Developer: Bloober Team Publisher: Konami Release: October 8th On: Windows From: Steam Price: £60/$70/€70 Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7-11700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, Windows 10 No game protagonist is more willing to stick his hand down a toilet than James Sunderland. Why is he doing this? You would have to ask him or the psychiatrist he badly requires. And it's unlikely he'd explain himself.
This isn't the type of story in which the protagonist has difficulty accepting the existence of horrors, nor struggles with the surreality of what he needs to do to get through a locked door. In the opening minutes, James finds a well with a glowing red square floating inside, stares into it (it saves your game), then makes a calm remark about the odd sensation he feels, and moves on. The human corpses that pepper the town of Silent Hill are noticeably that of James himself, his head bludgeoned and bloodied beyond recognition but his jacket and boots unmistakable.
He makes no remark on this. It's probably nothing. When I say it like that, it's funny.
But it all compliments Silent Hill 2 's ghostly and Lynchian psychological horror. Characters barely understand that they exist, never mind that they may be prisoners of a shame-triggered nightmare or manifestations of some unholy trauma. Your protagonist's muted response to the atrocious lake town fits with what we later come to learn about Jim "Dirty Hands" Sunderland.
As a player, you not only need to embrace James' unquestion.