Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

The Good
SH2 has a great story. I've read a lot of reviews of ppl complaining about the confusing story with so many missing pieces of information. Guess most of this ppl where the kind of ppl who finish adventure games with the game guide or who just take the shortest route through the game. SH2 needs more than that...it deserves more time and if you are willing to spend more time you'll get the real deal. Try to discover the past of Silent Hill.....read everything you get and you won't have too many questions in the end. Besides that, discovering the story is the real (maybe the only) puzzle of the game.

Besides that, be sure to have the appropriate audio to let you frighten by the sound itself. SH2 has some of the best sound effects i ever encountered in a game and some really gave me a chill. Still remember the feeling when the elk ran litteraly through my living room while examining the prison court. Besides the sound, the melancholic music adds real athmosphere, especially once it gets to an end, you encounter the truth, the music really makes you feel sad.

What's left? The graphics. Well, the blur filter too annoyed a lot of ppl but after turning it off to see the crisp graphics i though that it looked better before :) The details are great.....the restroom at the start.......disgusting.....and it goes on and on. You'll see incredible detailed textures through the whole game to give all the locations their special touch.

Another thing I liked where the 5 different ending sequenzes. While there are several "bad" ones there's one which you really should care to see and at least it should increase replayability.

So what's on the neg. side

The Bad
Sold as action-adventure with better puzzles than the RE series it was still disappointing to see those baby puzzles. Especially with the possibility to play with diferent skills i really hoped for more but we have to face the truth.....adventures are dead and what's left are puzzles a 5 year old would solve if he really would try hard!

The voice acting is quite poor, they didn't really fit into the situations but living in the german speaking parts of europe where every film gets dubbed it's kinda common to have bad voice acting and so that doesn't hurt too much :)

The biggest disappointment IMO was the sucky controls.....shortly after the start i restarted the game with easy action skill because the controls where kinda slow...sometimes it took to long to hit and while in combat that could cause quite a lot of damage fastly. Besides that it was too easy to get stuck on corners, especially with enemies around. Well, at least the different skill levels should make it possible for everyone.

The Bottom Line
It's a great game. It's dark, it's scary and it's sad. If you want a action packed game and don't care for story or puzzle elements you shouldn't really go for it. Like i said before, you'll miss a lot of the story and will be left with an unsatisfying story at the end. If you like puzzles or at least aren't afraid to READ, then go for the game, it's deffinatly worth it :o)