Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

"Very creepy and disturbing. A must own for anyone who likes to be scared."

I just have to say right from the get go that Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams is an amazing game. I remember how freaked out I was when I played Silent Hill on playstation for the first time. I got Silent Hill 2 the first day it came out and played it for two days straight until I beat it. I'm a HUGE fan of the Silent Hill series, and so far this one is the best of the three. But. we will have to wait and see what Silent Hill 4: The Room offers. I think it will top the series in scare factor, but who knows. Ok now to get to the review.

Gameplay: 9/10- The gameplay is awesome in this game. It's not like a Resident Evil game where you just go around destroying everything monster that gets in your path. In Silent Hill you don't get a lot of ammo or healing items, so you have to be very conservative. So, in some instances it is best to run around your enemy rather than fighting them. There are three different difficulties in the game. Easy, normal, and hard. They have a difficulty setting for two things, puzzles and enemies. So, if you think the enemies are too hard, but the puzzles are too easy, you can set them both to different difficulty levels.

Graphics: 10/10- I love the graphics engine that they used in this game. For some reason it gives the game a more creepy feel to it. I don't really know how to explain how the graphics are, but it looks like your TV may have a little static, but it's the game. I mean its nothing that will bother you in any way, but it definitely makes the game more eerie. The character models are great too. They actually have very good facial expression and movements. The enemies in the game are pretty neat too. They are very weird looking. When you see them you will find out that many times you will be asking yourself, "What the hell are these things and where did they come from!?"

Sound/Music: 10/10- This is one of the scariest parts to the game. All the music fits along perfectly with the area and situation that you are in. And the sound, oh man are the scary. You will here all kinds of weird noises that you don't know what they are or where they're coming from. At one point in the game, sirens start to go off(sounds like a tornado siren for a town), it really creeped me our for some reason. There is an enemy that you can hear dragging his weapon around and it's freaky, because you can hear it but you can't see it. Much to my surprise the voice acting really wasn't bad at all. Silent Hill 1 had HORRIBLE voice acting, but Silent Hill 2's is much better.

Story: 10/10- I don't really want to ruin the game for any of you that haven't played it yet, but I will tell you a little something about it. The main characters name is James Sunderland. One day he receives a letter from his dead wife telling him to meet her in their special place. Well as you can imagine the "special place" is in Silent Hill. The big question is, why would James go to look for his dead wife? You can only imagine that something bad will come out of that. I'm not saying anymore about the story, but I will say that it's very good.

Replay ability: 9/10- Well there are five different endings to this game, so if you plan on seeing them all you will have to beat it multiple times. Thats not a bad thing though, because on other playthroughs there is more stuff to do and obtain. You get to learn more about Silent Hill and how it happened to become the way it is. Another good thing is that this game doesn't lose its scare factor after you've already beat it. I've beat it 6 times and it still freaks me out.

This is a must own game for anyone that has an Xbox or Playstation 2. It has all the factors for a great game and it's done very well. So, buy the game or rent it. Sit down with all the lights off at night and play this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/04