Silent Hill 2: Born From a Wish Review

Considering I didn't really care for the base game, I'm surprised I liked this sub scenario as much as I did. This is mainly because I found the subject matter more interesting. The themes it deals with like slowly going insane, resigning to your fate and the idea of taking your own life but at the same time you consider your life precious enough that killing yourself is too painful to do. I found these concepts fascinating and the fact that this sub scenario made me reflect on all this much and it's only 30 minutes to finish is a testament to how less is more and how what you do with the time you are given can really elevate a piece of media.

Ernest Baldwin is also one of the most interesting characters in the series and is one of SH2's more interesting characters. Where the ambiguity in the base SH2 game I found annoying, the ambiguity here I found more intriguing since the subject matter resonates with me more. Does Ernest represent what little sanity Maria has left? Is learning that Baldwin wasn't really there basically just Maria slowly going insane and accepting her fate? Was doing his requests esstentially showing that Maria never had any control over her fate to begin with? The fact that I'm thinking about all this in a sub scenario that lasts 30 minutes is a rather impressive feat.

There is some nice songs here that wasn't in the base game like Terror in the Depths of the Fog and Morning Calm. I liked that Love Psalm played in the end credits.

As for the gameplay, it's basically SH2, monsters on normal difficulty die in 2 or 3 pistol bullets tops and you are showered with healing items and ammo, there is hardly any puzzles either. It kind of feels like an experimental indie game with just random sections of "shoot some monsters". There is no final boss either kind of furthur cementing this point. I did like that you got to visit a mansion a la Resident Evil even if it is much much smaller by comparison.

Apart of me wants to see if this gets the Resident Evil 4 Separate Ways(2023) treatment and there is full on adaptation expansion going on with this being a DLC expansion to the SH2 remake but only time will tell.

Overall, if you can find a way to play this, it's an interesting 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay you can find and something I can point to as a good example of "less is more".