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I'll say it, Silent Hill 2: Remake is the best horror game in years. It's terrifying, punishing, and an absolutely nail-biting experience pristinely paced to wring every chill and cry from the player it can. Bloober absolutely excelled in creating a masterpiece from a masterpiece, learning from the wonderful work of Team Silent while coding in their own DNA to create an instant modern classic.

From the foreboding fog to the crunchy combat, Silent Hill fans the world over should rejoice because the series is back and back with a voracious vengeance. It's gorgeous and narratively timeless, showing an incredibly raw look at mental health issues that, while not the most hopeful, contain painful lessons with uncomfortable truths that might just leave you with a level of compassion to your fellow man you otherwise wouldn't have experienced.

And all from a video game...take that naysayers.

Silent Hill 2 is arguably the best psychological horror game to ever grace the gaming landscape. Harrowing, tense, and dripping in an atmosphere of existential dread and trauma, our second trip to the titular town plays host to a variety of heartbreaking stories that are as honest as they are painful.

The series's signature blend of scrappy, clunky combat and riddle-infused puzzles creates a strange addiction to exploration that is rewarded and punished in equal measure.

Overall, Silent Hill 2 is a classic of a bygone era that richly revels in regret and the very human tendency to get ourselves stuck in cycles of self-destruction. It's terrific, thrilling, and my only real negative note would be over how darn difficult it is for casual gamers to access and experience, especially as a sequel that outshines its predecessor by miles.

Silent Hill is as impactful to the survival horror genre as mainstay Resident Evil, and, in many ways, transcends it entirely. Moving from B-movie schlock to serious psychological torment, dynamic camera work and scrappy combat blend into a terrifyingly tense jaunt through the mysterious and atmospherically unrivalled titular town.

Characters need work and some mixed messaging obscures a meatier story that can lead to a confusing finale, but, out of the gate, Team Silent came swinging hard, birthing a timeless style that clashes Japanese and American horror into a satisfying spookfest while setting a standard no one has come close to since.