When I look back at Half-Life 2's grandiose scale, it was in retrospect very much just the developers arrogantly showing off the technology without really considering pacing or atmosphere. When you take the amazing engine of that game and apply it to the simplicity and more well-rounded story of Half-Life 1... well, you'd get Half-Life Source, a remaster that absolutely no-one liked to a point where I didn't bother to play it. But if you actually put in the effort to entirely redo the set pieces, sound effects, combat, character models, visual effects, add in a kick-ass soundtrack, remove the annoying jumpscares, and ENTIRELY redesign the final act to something that's actually fun to play through, you get what I consider the quintessential Half-Life product.

Trust me, I'm the first to dismiss remakes but I am fully on-board for this one because let's face it, it's not like an amateur project that's not technically developed by Valve themselves with its own distinct title is going to replace the original the same way Capcom treats the Resident Evil remakes. Half-Life is still being sold on Steam, untouched by the passage of time, giving players the option to play either version as different packages. With all that, I have every right to confidently call this my favorite HL game of all time.

It isn't often when you come across a piece of media as life-changing as Silent Hill 2. While definitely not perfect in its gameplay mechanics, it's one of the most brilliantly written and intuitive character studies in the history of fiction, with the game element used to immerse you into the strangeness of the little messed-up town and its dark and gritty atmosphere. While horror games of today's standards seem to be obsessed with throwing in jump scares with hideously animalistic monsters, SH2 is able to scare the audience through the way it messes with your sanity by the sheer amount of mental abuse it gives to its main character. It's a fascinating journey of despare, perversion and sadness that wraps up its story in a way that makes sense to the player depending on how well they can connect to James and the secrets behind his twisted mind.

A game fanatic that still hasn't played Silent Hill 2 is like a film fanatic that still hasn't watched Citizen Kane or The Godfather.

Do you know how long I've been procrastinating my first playthrough of this game? It has been nearly a year now! You see, I REALLY like the first half of this game. It amazingly evokes the creepiness of this franchise in ways it's never been done before. I would've loved to see Team Silent making more games outside of Silent Hill, because there were clearly more stories they wanted to tell.
However, once the game reaches its midpoint, it becomes practically unplayable for me. Escort missions are fun for what they are but it doesn't belong in a game like this, especially when an unkillable dude starts chasing you with a gun. The titular room getting destroyed makes the game unendingly dreadful with barely a moment to breathe. Being able to escape from the nightmares gave the atmosphere a melancholic vibe, kind of like going to the merchant's store in Resident Evil 4, and you can't have a horror game without that calming inbetween. But you know what? I can take these problems to some degree if I wasn't forced to go through the same areas all over again! It makes all my previous progression seem wasted, the puzzles become infinitely less fun to solve, and it destroys the rising action!

I feel that all of this has something to do with Konami's intervention to turn this from an original IP into a Silent Hill game. It's like they were on the verge of sticking with what they already had in the first half, but then had to take the story in a completely different direction halfway through to make it more in-line with the franchise without the time or budget to create new environments and monster designs.

Overall, a game that had so much potential to become an all-time favorite of mine but destroyed itself with a shockingly unnecessary tonal shift.

I'm keeping this review neutral because I want to make a blanket statement about the upcoming remake:
I support the idea of it becoming something completely different!

The original is my favorite game of all time, and the fact that the remakes of the previous 2 got the treatment of 4's gameplay style was a warranted edition. I found the idea of remaking the game that basically set the stone for that exact gameplay to be a weird idea, but I see lots of interesting new directions they can take with the story. The original was a action-centered, campy, adventure with horror elements in it, and that was perfect for what it was, but I nonetheless felt intrigued by its earlier shapes and forms before it became what we know it as now. The idea of using this story to set a whole new tone and reinvent what it could've been sounds wonderful to me, like we get a chance to play the modern equivalent of the Hookman version. Something really spooky, more subtle, and just overall more serious.

But my biggest reason for it to be this way is because I don't want the remake to be compared with the original. There are lots of people in this world who are unwilling to get used to the controls, and I'm scared that if the remake serves as a substitute, it will be their only excuse for claiming it to be better. If this ends up happening, then we are going to forget what made the original what it is, which to me is the peak of all gaming. I prefer to have it be a widely different experience not only because it makes it so much more exciting and unpredictable, but so we can see it more as a reimagining than a remake, because that's what the creators always had in mind. We just assumed them to be remakes and now that's what we have definitively decided to call them. Would I have prefered it if this new version didn't end up happening in the first place? Admittedly yes, but I think there is still hope left so we can finally have this be a good final note of this remake legacy. Capcom may be a hard company to work with, but they're not the type to take the lazy way out.

This is what games like Call of Duty and The Last of Us II should have been. A story that actually delves into the value of the human life and the pointlessness of war and murder. I'll admit that the controls and difficulty scale could've been handled a lot beter, I've yet to find a perfect game afterall, but I don't think movies will ever be able to reach this level of intensity and exploration as it requires the interactivity to make the player feel Walker's guilt. I absolutely understand why the developers didn't want to spoil the plot in the marketing. Yeah, it's unfortunate how that inevitably led to its commercial failure, but thankfully we have the internet to bring masterpieces that we initially glanced over into the spotlight.
Going back to the story, Walker has become one of my favorite video game characters and one of the best examples of an anti-hero. He's up there with James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2. I think Nathan Drake fits Nolan North's voice acting a lot better, but Walker is far more complex and interesting. Actually, the whole game is complex and interesting with its dark aesthetic, fantastic plot twist (that I will definitely not spoil) and the greatest incorporation of player choice I've ever seen in a video game. David Cage has got NOTHING on this.

To me, Spec Ops is the embodiment of the reason video games were blessed into our world. This is the new form of storytelling we've been waiting for since Citizen Kane set the standard in filmmaking. It broke me as a person and is only rivalled by Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2 as my favorite game ever made. But Resident Evil 4 is my favorite work of art, and you'd need a miracle to beat that.