I recently played through the original Silent Hill 2 on the PS2 for the first time, and enjoyed my time with it. The apartments were genuinely terrifying for me at times, though the game's difficulty takes a steep nosedive soon after clearing the hospital, with the game just showering you with health and ammo (I was playing on normal). I didn't mind though, as what kept me going was to find out what was inside the next room and the ending of the story.

The endgame of Silent Hill 2 (which I consider to start when James starts watching the tape) was going really well, right up until the point where Maria (or Mary) transforms into a demon shackled to a hospital bed and begins to fly around, attacking you with tentacles. To me, this is the equivalent of the final boss in Bioshock; the game just trips and falls flat on it's face, ditching any sort of subtlety or tension that it previously had. I honestly could not help laughing when it occurred. I know that Silent Hill 2 is a beloved game, but I just want to know if anyone else is with me on this.

That incarnation of Mary/Maria is the ultimate manifestation of James's sense of guilt attempting to destroy him. And while she may not be as iconic as Pyramid Head (really not many things about Silent Hill in general are) defeating her is a key point to James's story. In that sense, I take her very seriously.

It's not the game's finest moment, but it's not bad or laughable in any sense either. It's important, and the interactions/dialogue before and after the fight itself are extremely impactful, the battle itself is just kind of lame. But that's par for the course with this series, right?

You could say that the visual design of the boss leaves something to be desired, possibly in terms of scale and threat, but I can't really think of any other kind of "monster" that would have been as succinct and appropriate in terms of ending James's arc; at that point Pyramid Head is already out of the picture.

In contrast, I think Silent Hill 3's final boss is a feat. Similarly, and as expected, it's vital in closing Heather's arc, but the sense of scale, horror, and threat is certainly more pronounced and appreciable. That's a terrifying monster top to bottom, the musical accompaniment is both unnerving, rousing, and memorable, and the fight is about as fun as you can hope for with a game as mechanically clunky as those in the SH series tend to be.

The design of Silent Hill's beasties and bosses have always been inconsistent to me. Some truly amazing ones, and some truly awful ones.

Maria was pretty decent from what I remember, but it's been a while.

Here's a video of the final boss, for those that need a refresher. This is the Maria version of the final encounter, but the Mary encounter isn't any different in terms of the monstrous form:

Seemed alright.

This reminds me of the climax of the Silent Hill movie, which should've been horrifying but the whole theater was dying of laughter.

@hailinel: Yep, still looks alright to me. Not my favorite SH design, though.

But man, woof, the graphics did not age well on that part of the game. It's not a very pretty game period (the indoor shadow effects still look great, however), but that looks bad even in relation to the rest of it. What a dull environment to end such a great game.

I do understand that aspect of it, I really do. Just the tone of events seem not that consistent to me; Here's a tape, here's James killing Mary with a great blurring affect that leaves a lot to the imagination, here's the Otherworld again, the hotel is flooded, here's Angela ascending up a staircase that is on fire, here is this quiet moment as you approach Mary/Maria on the roof, here's this video game boss fight, make sure to mash to break out of the tentacles!

I wasn't laughing because I found it funny. I laughed because it came so far out of left field for me.

@adequatelyprepared: After watching the video to refresh my memory, it's pretty obvious it's a fight only included for the sake of having a boss fight. Combat isn't the draw of these games, but hey, that's how it's got to be, right?

At the risk of bringing to mind the Mass Effect "too videogamey" thing, there are plenty of games that don't really need the final encounter with the antagonistic force to be a proper in-game battle. Silent Hill 2 probably would have been better off with (or at least wouldn't have suffered from) the last boss battle being the Pyramid Heads. If your bottom line is "it's jarringly silly," I'm inclined to agree.

I remember laughing.

My mind was pretty fully gripped at that point by the realization of what James had done, why and what that realization was doing to him. That final battle does pale in comparison to the "pyramid head" fight just before, but the hallway dialogue before the final encounter really established, in my mind, how important it was for James to find closure. The battle itself is pretty typical but that final killing blow, when she lies there, helpless and pleading, finalizes that James accepts killing her, that he decided it was the right thing to do, and that he would do it again (this is assuming it is actually the representation of Mary you are fighting). The end game message from Mary where she confesses her regret and desire for James to be happy solidifies that she also agrees with his actions.

If you reduce it to "A lady in a bed floating around. Shoot until cutscene plays." it is pretty weak, but for what i got out of the story and the characters, along with the variable story explanation afterwards, it's one of my favorite game endings ever.