Konami was notorious for chronically unloving PC ports like Metal Gear Solid 2 at the turn of the millennium. The horror classic Silent Hill 2 also belongs in this category. Modders can help. They recently fixed a bug that made the game unplayable on modern computers.
The Enhanced Edition project aims to make Silent Hill 2 better to run modern systems. The mod adds widescreen resolutions and improves the graphics in many ways. The team is making subtle improvements, but also wants to restore the condition of the original. Default is the PS2 version.
Changes include nicer shadows, restored post-processing effects, improved fog effects, reflections, restoring lighting effects and brightness to original levels, higher-resolution images e.g. in the main menu that were beautified by hand or with AI upscaling, and higher-resolution images Font to improve readability. The developers' screenshot comparisons on the project's homepage between their version and the natural version, the HD Collection of the Xbox 360 and the PCSX2 version from the PS2 emulator, show just how huge the difference is.
The list of features also includes better support for controllers. On this point too, Konami ports were notorious. In addition, bugs should be fixed. A critical bug is fixed with the latest version: On multi-core processors, sounds are skipped or played in an endless loop, causing the game to crash. To fix the problem, the developers have implemented a specially created audio engine.
The effort is remarkable, because Silent Hill 2 is not available through shops like Steam sold. In order to play the classic, the original DVD is required, the installation and configuration of the enhanced edition mod facilitates a setup routine for this. Despite improvements, the hardware requirements remain low. At least “eight years old” components are required, parts that are no more than five years old are recommended.