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Silent Hill 2 Remake As someone who did play the original, I can say this is about as good of a remake as you could hope for of that game. The interface has been streamlined so you spend as little time in menus as possible. Swapping weapons is done on the fly now and James can dodge in combat, which makes encounters much more intense since monsters can also dodge and counter you, meaning you need to always be on your toes and you can't just mash your way through every encounter. Looking at the map is also done in real time now, which means you can be attacked while reading it if you are careless. Sadly, they did remove a couple of unlockable weapons (no Pyramid Head knife this time) but they make up for that by greatly improving the boss fights. In the original game you usually just had to run around the boss room with tank controls and turn around to take potshots whenever you had enough distance, but now they're much faster and more aggressive with their attacks, meaning you need to learn to dodge. One remade boss in particular doesn't really do anything more than charge you and try to grab you, but the new fight with it still has so much atmosphere and intensity that it's become one of my favorite survival horror boss fights ever. I bet anyone who has played this game will know which one I'm talking about. I really can't think of much to criticize about this game that didn't already apply to the original one. Not that many enemy types, limited weapon selection, easy to get lost if you aren't paying close attention. All that is just baked into the series, so if you already liked the original Silent Hill 2 then I see no reason you wouldn't like the remake. If you never played it, now's a great time to see what all the fuss is about.

The Evil Within Several years late to the party, but I finally beat this one. A real rollercoaster, where the highest highs are excellent but the lowest lows made me question why would anyone play this. The atmosphere, music, and monster designs are top tier, super creepy and scary with a nice mix of combat and horror. The story was cool, it really puts the psychological in psychological horror. Can't wait to start 2, see where this goes. Starting around chapter 9 however, there's some serious issues, it really likes to throw insta-death stuff at you, one of the more annoying ones being capable of teleporting and appearing right in front of you, combine this with enemies and traps around the area and it ended up being a really frustrating encounter, specially since the best way I found to deal with that was to just run around in circles until it went away lol, that kinda kills the atmosphere. There's also this room in one of the later chapters that was a nightmare to deal with, all the traps in the universe gathered in a single room. Overall, it was a really good survival horror, though I don't know if I'd recommend it, it does require some patience, both to deal with some technical issues and to make it through some of the more annoying sections. If you do have that kind of patience, then yeah, definitively worth it. Also if you link your Bethesda account, you get access to a bunch of extra stuff including infinite ammo mode. Might be a fun way to do a NG+ run, specially with some of the stuff you get for beating the game once. Grade: B+

Silent Hill 2 Remake I never played the original, so I went into this one completely blind. Well, almost completely. I had the big thing spoiled years ago but knew nothing about the game beyond that. Well, holy fuck, this game is incredible! It might actually be the scariest game I've ever played. This isn't Resident Evil fun time. The atmosphere in this game is so goddamned oppressive and tense that I couldn't take it for more than a couple hours at a time. Which is quite a feat for a game with only about half a dozen enemy types that aren't particularly difficult to deal with. The sound design and soundtrack in particular are god-tier. I was constantly dreading what would be around the next corner. I obviously can't compare it to the original but I have to assume it's up there with RE2 and RE4 as one of the best video game remakes ever. It modernizes the original game and expands on it where it makes sense to but also preserves what made it work in the first place. The voice acting still feel off and adds this eerie vibe to all the cutscenes. The combat works really well without making James feel like John Wick. The puzzles weren't particularly difficult but they were satisfying enough to solve and didn't involve bullshit leaps of logic. The original is one of those games that I had been meaning to play for years but never got around to. And now I'm kinda glad I never did because this was a hell of a way to experience it for the first time. I remember playing the first game on my PS3 years ago and it just didn't compare to this. I know there are some brand new games in development but I really hope Konami aren't done with the older ones. I'd love to see remakes of the first game, at least. Ideally, SH3 and 4 as well. Or at least some kind of proper collection like they did with Metal Gear Solid. So yeah, if you're in the mood for a spooky October game, this is the one to get.