Believe it or not, horror games are meant to be played as a group, and Silent Hill 2 is no exception. It took us about 1 month to finish the game together. We played on Easy. We never died, and the only time we failed was when I shot Maria in the face on accident in the hospital while mashing the controller when we were lost (oops!).
I hated this game, affectionately. I don’t deal well with body horror, jump scares, and prolonged suspense. Nor do I do well with sharp drops in FPS while rotating the camera in open areas. At the end of a few sessions, I couldn’t tell if my nausea was from fear, disgust, or motion sickness. So when James first met Eddie puking his guts out in an apartment bathroom (he doesn’t stop, we checked on him several times) I realized that I felt some kinship to Eddie. To put it as kids do, I was “kinning” Eddie.
I don’t like Eddie as a character. To some degree, perhaps a mild one, I don’t like myself, but I’m trying to live in a away where I will. Anyway, as we followed James’ escapade through Silent Hill 2, we encountered Eddie a handful more of times.
Once, he was eating pizza in an abandoned bowling alley. James was disappointed with him. I like pizza, and have bowled a socially acceptable number of times. My relatives have expressed disappointment in me, somewhat. Eddie’s just like me.
Then we found him in a cafeteria next to a dead body. He had a gun. He presumably shot that person. Eddie, what have you done? And yet, I thought that maybe, if I were in a deep, wet, underground prison with a gun, surrounded by bloody, mutated freaks, I too might have shot that person.
Then we found Eddie in a similar situation. He shot even more people! And he’s ready to shoot James too! And you know what? Same! James gave off extremely strong incel-MRA vibes from the start. As the game went on, the vibes only grew stronger. I was ready to shoot James. Unfortunately, the game needed James to win and Eddie fled to the next room. Eventually, James followed Eddie and finished the job. I wondered if there was a relief that came with not knowing the conclusion of the game, with not discovering that James killed his terminally ill wife because they didn’t have a healthy relationship dynamic after she got sick, with being able to stop playing Silent Hill 2 forever? Eddie knew that relief, and I could have known it too.
Alas, we finished the game as James and listened to his dead wife read a very long letter that sounded sad, but I was really happy to be done with the game.
When we watched the credits, I learned that some psychopath designed the game to be played multiple times with multiple endings. This means that Eddie could puke multiple times, eat multiple pizzas, shoot multitudes of people, and die multiple times. And honestly, I feel for the guy. He doesn’t deserve that. We don’t need to play through Silent Hill 2 again. Thanks! Here’s a score: 7/11.
