Oh no, square is attack and I just killed my horse.
Enemy surprise attacks help make Silent Hill 2 scary.
But I actually found that the time off had made the game better, not worse.
Like comedy, understanding what makes horror work can be a bit like dissecting a frog.
You learn how it works, but it dies on the table.
But when you take a break from a horror game, the distance makes those details unfamiliar once again.
To continue the comparison with comedy, both mediums are sustained by surprise.
In comedy, a joke subverts our expectations and we laugh.
Horror, on the macro and micro levels, is also built on subversion.
Jump scares, too, are built on sudden surprise.
Its the reason a comedy is less funny if you watch it again soon after.
You know the jokes, so they cant surprise you.
In returning toSilent Hill 2, Im getting surprised all over again.
The weird headless monsters that hide in shadowy corners.
The warped and warbly radio static that plays when you get near to an enemy.
The footstep-like sounds that make you sweep the camera behind you only to find nothing at all.
Now, returning, the game feels as scary as it did when I first started it.
In a way, Silent Hill 2 and horror remakes in general are drafting off the same phenomenon.
As the games original audience aged, new players who had never experienced the original took their place.
For them, time has turned a familiar game into a brand new experience.
And for those older gamers who were there then and played the remake now?
23 years is plenty of time to forget some details.
Hell, even a month away is long enough to make Silent Hill 2 feel new all over again.
Silent Hill 2 and Crow Country look to the past in very different ways.
