9.0SILENT HILL 2
This year my October was made extra spooky with the release of the Silent Hill 2 remake. The game had big shoes to fill and the lead up to the release was a bit rocky with people not really convinced about the game, but as soon as it went into its early access period, general opinion on the game quickly 180°'d.
Honestly, regardless of how good it turned out I just really wanted to get into the Silent Hill series following my recently found love for Last of Us and Resident Evil. The latter being Silent Hill's main competitor and genre brother.
Basically if you played an RE game, you'll know the core gameplay loop of SH2 immediately. Labyrinthian areas you need to explore and figure out the way forward by completing the various puzzles placed in front of you, while the corridors crawl with all sorts of creepy monsters.
Core difference between Resident Evil and Silent Hill however lies in how the games handle the action-to-horror ratio. If RE games do 70% action and 30% horror, SH flips the formula on its head. Reducing the action hero elements to a more bare-boned approach and instead build on the atmosphere, making you feel small in the spooky world, building the suspense of every encounter (with warning white noise from your controller) and delving its themes away from mutated monsters and zombies and into the abstract and psychological.
While I can't vouch that SH2 remake will be the game of the year from a technical perspective, I honestly consider this to be perhaps my favorite game of the year. Yeah, the graphics are triple A enough without exceeding any benchmarks and the gameplay mechanics are kinda RE stripped down in terms of action options, but the atmosphere and creative energy of the world and creatures won me over in ways that TLOU and RE haven't quite managed to do.
And most importantly: F**k Eddy
