I'm just curious who has bought this and also played the original games and if they can offer any sort of comparison.

Watching the video I was worried since the textures look "smoother" and they removed a lot of the fog from the games, which basically kills the original aesthetic. Has anybody who has played through the original games recently checked out this HD collection and seen how the two compare? I'm just curious, as both Silent Hill 2 + 3 are some of my favorite games ever, but I'm hesitant to make the jump if the HD smoothing cuts out the grittiness of the originals (and I can always just get the PC versions and play it uprezzed that way if I really want).

Thanks!

Loved both games and i re played silent hill 2 about a year and a half ago and yea it seems to look noticeably better. And i don't know where u heard about the fog problem but the fog is still there and as creepy as ever. i haven't played much im near the end of the apartments in 2 but so far im having alot of fun with it. The one bad thing ive run into is that their is sometimes some audio stutter when your running through town and that's kinda a bummer but im hoping that get's patched or something.

I can't WAIT for this.

Damn, looks like they took the weird blotches of dirt/fog out of Silent Hill 3. That sucks.

I don't know but as far as this video goes, the HD versions look worse in the sense that at lot of the lighting and atmosphere gets lost. SH2 looks just worse period and SH3 looks sharp and clean but the missing fog and overall cleanness seem wrong.

How's the new voice acting in SH3?

Yeah, I've heard the video above isn't the final product, but I was wondering if anybody who has played it can attest to whether or not the smoke/fog/rust/etc. is missing from the final release copy of SH2/3.

Got it at midnight. (was the ONLY one. Everyone else was there for Raccoon City -_-) SH2 Looks much better and it feels like the fog is even better thanks to lighting being enhanced a bit. As for SH3, there is a little less fog and everything is smoothed out a little more in order to look better. Also the brightness was cranked up a bit, but a quick trip to the options menu fixed that. As much as fans as a whole don't want to give it a chance, the new voice acting for SH2 is much much better and actually improves the experience (played with original first, then new). As for SH3, it's not tons better, but Douglas' voice isn't terrible now. I highly suggest it if you haven't played them before or want it for a current gen console.

That video is absurdly misleading; it appears to be a different build than the final release, and the settings are completely different. The collection looks great, and it retains the atmosphere very well. The problems of brightness and contrast present in the Gamespot video are nowhere to be found in my copy.

I had concerns when I first saw that video, too. It turned out to simply be a shoddy effort on Gamespot's part. There may be some subtle differences, e.g., fog density & lighting nuances, but I doubt anyone could notice without constant side-by-side. I have old versions of both games, and I've compared them myself; the HD versions are easily superior in look, and they don't really lose anything. Playing a PS2 copy of SH3 on a PS3, aside from being acronymically cumbersome, still looks damned good, but this version looks better.

That said, the performance may be a bit of a question. The frame-rate is a bit of a problem, and there are occasional bugs that infrequently bring things down. It's not bad enough that I'd advise against purchase altogether, and they released a patch today that may help, but it's something to keep in mind.

The HD version looks better but it almost looks like the few colors that were in the game originally (well, his green coat really) is now pretty de-saturated. I'm not sure I like that.

@DrBendo said:

That video is absurdly misleading; it appears to be a different build than the final release, and the settings are completely different. The collection looks great, and it retains the atmosphere very well. The problems of brightness and contrast present in the Gamespot video are nowhere to be found in my copy.

I had concerns when I first saw that video, too. It turned out to simply be a shoddy effort on Gamespot's part. There may be some subtle differences, e.g., fog density & lighting nuances, but I doubt anyone could notice without constant side-by-side. I have old versions of both games, and I've compared them myself; the HD versions are easily superior in look, and they don't really lose anything. Playing a PS2 copy of SH3 on a PS3, aside from being acronymically cumbersome, still looks damned good, but this version looks better.

That said, the performance may be a bit of a question. The frame-rate is a bit of a problem, and there are occasional bugs that infrequently bring things down. It's not bad enough that I'd advise against purchase altogether, and they released a patch today that may help, but it's something to keep in mind.

The brightness issues are probably just caused by recording the footage at a dynamic range of 16-235, and then rendering the video as 1-255.

As I posted in another thread, I reached many of the parts in this video for Silent Hill 2 where fog was reduced and it is only reduced in very small parts when the game controls your character in a cinematic such as walking out of the rest stop and talking to Maria on the peer. Shortly after both of the instances the fog is right back where the original had it. Fog is not reduced at all so far in the Silent Hill 2 version gameplay wise, only controlled cinematics (not the CG cinematics).

Edit: Played on XBOX 360 version.

@Grivah: Yeah. I've played through it multiple times on the 360 and haven't run into too many things that have hindered the experience with the exception of the boat scene. For SH3 though, the voices fall out of sync at times and the sound skips and the frame rate dips horribly any time I use a submachine gun or a flamethrower and it stands out so bad that I purposely avoid using them. I'm hoping for a future patch that will address these issues. :\

I'm right with you on the fog issue. It doesn't seem worse at all. In fact, I think there's actually more fog in this version if anything, with the exception of a few cutscenes.

I'm currently playing through SH2, and... man, no, there's definitely still fog. Most notable has probably been sound issues for me. I didn't realize it until a few minutes in, but sometimes the sound for James' gasping for air is pitched incredibly low. I actually thought it was a monster or part of the ambient sound at first, until I listened and realized it was matched up with his gasping animations.

Some oddities so far, and not comforting being only... oh, thirty minutes in, but overall it still seems to look pretty good. The CG scenes seem... blurry? It's kind of disorienting really, and it's hard to define, but everything feels out of focus in them, and not in a purposeful way.

Edit: That air gasping thing isn't actually a sound glitch, it's just the new recording for the new voices. It annoys me to no end. It sounds like someone sawing through wood.