazed over that completely meaningless nonsensical claim as if it was just common sense. Art is anything but timeless. One of the most valued aspects to art at large is its ability to reflect the time and place during which it was created.
Yeah there’s too much bloat. You feel it in the first play through, but you REALLY start to notice it in the repeat runs. The labyrinth is awful, especially the gamey 3 room combat section. What a chore.
This is the one I've been waiting for
But here's the thing: the score is NOT mostly intact. Why am I hearing the sound of Pyramid Head dragging his massive metal sword along the floor of the 3rd floor apartment building in the original game now being played outside, in the middle of the street, before I even get to the apartment complex in the remake? Even this misuse of the soundtrack does a massive disservice to the original, which disappoints me greatly, because I expected better from Yamaoka.
Yep and th sound play's every couple of minutes endlessly
So you think you understand the game better than the guy who was literally the lead sound designer of the og game? You guys are delusional af.
@@M.sami12Ok, then, genius. You explain to us why the sound of Pyramid Head dragging his massive metal blade along the floor on the third floor of the apartment is being heard over and over again outside in the middle of the town? I'll wait.
It's funny that your criticism broadly mirrors that of TheElectricUnderground, but his review will get torn to shreds.
This remake would be a decent 6/10 horror game by itself, but it doesn't do Silent Hill 2, a game I consider a 10/10 for what it set out to do with its story and atmosphere, justice when it comes to translating the same mood and emotion. I'll always prefer the original over it.
Lol, fanboys. "It just needs to be clunky as shit and have the worst acting ever recorded to be good
Ding dong, your opinion is wrong!
There's something about the remake that just feels...sterile. A pale imitation that completely misses the point of the original and destroys what made it special.
thats bloober team for ya
it's your sense of nostalgia and cope that the original is still good talking for you maybe
@@jeffboy4231 In your own buzzword vocabulary, go seethe. Stop using “nostalgia” to justify your shitty opinions.
I bought the original on release day, I was 19. Ive been a constant replayed ever since. For me, the remake lovingly captured the feeling of playing the original when it was new.
Can't say I agree. SH2Remake feels like playing the original did, like playing a Resident Evil clone with better atmosphere and story.
"Completely misses the point". They couldn't have nailed it harder. Speaking as a massive fan of the original, this is the best you could ever hope for from a Silent Hill 2 remake.
The new voice acting and soundtrack are huge downgrades. Why on earth did they change Mary’s letter at the end of the game? It feels like I’m taking crazy pills that people just shrug off these massive changes like it’s not important.
The remake in itself is already a completely different game, it has nothing to do with the original, it is just a mere copy without soul. Why don't people complain? because they just want to play the new trendy game, nothing more, nobody cares about SH2 OG.
@@Kirisu__Mafuyu I'm 3 hrs into the game and I'm seriously just bored. I don't remember it being so lifeless. Is it even worth finishing, does it get better?
god this discussion is miserable
@@gavinojames1 You've rammed up the stimulation, please continue
Nah, it not important
The original has a point-and-click adventure game feel to it which is what gives it an artistic feel to it. This remake is basically turning it into The Last of Us with that style of combat and camera. Sure it makes it more fun, but I play Silent Hill to be disturbed, not have fun. It's definitely less artistic, less disturbing, less focused on the point. It's like turning on the lights in a haunted house so that you can see better.
I think I agree. I had a lot of fun with the remake, but it didn't freak me out anywhere near as much as the original does.
@@energeticyellow1637 I had the complete opposite experience. The original never scared me, and Ive been playing it since release. Im actually too scared to continue playing the remake.
@@Johnspartan296 i played the original and its not that scary but...is very disturbing....did you find the remake as disturbing or more than the original?
@@Johnspartan296I felt too competent in the remake, like I could take on anything that came my way due to the more fluid combat and dodge button that gives you an entire second of i-frames. The og's stiffness and clunkiness really amplified the atmosphere and made James feel a lot more like an every-man.
@@energeticyellow1637 The combat in the original was way too easy. For me, it wasnt scary or tense when fighting monsters because you could just stand still and bonk them on the head repeatedly and they couldnt do anything. That was boring. The combat in the remake is actually scary and tense because it was actually challenging. Yes, you have i-frames with the dodge but its not like you can spam it constantly. And the enemies are unpredictable. I dread seeing enemies in the remake because combat actually adds to the horror factor instead of detracts, like in the original.
The shader compiling thing has nothing to do with the specific stutter SH2R is facing. This has nothing to do with compilation, it's a side effect of UE5's World Partition system, something a lot of devs don't use. Bloober decided to use it to break up the town into chunks for loading instead of streaming assets. I guess their logic was that the fog could hide the massive chunk loads visually so it works better than it generally does in wide open worlds. The problem is World Partition has and always will cause a frametime spike, because you can't preload PSOs from unloaded WP chunks, they must all be loaded and processed simultaneously when the chunk loads. This is why the stutters are 100% consistent, they will always happen in the exact same spots in the world with 100% consistency, because that's where the load trigger for the chunks are.
I highly doubt this will ever be fixed in UE5. Epic has barely touched the WP system since it was added years ago, it's a borderline abandoned feature. The single most glaring issue with UE5 is that Epic doesn't really care about adding or fixing features unless it's relevant to Fortnite. There is a serious flaw with the Lumen GI system that has been present since day 1 and they don't fix it because Fortnite has that feature disabled.
Welcome to the world of market monopoly.
Now eat shit like everyone else. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Unfortunately the game engine is reaching monopoly status, almost everyone glazes this game engine to no end while 90% of PC gamers just have to deal with the horrid thing
I kinda prefer the weird camera angles, feels like I'm in a Stephen King movie or something
the voice acting in the og was very Lynchian now its very generic
Or David Lynch
@@at0micl0bster It was Lynchian when it worked, but Ray Wise being weird and psycho in Twin Peaks is an entirely different kind of weird from the actually bad acting that SH2OG has at times. Sometimes the OG nails it perfectly, like with Mary, Angela's trauma, & the letter reading, but there is a ton that does not hit
one thing that I dislike a lot is that you encounter the same enemies so often that it stops being scary or tense, and since the game definitely has far more focus on combat it means that they stop being monsters to hide or run away from but they become nuisances to dealth with repeatedly, I'd much prefer a remake where ammo was so sparse that you had to only use it in life or death situations and with that obviously less spam of said enemies (mannequins)
I still prefer the Ps2 version, this remake feels generic like it was made to appeal to all masses which brought all the issues that I dislike the most, in the end if I wanna play RE I'll play RE but I wont sit down to play poor man's version of RE here yet it also doesn't feel precisely like OG SH2
maybe they shouldnt have turned an adventure game into an action game...
I do want to mention that the puzzles are pretty excellent (so far, I only just beat the hospital), reaching that perfect mix of making you feel clever without ever needing to reach for a walkthrough. They still have that pacing problem but they do a great job of snaking you through through the environment with a mix a beautiful environments and creepy story telling.
"Some of the most disturbing pyramidhead scenes have been trimmed or even removed but I wouldn't call it censorship, the higher level of fidelity makes some of the other creatures more horrifying than ever before" What? That's a totally disjointed and wack argument, sounds like that ex-ign employee saying giving everything a 7 is good because they need to reserve the 3 to 0 score for games that they don't even bother to review. This reeks of that time gmanlives callled starfield a masterpiece.
Those are some serious mental gymnastics indeed. Watering down explicit imagery IS censorship. The presentation is also very bland. OG had much more interesting camera work and color pallette. This remake is basically a Hollywood adaptation of a great Japanese horror: safe and digestible
He's really just playing it safe for this vid. It's like moistcritikal hacked into his channel and uploaded this.
Using remakes as an argument against videogames being art is weird in the age of 4K AI-upscaled re-releases of beloved 80s movies (something you also made a video on)
There's a moment where Silent Hill 2 used its camera in a Resident Evil 1/2 style way I'm shocked you didn't comment on. It's the part where James and Maria are being chased by Pyramid Head. In the original the camera is fixed and when the camera angle changes James and Maria go from wandering through a corridor to being chased. In the sequel this part is made way worse and it feels far less iconic.
They also shaved down a lot of the original's rough edges down for the worse. Like James is far less of a flawed protagonist. Where in the original he was kind of a lecherous functional alcoholic who was mostly out to lunch. The sequel makes it feel like they wanted a very specific interpretation in mind where he feels like he cares more about the people around him. You can see this sort of thing with most of the other characters. Like Eddie feels like a much less subtle character. It reminds me of the changes made in the Demon's Souls remake where they exaggerated a lot of the art direction and made its world feel like they were spoonfeeding everything to you.
This 100%
When I saw Eddy the first thing I thought was "demon souls remake".
He looks like a grotesque abomination now.
In the og he is just a fat guy that could be a side bully character in tons of movies of that time.
Just proves once again how hollow and artificial our cultural products have become. Convejor belt slop.
@@Senumunu I genuinely would've preferred if they remade one of the less good Silent Hill games. Like the post Team Silent ones. I think there's far more value in remaking something that's bad compared to remaking something a lot of people like.
I feel like the original version was a bit too unsubtle in it's slapstick "this idiot keeps running face first into brick walls" narration. The remake's "everything explodes now for no reason" is definitely a different, more cocomelon kind of take. But to blind players, it does work better to convey a sense of fear, that has just taken a hit from Pyramid Head/Valtiel's helpfulness, and it lasts at least until the Desolate Area of the Labyrinth, making Pyramid Head feel more natural/less confusing in that scenario.
In the original James was also Angela/Eddie's Pyramid Head - too little, too late. The remake makes that more clear, by having James literally punch Eddie in the face - and Eddie is not really surprised, or even particularly angry about it. It's just James being James, at that point.
What i like about James is that he is supposed to be simple but there are hints which make you question and doubt, and after the ending everything connects. Then it's the replay/replays which is the true sh2 experience
Edit: Also I don't like how the new sh looks, the lighting is just not right for this, everything looks too clean and the monster designs are a genuine downgrade
@@MGrey-qb5xz you assume James is a heroic character but by the end you realize he was lying to everyone including himself
I'm sorry but the more people hype up this remake while calling the original outdated, the less I'm inclined to give it a chance. Fact is, they took a masterpiece of a game that pushed the medium forward and made it just like every other triple A slop. Silent Hill 1 does *not* deserve an overhaul, certainly not by Bloober.
@sjgrfnc My God, thank you! I've been screaming this for years now. All this trend of remaking games has done is let this mentality fester into such a monster that it seems like whenever game exists, we gotta remake it, and no matter what the remakes come out with the reception of "new is good! modern is better!"
It's as if the craft, historical merit and reception of the originals suddenly doesn't matter anymore because now we have IMPROVED versions. This is what everyone gave Spielberg and George Lucas shit for back when they were modernising their films and now it's like people froth at the mouth for it with games
Sh1 needs an overhaul. You are CRAZY if you think it doesn’t. That game needed an overhaul more than sh2.
@@fruitslicer Explain why, exactly
I wouldn't call it "another triple a slop" but alright
I absolutely hate that remakes are essentially erasing the past. We need access to the originals. The grainy textures are a huge part of the charm. Emulating an era is far more interesting to me than having a modernized updated version. Remakes are new games. I want the old games.
gotta say this silent hill 5 remake left a lot to be desired. action hero james sunderland got old after 5 minutes, the "extra content" (padding) added nothing to the game, the samey hub area designs of the levels make everything drag on forever, and I found myself just sprinting around and mindlessly killing everything in my path until I reached the end of a level. the only time I had to go in and out of the map to chart my path was all the way down in the Labyrinth with the annoying floor/ceiling walkers that force you to wait 5 seconds to move each time you come across them by screaming at you. the atmosphere is totally gone because of the new VAs, the generic sound design, the overly bright lighting, the cleaned-up environments, the slow as balls pacing (despite the nonstop mind-numbing action), and the music of all things, which is a big surprise since they brought Akira Yomaoka for this one. I don't agree that this game is worth trying, in fact, it might serve to poison someone against the original since it is so generic.
throughout this game are references to the original, you can see items, puzzles, and hear lines of dialogues they cut out for being too silly. it really made me want to replay the original, because it was a far better experience.
i kinda hate all the changes he made to the og songs, they add nothing and just ruin it
That most people at the end of their run have killed more than 300 enemies seems like a bad joke to me, just with that you realize that this is not Silent Hill.
silent hill 5 remake?
@@animalbancho1726 the gameplay is straight out of sh5. it was an odd choice to bring the combat from the most hated silent hill game to the most beloved.
Is there really anyone under the age of 40 who still unironically argues that video games aren't art?
Gotta be at least one person. It is an insane claim though
I have sad new for you, right now there are still people in their late 20s and 30s that truly believe all video games are for 12 year olds or younger kids.
Art doesn't need to be remade yet apparently videogames do. When even videogames from as late as the sixth gen, which itself was considered a great graphical and mechanical jump from previous generations, get dismissed by most gamers janky unplayable messes in need of being remade, that's a pretty bad sign.
@@vibri_ there's remastered versions of movies all the time, although they can be hit or miss. Songs get remasters and covers. Heck even paintings need restoration from time to time. So no video games are not the only medium that gets remasters and remakes.
@@PleasantLeech the difference is that nobody considers most remakes of old movies or remasters of music to supersede or replace the originals, whereas with videogames that is often the norm.
After agreeing with just about every point you make about Resident Evil I expected your insight to follow through to SH2 but I really disagree with what you say about the remake in this video. The camera, controls, acting all add wonderfully to the lightning in a bottle experience.
It isn't scary to have full control over Silent Hill. Nor does flipping a light switch every now and then add anything to atmosphere. It's very cheap horror cliche that shows, among dozens of other things, that Blooper still doesn't have a grasp on horror and should have stayed far away from this game.
That's 100% your rose tinted glasses. And I say this as someone who's favorite game of all time is SH2. This remake was wonderfully done and the vast majority of people who've played it understand why.
@@bkirk0510 The vast majority of people who've played it are dumb sheeps, casuals who played the OG last time 20 years ago, if at all.
@@bkirk0510 Classic rebuttal; “you just have rose tinted glasses.” Surely you can do better than that, man.
@@pikachufrankie I can't say anything to help OP. Like what does "full control over SH" even mean as a criticism? It actually has a camera you can control and not fixed angles? And what the hell is "flipping a light switch every now and then"?
I agree that the OG tank controls, fixed camera angles, and VA are huge parts of its charm, but they don't define the game. People like OP would have hated on the remake regardless of the final product unless it was literally the exact same game as the OG, but with HD textures. Even then they'd probably complain that it looks "too clean" lmao
@@pikachufrankie Is kinda hard to give a rebuttal to someone that clearly doesn't wanna hear it. Even if you were to give someone the most detailed response, they would still complain about the game being "too modern" or "too clean" people like the original comment need to stay away from modern games, and just play PS1 and PS2 games, cause that's what they want, clunky games, low resolution, or a certain graphical style.
Great job as always Nerrel. I feel blessed for having gotten two videos from you and under a month. Keep it up!
There’s only one person I’ve been waiting to here their thoughts on this game and that’s you Nerrel! It’s about time!
I thought you would go more in depth with this, thought the same with your RE4 review, is there a reason you don’t?
The original was the first game my girlfriend and I played together. For our 3rd anniversary, we bought the remake and haven't finished it yet. The game is really good, and I agree with everything you said. I feel that bigger isn't always better. The expansions almost always were a detriment to the pacing and I'm so glad to see you mention getting to the Hospital in an hour. We felt the exact same way.
Love you, Nerrel. Happy Halloween!!! 🎃🦇
Yoo beesquared love your mother vids ❤
“enemies always sound closer than they actually are” that sounds like a lazy oversight
Taking a stand means being wrong sometimes.
So i take a stand at saying video games are art and the remake can go fuck itself.
@@garsedj lol
12:33 Sick IGN burn
Could also be aimed at people who react negatively to things they like getting 7s
Whether or not it was intentional the limitations of the PS2 and style of the time were integral to the original.
Now it looks like an RE mod and can get lost of any aggregate list of horror games. And I only played the original a few years back.
And making more combat makes no sense to me artistically. I barely died in the original and was still uneasy and unnerved bc the threat of danger and unknown was more effective.
Now that you have to fight more often it makes it feel like you have too much control and feels more gamey. Which works for other horror games (e.g Dead Space) but not Silent Hill.
It also homogenizes the enemies. Something I've seen criticized by new players is the lack of enemy variety. That wasn't an issue in the original bc they weren't combat fodder, what they implied narratively and atmospherically mattered more.
No matter how good the tech is now it just doesn't have the same impact and I have barely seen any new fans from this remake loving it like the original did to people.
Bad review, better luck next time buddy, maybe you should just have better oppinions!
Good job buddy
Please shut up, it's not funny
Maybe tell us why? I think everything he said were good criticisms.
@@piotyrholbionur a chump pal
@piotyrholbion the joke went over your head it seems....
None of the "remakes" are remakes.
They are all reinterpretations in modern technology.
I don't connect any of the to the original games. No matter what they claim.
"waaah waaah is only a remake if it makes the game a 1:1 copy and includes the shitty dated gameplay waaah waaah" get over yourself.
So, basically, what you're saying, is that the original directors should be involved in remasters of their work
Don't show FF7R as an example of "improvement" please, what they did to the story is no improvement 😢
you dont like comp of ff7 anime slop?
Holy fuck was that Remake/Rebirth crappy. Destroyed almost the OG for me.
The story in both was mid, but I agree the remake shits all over the original story (in a bad way).
I disagree with you regarding the first few minutes talking about the camera and the way you portrayed the combat of the original.
For the combat, you don't need to just stand there and swing like a moron, this is a rookie mistake that I know how to avoid.
Also I will argue the farther away camera is actually better than being too up close to the action, the original camera showed a sense of scale and made your character look smaller in comparison to the town, making you look weaker and insignificat to it.
This entire video feels like a huge miss. The fact that genuine arguments being made here are "good graphics = good game" and "muh clunky controls" is disappointing.
I guess he just decided to be less picky this time around. Personally I think a product like this deserves all the cynicism that it can get. If the combat, graphics, and overall direction is so great here why bother making a remake? Why not make a new game?
It helps to know he only first played Silent Hill 2 about a year or 2 ago. He has a review of it.
Wouldnt call that censorship? Then what is IT. Is not only that but maría and the way she opens that door and the way James look is not the same. And wtf hapened to Angelas face.
Disregarding the OG as cllunky? Bro of coruse is not a modern slop with ultra graphics but it doesnt need to.
I can play a lot of Ps2 games without caring a bit for the graphics because thats pretty much what ruined gaming. So much focus on how everything looks and not how it feels to play
Just like what hapenned to 343 bungie and the halo saga
kinda weird to talk about how better the immersion is in the new game because of the big graphics but also praising James fucking Sunderland doing Leon Kennedy type takedowns at 8:50
Hes fucking swinging a pipe how is that a takedown leon uses guns 😭
Great work on the jack o lantern. Happy Halloween Nerrel.
At the end of the day, if it doesn't capture the same unique feel the original did, it's likely a waste of time. Visual overhauls like Metroid Prime and Ocarina of Time 3D worked so much better because they didn't risk changing the gameplay, only perfecting what the visuals wanted to be, but originally couldn't.
Whilst that's still rocky terrain- as it removes the original graphical achievments, you then have the Remastered LucasArts games and the Halo collection which let you revert the graphics instantaneously at the click of a button, which is about as perfect as it gets, with all that's arguably left is having to tack on an hour of behind the scenes footage to have to explain and compare why the original visuals worked at the time and so on and so forth.
those other games likely had finished code to work with when doing their visual remasters (konami threw out the finished code for most of their old shit, the HD collection is the result of that)
Sounds to me like you weren't really a fan of silent hill 2, nor understand what the devs were going for in the original. I'm a bit surprised you are defending the unnecessary changes and censorship, too.
Over the shoulder camera is aggravating when you're trying to figure out where the last piece of the puzzle is, only to realize it was in a super tiny drawer you looked at the wrong angle. Fixed cameras could point you in the right direction by highlighting the actual setpiece, while in OTS you're scrambling for the icons.
It was very cool to hear your take on the game
Great video, I'd have to disagree on the fact that graphics from older gens are inherently inferior, there's a lot of technical and historical value on seeing games like say, Vagrant Story on PS1, on original hardware and original resolution, parsing all the know how and techniques used to get such results on the hardware, and that goes for many other games as well on other systems. I feel like it is very detrimental to the status of games as art that they're made to be technically disposable, unlike other forms of historical tech. The basic fact that the actual PS2 original version of SH2 isn't available for official purchase anywhere today says it all.
If you wouldn't call it censorship, what would you call it then? the new scenes are so vague that they completely miss the point. When they remove and censor something it's censorship, you know what isn't censorship? Queen Dizzy, she's got a bunch of clothes now showing less skin than a nun but it fits the story and her character development, how does trimming and removing pyramidhead's scenes not quality as censorship?
When will youtubers and reviewers realise that tank controls and unresponsive in early horror game titles is what made them unique, fun and scary. You’re not suppose to feel comfortable while controlling your characters especially in scary and dire situations, how are you going to feel the horror and challenge as the situation intended for you if you can easily weave and dodge around what is represented as scary and life threatening enemies? It trivialises the whole encounter to nothing but an inconvenience without the limited movement implemented by tank controls.
"Tank controls" and fixed camera angles are one of the biggest idiot filters in gaming ever. It's the easiest thing to wrap your head around if you can imagine a 3D apple rotating in your head.
I agree which is why I play these games with a controller even on PC BUT I ultimately prefer third person for the added immersion, fixed camera always felt to me like a cinematic choice that makes a clear delineation between the character and the player.
It's a pick your poison type of thing and I am sorry that your preferred poison is being left behind when it's equally valid.
correct. the boss encounter with pyramid head in the small room is so memorable because of how terrifying it is because of your general lack of control and options in the moment. of course the remake ruins this and just makes it a giant room because well it needs to be like resident evil now.
Why not just make the enemies faster to compensate for it?.. then you no longer have to play it like Bubsy 3D
@a lot of it was not a limitation, but a lack of options. The PS1 didn’t have twin sticks and it took until Resident Evil 4 for video games to grasp the full potential of the 3rd person perspective for non adventure/platformer games. Surprisingly Silent Hill one plays much better than Resident evil original does because of the non fixed camera. What makes them truly age is the abundance of load-screens between each room (with load screens being slow and quiet, to the point of feeling wasteful of time), the pre rendered raise/drop in quality, script reads and archaic puzzles or game logic. Theres also ease of access, and the fact that so many claim these need to be played on original hardware (controllers, consoles, and crts being not easily available) with Screens also being vastly different than they ever were (HDR, OLED, 8k, 16:9, and capable of being over 80 inches). With how beloved and replayed the Original SH2 is people have praised even the smallest or unintentional things as being part of the charm, which isn’t a bad thing, but is not the reality of its intent. With a story like Silent Hill 2, giving it a remake makes it current and makes people remember that the story is the important aspect of what makes it special. Both games try to make the environmental storytelling aspects of it along with character choice and decisions tie together the interactive elements of what a game is and can achieve, thus reinforcing yes this is a medium that can be seen as art.
Video games can age and be a detractor to them. The concept of memory cards made most games better by not having to write down laundry list codes, but even old games have these quiet slog you go through to save. And before it gets nitpicked, that is a reasonable claim with how often the PS3 and early PS4 save screens were clowned on with how immersion breaking they are.
thank you for the comfy Halloween vid Nerrel, hearing you talk about the original has made me wanna play it now, and I think i will :>
Removing/altering the pyramid head scene was 100% censorship. That being said, it's up to the individual how much this matters. It's a horror game, and what Pyramid head was doing was without a shadow of a doubt horrific. Removing it was deliberately to avoid offending modern sensibilities.
People involved with the original have said many times he wasn't meant to be fucking the mannequins, it just happened to look like that
@mistermista2927 you're misquoting it. he intended for it to be sexual. He's stated as such. My guess is he's downplaying it because as he also states. People declaring it a r**e scene landed him with rejection from women. I can see why he wants to distance himself, but if you watch the scene you can clearly see the implications.
Secondly the mannequin scene as you can see in this video was entirely edited out. No mannequins are there now. Meaning the intent of it being a sexual grotesque scene was removed entirely and the censorship still stands.
I don't know. Ito expressed some frustration with Pyramid Head being too cool a design (and thus aspected into contexts beyond their manifestor's influence), and he wasn't really supposed to be . And he said, it's a helmet - if anything, his purpose is to humiliate "Pyramid Heads" in the real world. So given that Born From A Wish leans into Maria's suicidal ideation (a very irrational thing for James to desire in his fantasy Mary replacement) and the fact that her boyfriend is a closed door, I get the impression that Pussy Head and the other 2nd circle monsters Mannequins and Nurses, are all a lie - it's just much easier and less embarrassing for James to pretend, that he hates Mary because of no sex. So he can still feel machismo-correct.
And just from the positioning of limbs in that sequence, and James being in the closet, it's still a Blue Velvet reference, which fulfils Valtiel's intended purpose - the reason why James is tasked to witness it. You weren't really supposed to one-hand game it, not to kink shame you, but... it's a weird point of criticism, though.
@@RewindTHEsunset Dude, you haven't even seen it. He is still abusing a mannequin in the remake, it just doesn't look so specifically like he's raping it. You wrote a whole paragraph about a cutscene you imagined when you could have taken ten seconds to look for it on the website you're commenting on
@philippeamon7271 you're entire comment proves why the scene is great. Everything you said is conjecture. That scene is also conjecture and the point is as an art form that's the point. To remove the scene and give less points of contention and alter the original idea is the critism. It's valid not weird.
How did you make that outro? The James pumpkin carving at the end with the background is just perfect.
i literally waited all 2 seconds of my lifespan to see this video
it’s a christmas miracle! i was just binging your videos for the quintillionth time
I haven't even played this game and I'm sick of the mannequins.
Nerrel shilling for yet another demake, what else is new.
They need to make the originals available on modern hardware. Otherwise this demake will replace the OG.
But... they are, though? The Silent Hill HD Collection, that was laughed out of town a few years ago?
Give it a couple years before people come around on this remake. The same incredible story but now the actual game part is no longer unbearable. The original was always a bad game with incredible atmosphere and a great story. Now it's a good game with the same great story and (mostly) the same great atmosphere. The "demake" is the way to go.
@ThePhantomTommy people are praising the demake. Glazing it constantly. You are a tourist. Not a true fan.
@@ThePhantomTommy also I noticed you didn't mention my point about game preservation 🙄. Tourists man
@@philippeamon7271 so there's a really bad broken version. So screw the OG?? . I have the PS2 disc but it's expensive and basically a collectors item. I know you never played the OG and don't care about game preservation. But some people do.
Still feels awkward to watch James dodging like a pro boxer.
at least he can dodge
How can you claim removing scenes isn't censorship just because some totally unrelated and unspecified thing has higher fidelity? What a bizarre statement.
6:38 From what I have been told the stuttering is an issue with the Unreal Engine 5. Looking online I have seen some projects for a universal fix for games that use it.
But why not just play the original?
He states in the beginning
@@TheVisualNovel its also significantly more annoying and tedious to play older games since many of them are not available legally outside of their original platform. So you have to either fork over like $200-300 for a PS1 and a working SH1 disc or you have to set up a less than legal emulation setup on your PC (if you have one) which many typical gamers are not willing to do. So the people who do jump through these hoops to get them, or have had them since they came out, as a removed group from the community for being so dedicated to the nostalgia of the old games or as the types to view games in a more artistic or academic sense.
Because it's a worse game.
cause the industry sucks and doesnt keep their games available
@@superstrat5826brainlet
That whole argument whether games should be considered art is kinda played out.
At the end of the day, would anyone here enjoy the games any less if it wasn't considered “art”? Would it prevent developers from making things as interesting and unique as Silent Hill 2?
“Art” is a construct. It isn’t a universal law nor concept. It isn't inherent in nature. It’s manufactured, created or spawned from creative people and based on (among many factors) societal norms. The purpose differs from person to person.
If arts' purpose to you is to simply elicit emotion, congratulations, games are now art.
If art is supposed to elicit emotion based solely on its own merit without any required input or participation from the audience, it gets trickier to justify that label.
I do find it troubling when so many people obsess whether games should be considered art - as if the games would be considered any less meaningful without that label? It just plays straight into the hands of elitists, strengthening the label and feeds into the authoritarian idea whether a certain clique should get to decide the inherent worth of things we enjoy.
This video perfectly shows why this "remake" should've never existed! 12:40 And no, Silent Hill 1 doesn't need to be touched either. It's perfect the way it is.
No. Over the shoulder camera is just terrible and cheap. All atmosphere is lost for "What is around the corner???So scary!" But it's the perfect remake for the unthinking, "forget about it next week" world we live in now
If this were an original Silent Hill game, a new story, I'd be way more inclined to forgive its small flaws. Given that it's a remake of one of my favorite games of all time, it just didn't have a chance to make much of an impression on me other than a brief novelty. Seems like they did it some justice, which is great, and I'm happy for Bloober and Konami. I hope we get some new games soon that aren't remakes and don't suck.
The issues I had with this remake was the voices, mannequins and gameplay. Other than that the game was pretty good. The combat sadly does take away the replay value for me. Some areas overstayed their welcome like the otherworld and even if we had the knife and hyper spray, i would still feel like the game lacked weapons. SH1 had a whole arsenal, and I know theres only like 3 OP ones but I like the variety still. If Bloober does remake the others, they really need to work on the combat and VAs.
nerell making a jerma edit was not expected but i'll allow it