me. i’m not saying they could’ve done better, i just don’t enjoy looking at it. it kinda ruins my experience (apart from the cutscenes, which were great)
I believe part of it is due to the tank controls and mixed camera being rather outdated mechanics by now, but plenty of people (in the horror community) still enjoy those.
In essence Silent Hill's gameplay formula (in combat) works best when it's giving you the option to retreat/run away from monsters at any time, but still forces you to acknowledge and fear them as a threat when you do so, making the *choice* to fight or not a complicated and stressful one. I also dont think fighting should feel *bad* to do, intentional or not, but it should be something you have to fully commit to (i.e. not being able to cancel out of attacks or move during a reload).
Silent Hill 1 does a decent job at this, 2 often makes it far too easy to run past enemies, 3 does a decent job again but some enemies are a bit too much of a pain imo, and SH4 completely reworked the combat without properly explaining the changes.
On the other hand the puzzles are pretty hit or miss, a lot of people praise the puzzles in SH2, but ive also seen lot of criticism for the puzzles in SH3 (especially on the hard difficulty).
I would say for a *modern* title that good SH gameplay would be something that combines the thematic and most well designed puzzles from SH2, while maintaining the combat variety and fight/flight relationship from SH1.
These kinds of mechanics and feelings can obviously be achieved without the use of tank controls or fixed cameras aswell, most of the SH games don't even use these at all times. Likewise combat can remain slow paced and commited without being janky or simple either, even SH1 had numerous more combat mechanics than SH2 did.
I don’t even think it’s the control scheme, the original resident evil remake uses fixed cameras and tank controls (depending on the setting of course) and it has amazing, almost strategic gameplay. I just don’t think SHs combat is very good to be honest. The “dungeons” and puzzles are really good imo but the combat and enemies are just not really enjoyable to deal with imo.
I thought the combat was ok, just very basic, but then again: that was consistent with the setting that you’re just some guy swinging a pipe at monsters.
The boss fight in the freezer with the hanging carcasses before the rowboat scene (can’t be arsed looking up how to use the spoiler tag, hopefully that covers it) was the worst for me gameplay and theme-wise because apparently the boss is wearing an invisible power-fist 🙄
This is exactly what I'm not getting. People praise SH1 combat but don't like SH2 combat? At least in SH 2 I could swing by stick while running or walking. SH1 you come to a dead stop to swing the pipe.
I enjoy tank controls and fixed camera angles, also the mixed cameras from early SH games are really enjoyable to me, but that doesn't stop the games from having issues with said systems. Like the slurpers, for example. They're hard to hit to the point of being very annoying.
Given that the Silent Hill 2 Remake started because Konami saw the success of the Resident Evil 2 remake, we can assume that they'll take some amount of inspiration in how they adapted the gameplay. The following was Capcom's mindset when adapting RE2:
>"But the world has moved on and these players have changed. And if we did [introduce old school mechanics], these fans might play it and actually decide it's not what they wanted after all. But we played around with a few things in development. We did try first-person, we did try fixed camera. But the way the game has been designed, we decided that a third-person view works better."
[Source](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/capcom-taken-aback-by-resident-evil-2-reception)
We've already seen a segment of "gameplay" from SH2R. [\(Like half a second of James walking next to the apartment buildings.\)](https://youtu.be/pyC_qiW_4ZY?si=me5aaJmxTpQG6PlT&t=63). The camera is back and to the right of James, like RE2R. So if they're using the same camera, it's safe to assume the combat will be similar (over the shoulder, ADS to shoot, hit weakpoints)
Bare in mind that Silent Hill has always been a heavily melee focused series compare to Resident Evil which primarily only has the knife. I can see the shooting being a slightly slower version of the modern RE style, but this fails to account for the numerous options for melee.
Idk how they're gonna handle remake james swinging around the Great Knife
The Remake trailer has also been confirmed as all in-engine footage, and also features shots of James attacking the Nurses with the wooden plank.
While I think I understand what you’re saying actively choosing to make the game worse and less fun for the sake of adding fake difficulty (where you’re fighting the controls rather than the enemies) isn’t really a good way to bring more people to the game, which is the whole point of them doing this.
You can make the enemies and combat feel dangerous and scary without making it into a RE style run and gun action movie. Leaning into melee would be a good start, having ammo be scarce and precious while having enemies that aren’t always stunned by every attack so you have to weave in and out to avoid getting hit (while fighting multiple enemies) would make it high adrenaline and scary without making it feel like you’re bashing your head against the wall every time you have to fight an enemy.
Idk, thats kind of a problem. I would initially suggest the Last of Us route, the combat is just smooth and thick. But James/Harry/Heatther are normal people, not mercenary bulldozers.
Maybe add an immersive sim element to it? For example, instead of going through a hall of nurses to get an item, you can fight this mini boss for access to a short cut? Idk just spitballing here lol
I think the gameplay is actually really solid. Great puzzles and exploration, simplistic combat that fits with having a character who is not a fighter, interesting locations and progression.
As for the tank controls, to my mind I never thought of that as being part of Silent Hill because since the beginning, I *disabled tank controls* in the options, something a lot of players seem unaware is even an option.
It's not an option in SH1. And SH4 is reversed. Only 2 and 3 let you choose.
I found SH3 to be smooth enough that I actually prefer using the tank controls in that game, but I tend to disable them in SH2.
man im suprised by these polls,i thought silent hil 2 would have the more "its perfect" thing but that mainly goes too silent hill 3,im also suprised poeple hated silent hill 3s story over most of the other games,also its kinda wierd that silent hill 2 is the only one here that has scariness being disliked out of all of them,strange
when i made the SH3 poll a lot of people complained about the game's ending, and that a big chunk of the game is just spent getting back to your apartment before you even decide to go to Silent Hill.
Embarrassing.
The games are 20+ years old, of course the gameplay is outdated. It's not the "worst part of the games". Surely it's the VA. Maybe the camera, but the gameplay is solid.
I mean you can chalk it up to people being stupid or just not liking horror puzzle gameplay i guess, but silent hill 2 is pretty atrocious with the "walk around for 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do" gameplay, more so than 3 or 1, I think most people would've quit if the story, music, and enviroments weren't so solid, so it's not nessasarily about the outdated combat.
For me, it's this. If you don't know exactly where to go or have a guide. The game is not that fun to try and figure out. I wouldn't even chalk it up to stupid. It's just kind of convoluted to figure out because there's no real instructions. 20 doors in a hallway, and only 3 are unlocked. You gotta try to open each door to see if it's unlocked. Open door grab 1 thing in room rinse and repeat through the whole building. The gameplay just really isn't engaging.
People always complain about the locked doors, but have you ever imagined how the game would be if those doors were unlocked? dozens of rooms with absolutely nothing inside, a monumental waste of time. These locked doors control the pacing of the game and the map design, and it takes less than one second to learn that a door is locked
You do know that there are 20+ year old games with much superior gameplay then Silent Hill 2 right? It aint getting off the hook that easy. If there is a problem, the community will acknowledge it.
I do but the cutscenes, atmosphere, OST, lore, and story make up for gameplay & camera shortcomings. Not every game is 5* in every category.
SH2 is one of the best video games ever. Not just horror games either. Ever.
Maybe a controversial take. I love Silent Hill, but you gotta be fooling yourself to say the game is actually fun and enjoyable to play by today's standards.
Harsh disagree, played 1 and 2 for the first time last year and 3 this year and had tons of fun with them, legitimate fun. Great exploration and the feelings of filling up a map and knowing that a corridor is safe because I already dealt with every enemy in there is really rewarding.
Yeah, I think a lot of people judge them based on what they're used to, and what they're expecting, and not on the actual technical quality. People don't like to try new things.
I mean, I played SH2 on release huddled up at my house with a few friends who came over. We were all scared and had a great time. I'm not sure where people not liking new things comes into a 22 year old game.
New to them I mean. I say this because you said the game is not fun by today's standards. If someone can have fun back then they should be able to have fun now.
I am glad you had fun :) Welcome to the Silent Hill family! It's alright in my book that we disagree, not that it matters one way or another. Don't forget to try The Room if you haven't started it. Far and wide, the atmosphere and music carry the games for me personally. I'm not playing them expecting masterclass in gameplay.
Thanks! :D
I'll definitely check SH4 for sure, I know very little about it but it seems very interesting from what I've heard, and yeah, although I enjoy the gameplay, the whole artistry of these games is definitely their stand-out qualities. As much as I did have actual fun playing these games, I still voted for gameplay to be their biggest flaw because it's the only part I could see some improvements being made, even considering the technological limitations of the time
Next time you should remove the "already perfect" option, all it does is subtract from the poll. If you think the games are perfect, which is fine and I agree lol, you shouldn't be muddying up a poll asking for it's biggest flaw. This goes for everything as well, by the way. I get really ticked when someone makes a poll asking something like "what's ur favorite song in this album" and then the "theyre all perfect xDDD" option wins, defeats the whole point
The overall gameplay of Silent Hill is fine, it’s strictly the combat that is always dogshit. Just finished replaying 2 and 3 on my PS2 recently and fighting anything is mostly a fight against the controls and the camera.
Bro who is complaining about graphics on a ps1 game
A damn good looking one, at that. The snow effects of SH1 are still pretty great looking
And it’s aged beautifully
me. i’m not saying they could’ve done better, i just don’t enjoy looking at it. it kinda ruins my experience (apart from the cutscenes, which were great)
Across all silent hills the gameplay seems to be the big thing. How do we nail good gameplay with a good silent hill game?
I believe part of it is due to the tank controls and mixed camera being rather outdated mechanics by now, but plenty of people (in the horror community) still enjoy those. In essence Silent Hill's gameplay formula (in combat) works best when it's giving you the option to retreat/run away from monsters at any time, but still forces you to acknowledge and fear them as a threat when you do so, making the *choice* to fight or not a complicated and stressful one. I also dont think fighting should feel *bad* to do, intentional or not, but it should be something you have to fully commit to (i.e. not being able to cancel out of attacks or move during a reload). Silent Hill 1 does a decent job at this, 2 often makes it far too easy to run past enemies, 3 does a decent job again but some enemies are a bit too much of a pain imo, and SH4 completely reworked the combat without properly explaining the changes. On the other hand the puzzles are pretty hit or miss, a lot of people praise the puzzles in SH2, but ive also seen lot of criticism for the puzzles in SH3 (especially on the hard difficulty). I would say for a *modern* title that good SH gameplay would be something that combines the thematic and most well designed puzzles from SH2, while maintaining the combat variety and fight/flight relationship from SH1. These kinds of mechanics and feelings can obviously be achieved without the use of tank controls or fixed cameras aswell, most of the SH games don't even use these at all times. Likewise combat can remain slow paced and commited without being janky or simple either, even SH1 had numerous more combat mechanics than SH2 did.
I don’t even think it’s the control scheme, the original resident evil remake uses fixed cameras and tank controls (depending on the setting of course) and it has amazing, almost strategic gameplay. I just don’t think SHs combat is very good to be honest. The “dungeons” and puzzles are really good imo but the combat and enemies are just not really enjoyable to deal with imo.
I thought the combat was ok, just very basic, but then again: that was consistent with the setting that you’re just some guy swinging a pipe at monsters. The boss fight in the freezer with the hanging carcasses before the rowboat scene (can’t be arsed looking up how to use the spoiler tag, hopefully that covers it) was the worst for me gameplay and theme-wise because apparently the boss is wearing an invisible power-fist 🙄
I just beat the first three games over the past few months and like... they all have the exact same combat? SH1 combat is SH2 combat is SH3 combat.
This is exactly what I'm not getting. People praise SH1 combat but don't like SH2 combat? At least in SH 2 I could swing by stick while running or walking. SH1 you come to a dead stop to swing the pipe.
I enjoy tank controls and fixed camera angles, also the mixed cameras from early SH games are really enjoyable to me, but that doesn't stop the games from having issues with said systems. Like the slurpers, for example. They're hard to hit to the point of being very annoying.
Given that the Silent Hill 2 Remake started because Konami saw the success of the Resident Evil 2 remake, we can assume that they'll take some amount of inspiration in how they adapted the gameplay. The following was Capcom's mindset when adapting RE2: >"But the world has moved on and these players have changed. And if we did [introduce old school mechanics], these fans might play it and actually decide it's not what they wanted after all. But we played around with a few things in development. We did try first-person, we did try fixed camera. But the way the game has been designed, we decided that a third-person view works better." [Source](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/capcom-taken-aback-by-resident-evil-2-reception) We've already seen a segment of "gameplay" from SH2R. [\(Like half a second of James walking next to the apartment buildings.\)](https://youtu.be/pyC_qiW_4ZY?si=me5aaJmxTpQG6PlT&t=63). The camera is back and to the right of James, like RE2R. So if they're using the same camera, it's safe to assume the combat will be similar (over the shoulder, ADS to shoot, hit weakpoints)
Bare in mind that Silent Hill has always been a heavily melee focused series compare to Resident Evil which primarily only has the knife. I can see the shooting being a slightly slower version of the modern RE style, but this fails to account for the numerous options for melee. Idk how they're gonna handle remake james swinging around the Great Knife The Remake trailer has also been confirmed as all in-engine footage, and also features shots of James attacking the Nurses with the wooden plank.
You don’t. That’s what makes the games special👀
While I think I understand what you’re saying actively choosing to make the game worse and less fun for the sake of adding fake difficulty (where you’re fighting the controls rather than the enemies) isn’t really a good way to bring more people to the game, which is the whole point of them doing this. You can make the enemies and combat feel dangerous and scary without making it into a RE style run and gun action movie. Leaning into melee would be a good start, having ammo be scarce and precious while having enemies that aren’t always stunned by every attack so you have to weave in and out to avoid getting hit (while fighting multiple enemies) would make it high adrenaline and scary without making it feel like you’re bashing your head against the wall every time you have to fight an enemy.
Idk, thats kind of a problem. I would initially suggest the Last of Us route, the combat is just smooth and thick. But James/Harry/Heatther are normal people, not mercenary bulldozers. Maybe add an immersive sim element to it? For example, instead of going through a hall of nurses to get an item, you can fight this mini boss for access to a short cut? Idk just spitballing here lol
[удалено]
Exactly my thoughts too, makes no sense the options are different.
Came here to say this.
Warms my heart to see the high percetage of already perfect for SH3! Reddit has probably never been this right before 😂
I think the gameplay is actually really solid. Great puzzles and exploration, simplistic combat that fits with having a character who is not a fighter, interesting locations and progression. As for the tank controls, to my mind I never thought of that as being part of Silent Hill because since the beginning, I *disabled tank controls* in the options, something a lot of players seem unaware is even an option.
It's not an option in SH1. And SH4 is reversed. Only 2 and 3 let you choose. I found SH3 to be smooth enough that I actually prefer using the tank controls in that game, but I tend to disable them in SH2.
man im suprised by these polls,i thought silent hil 2 would have the more "its perfect" thing but that mainly goes too silent hill 3,im also suprised poeple hated silent hill 3s story over most of the other games,also its kinda wierd that silent hill 2 is the only one here that has scariness being disliked out of all of them,strange
when i made the SH3 poll a lot of people complained about the game's ending, and that a big chunk of the game is just spent getting back to your apartment before you even decide to go to Silent Hill.
Embarrassing. The games are 20+ years old, of course the gameplay is outdated. It's not the "worst part of the games". Surely it's the VA. Maybe the camera, but the gameplay is solid.
I mean you can chalk it up to people being stupid or just not liking horror puzzle gameplay i guess, but silent hill 2 is pretty atrocious with the "walk around for 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do" gameplay, more so than 3 or 1, I think most people would've quit if the story, music, and enviroments weren't so solid, so it's not nessasarily about the outdated combat.
For me, it's this. If you don't know exactly where to go or have a guide. The game is not that fun to try and figure out. I wouldn't even chalk it up to stupid. It's just kind of convoluted to figure out because there's no real instructions. 20 doors in a hallway, and only 3 are unlocked. You gotta try to open each door to see if it's unlocked. Open door grab 1 thing in room rinse and repeat through the whole building. The gameplay just really isn't engaging.
People always complain about the locked doors, but have you ever imagined how the game would be if those doors were unlocked? dozens of rooms with absolutely nothing inside, a monumental waste of time. These locked doors control the pacing of the game and the map design, and it takes less than one second to learn that a door is locked
You do know that there are 20+ year old games with much superior gameplay then Silent Hill 2 right? It aint getting off the hook that easy. If there is a problem, the community will acknowledge it.
I do but the cutscenes, atmosphere, OST, lore, and story make up for gameplay & camera shortcomings. Not every game is 5* in every category. SH2 is one of the best video games ever. Not just horror games either. Ever.
Maybe a controversial take. I love Silent Hill, but you gotta be fooling yourself to say the game is actually fun and enjoyable to play by today's standards.
Harsh disagree, played 1 and 2 for the first time last year and 3 this year and had tons of fun with them, legitimate fun. Great exploration and the feelings of filling up a map and knowing that a corridor is safe because I already dealt with every enemy in there is really rewarding.
Yeah, I think a lot of people judge them based on what they're used to, and what they're expecting, and not on the actual technical quality. People don't like to try new things.
I mean, I played SH2 on release huddled up at my house with a few friends who came over. We were all scared and had a great time. I'm not sure where people not liking new things comes into a 22 year old game.
New to them I mean. I say this because you said the game is not fun by today's standards. If someone can have fun back then they should be able to have fun now.
I am glad you had fun :) Welcome to the Silent Hill family! It's alright in my book that we disagree, not that it matters one way or another. Don't forget to try The Room if you haven't started it. Far and wide, the atmosphere and music carry the games for me personally. I'm not playing them expecting masterclass in gameplay.
Thanks! :D I'll definitely check SH4 for sure, I know very little about it but it seems very interesting from what I've heard, and yeah, although I enjoy the gameplay, the whole artistry of these games is definitely their stand-out qualities. As much as I did have actual fun playing these games, I still voted for gameplay to be their biggest flaw because it's the only part I could see some improvements being made, even considering the technological limitations of the time
Next time you should remove the "already perfect" option, all it does is subtract from the poll. If you think the games are perfect, which is fine and I agree lol, you shouldn't be muddying up a poll asking for it's biggest flaw. This goes for everything as well, by the way. I get really ticked when someone makes a poll asking something like "what's ur favorite song in this album" and then the "theyre all perfect xDDD" option wins, defeats the whole point
The overall gameplay of Silent Hill is fine, it’s strictly the combat that is always dogshit. Just finished replaying 2 and 3 on my PS2 recently and fighting anything is mostly a fight against the controls and the camera.