GamesHorrorSilent Hill 2Silent Hill 2 Remake finally put Bloober Team on the map for horror fans, but in 2025 Cronos: The New Dawn will decide whether it stays thereWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesHorrorSilent Hill 2Silent Hill 2 Remake finally put Bloober Team on the map for horror fans, but in 2025 Cronos: The New Dawn will decide whether it stays thereWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Konami/Bloober Team)
I, like many horror fans, had serious doubts aboutSilent Hill 2 Remake. Specifically developer Bloober Team’s ability to do justice to such an iconic game. The studio, founded in 2008, had yet to really prove itself with a single release you could point to as evidence that it had the chops to bring Silent Hill 2 to a modern crowd. Sure, there was Layers of Fear and Observer, horror games I’d describe as competent and imaginative, but there was also Basement Crawl and Blair Witch, which are both nothing short of appalling.
This is all to say, very few people expected Bloober Team to stick the landing with Silent Hill 2 Remake. But against all odds, it did exactly that and then some, delivering a new vision that’s faithful to the original but modernized and expanded in meaningful ways. For one, its combat doesn’t make you want to snap your controller in half. There’s also a lot more of Silent Hill itself to explore, with an expanded and more interactive map that hides all sorts of secrets, items, and lore entries.
I’m not afraid to say that Silent Hill 2 Remake is an objectively better experience than the original Silent Hill for most people. It looks better, sounds better, plays better, and perfectly captures the thick, oppressively bleak atmosphere of the original. Purely from a technical aspect, the remake’s modern visuals allow for more nuanced and evocative character expression, which translates to more emotionally resonant storytelling, which is one of many things the original game excels at.
Horror from whole cloth
(Image credit: Konami)
Of course, remaking a classic is one thing, but designing a whole new IP is another beast entirely. I’ll give Bloober Team its flowers all day for Silent Hill 2 Remake, but until it can deliver a classic with its own DNA, I remain undecided on its staying power, at least in the AAA horror space.
In case I wasn’t clear enough in the intro, I’m not saying I doubt Bloober Team’s ability to make a great original horror game, it’s just that I don’t believe it has one in its catalog yet. The Medium is probably the next best thing for my money with its innovative world-hopping mechanic, but aside from that cool hook it very much falls in line with the studio’s previous psychological horror releases, meaning you’d almost be forgiven for calling it a walking sim.
Layers of Fear, likewise, is another one Bloober Team fans might herald as a classic that I found to be atmospheric and well-written but ultimately, just kind of boring. To say there’s little variety in the gameplay is an understatement, and the scares are mostly of the jump variety - the antithesis to Silent Hill 2’s slow-building, creeping dread that embeds itself beneath your skin.
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Glass half full
(Image credit: Bloober Team)
Cronos: The New Dawn - Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer - YouTubeWatch On
Cronos: The New Dawn - Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer - YouTube
Cronos: The New Dawn - Official Cinematic Reveal Trailer - YouTube
I think that’s the right play. One common criticism of Bloober Team is that its games can feel a little derivative, and yeah, it’s pretty hard to point at one consistent theme across its catalog as Bloober Team-specific. The fact that it nailed Silent Hill 2 Remake won’t do anything to remedy the perception that Bloober Team games are unoriginal, so building on themes and mechanics from its previous games seems like a smart choice.
Cronos: The New Dawn could be a make or break situation for Bloober Team. The studio utterly redeemed itself with Silent Hill 2 Remake, but I see it as more of a pre-exam than the final test. In an interview from October,the remake’s co-director Jacek Zieba said Bloober Team is “done making shitty games” and that the studio had “found its niche.“Cronos: The New Dawn will either be the proof in the pudding or a disappointment that regresses the studio’s reputation to pre-Silent Hill 2 Remake days. Hopefully it’s the former.
Let’s all manifest the reality in which Cronos: The New Dawn is on our list of thebest horror games.
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