The Silent Hill HD Collection is what you get when you spend extra time and money revoicing two of your classic games with well-known voice actors and creating a plethora of new issues along the way by hiring an incompetent team.
If you haven't seen the image before I suggest you take a look at https://imgur.com/cn9chMe before continuing with this read, and hopefully before you make the mistake of purchasing this collection.
Don't let the title fool you into thinking you're getting a complete package of Silent Hills mainline games. This game is not a tetralogy, it's not even a trilogy, it's a duology with Silent Hill 2 & 3. If you are not aware, from the mainline titles SH2 and 4 are standalone sequels that require little to no knowledge of previous titles to fully enjoy them. SH1 and 3 share many important plot details and characters so right off the bat this collection may leave you feeling unsatisfied.
Silent Hill is a series that has long been marred with issues after the 4th mainline entry. The second title may as well be regarded as sacred text in the horror video game community. I won't cover each game individually in this review, instead I will list the most egregious errors packed in what I call "The Duology of Pain and Sacrilege" or 2 PoS for short.
FogSilent Hill is known for its atmosphere and soundtrack, especially the second title. This poor HD port destroys the dense fog that covers the small quaint town the series revolves around, this leads to seeing parts of the environment not meant for player eyes- Such as tiling, cut offs in water and trees, or low resolution backdrops. SH3 takes it a step further by giving you cyan colored fog as if you have stepped into an underground Eastern European night club. Both games suffer serious damages to their atmosphere because of this issue.
SoundCrackling, loop errors, flat out not even playing-- These are the sound issues you will run into many times while wandering the
dirty streets now clean streets of Silent Hill. Although not often, when you enter into an area with 3 or more enemies you are met with a popping sound which I can only assume comes from errors associated with multiple overlapping sounds. If you are new to the series you might even interpret these sounds as being deliberately part of the game since they are so jarring and sudden, but that is not the case.
Before starting SH2 in this collection you are given the option of new or original release voice tracks, but don't let choices deceive you my friend as there are changes even in the original release, albeit minor. This might not seem severe but if you are a purist who wants the closest experience to the original without having to hunt down an original copy for absurd prices, you are out of luck. As for the new voices, if you have played any triple-A titles, watched dubbed anime, or cartoons than you have heard the voices of Troy Baker and Laura Bailey. The new voice work is overproduced and has turned an original beloved somewhat bizarre voice track into generic horror movie garbage. As for SH3, you must settle for the new voice track as there is no option for the original, how generous of them to make the choice for us! Now we know where the budget for this HD collection went towards.
CG CutscenesStretched and cut off, much like the SH wiki community years ago if you catch my drift
(If you know, you know). Anyways, SH2 and 3 have a lot of CG cutscenes (Like many games from that era) and Hijinx studio made sure they fit on your crystal clear 50" 16:9 1080p TV by stretching out the video leaving you with terrible quality and enlarged characters. It's true what they say, the camera really does pack on a few extra pounds! They were also kind enough to shrink one of the most important scenes down to place on a shoddy looking TV overlay that only does more harm than good by cutting off bits of the footage. Thanks, Hijinx Studios!
Visual changesAre you an artist with a vision? Do you find the work of Team Silent
wrong? Surely this masterpiece of a horror game that is full of nuances could use
your touch,
your input. If you answered 'yes' than welcome aboard Hijinx studios! Your first order of business is cleaning up the dirty abandoned streets of Silent Hill, that means no grime or dirt, just clean smooth asphalt. What about the Silent Hill Ranch sign at the beginning of the game? It looks ugly so let's redo it in
COMIC SANS because it's what Team Silent would have done if they heard my glorious input! Let's brighten up the environment a bit in SH3 and remove some of the rust in the Otherworld too. With the amount of pointless changes that completely miss the point of the game you'd think Hijinx was trying to steal credit from Team Silent or sully their name, but they wouldn't do that..... Right?
The EndWell my friends, that's it for me. This is no review on the gameplay of Silent Hill 2 or 3, only the quality of this HD port. I would like to say the future of Silent Hill looks bright but the recent release of Ascension has been nothing but a greedy joke played by Konami and another no-name studio looking to ride the coattails of Team Silent and their work. I would like to say I exaggerated the issues here but they are all very real, and I haven't even gotten into the problems such as in-game cutscenes freezing up, textures missing, spelling errors in subtitles, long fade ins and outs, busted animations, and more. Is the game playable, yes, it is. Is this the way to experience Silent Hill 2 or 3, no, it is not. I know the original releases are not easy to find for a fair price, but I would like to mention that there is a wonderful team of fans who have created an 'Enhanced Edition' of the PC port to Silent Hill 2 that makes the work of Hijinx Studio look like an absolute joke made by a team of toddlers tapping away on a Fischer-Price My First Computer. Look into it if you are interested in playing the best version of Silent Hill 2 with some modern features. It's also worth noting that SH3 is in a much worse state than SH2 is in this collection. If you must settle for the HD collection version, ensure you come in knowing it is not what the original team had envisioned and that out there is a perfect original and a brilliant touchup by fans. I would only recommend this to owners of the original releases who don't want to bust out old hardware to play them and would advice newcomers to look into the 'Enhanced Edition' or original copies instead of this version. If you are a devout SH3 fan, or just a SH fan in general, pretend this collection does not exist.
As an HD port, this gets a 1 out of 5 from me. While the original games are still a solid 5.
Oh, and one more thing to note: The studio responsible for this HD port has not produced another video game after this marvelous piece of incompetency. It is up to you to decide if that is a blessing or a curse.
1.0