The best remasters look the way you remember the game, a hardware generation or two removed. The Silent Hill HD Collection infamously did not accomplish that. It is one of the most (fairly/unfairly) derided remasters of all time, but isn’t totally irredeemable, and may actually be a great option for some players.
The collection contains both Silent Hill 2 and 3, but here I’m going to focus on Silent Hill 3. This is because 1) it was the better of the two HD ports and 2) while SH2 has a generally well-received modern remake, SH3 is much trickier to play these days. Let’s get a few things out of the way first: if you have a way to play the original version of SH3 on PS2 on a CRT TV, do that. If you want to mess around with settings and mods on the PC version, that’s your journey and I respect it. But if you have no desire to do either of those and you have a PS3, the HD Collection is a solid option.
Silent Hill 3 is a sequel to the original PS1 game, and in my opinion, the most authentically scary game in the series. It’s not my favorite Silent Hill story, but maybe my favorite vibes. And the vibes in the HD version are somewhat intact.
The biggest issue with the remaster was the visuals. Lighting, fog, textures, etc. all came out a bit weird in this HD version, at least partially due to the developers working with incomplete code. It was a whole thing at the time, leading to mixed reviews and some shitty harassment. Developer Hijinx did update the game on PS3 to a decent state that still didn’t fully capture the vibe of the original, but was a perfectly serviceable way to play the games. Looking at reviews from the time, there were also some sound and frame rate issues, but either those were fixed by the patch, or I didn’t notice or encounter them in the two hours or so I spent with the game this week.
So, who does a serviceable HD port of Silent Hill 3 serve? Well, if you’re into trophies, you’ve probably played worse, and there are some great bragging rights trophies to obtain here. If you want a physical edition of the game, but don’t want to pay absurd prices for an English copy on PS2, the collection is a much more affordable option. And like I said earlier, if you’re into emulation, modding etc., that’s your journey.
I, like many fans (and probably everyone involved with the collection), wish it would have turned out better. There’s plenty to nitpick, but if you’ve never played SH3 before and don’t have the baggage of PS2 version memories, this is a decent, affordable way to experience one of the best games of the series and genre.
Played and captured on a PlayStation Triple
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