The Best Mods to Increase Performance in Silent Hill 2 Remake
In this article, we’ll take a look at the two best mods to boost performance and add a few extra features to Silent Hill 2 Remake on PC. These mods not only enhance gameplay but also make the game more visually appealing while managing to improve performance across the board. The stuff that the game developers should have included by default.
The Best Mods to Increase Performance in Silent Hill 2 Remake
All-in-One Visual & Performance Fix This all-in-one fix is a highly recommended mod for Silent Hill 2 Remake. It offers a bucket load of performance and visual improvements, fixing things like stuttering, particle trails, fog noise, and reflections. The best part is that it actually gives decent results on low and mid-range PCs as well.
What it Fixes and Improves:
- Fixes stuttering and frame spikes: The mod optimizes various elements like volumetric fog (a major source of frame time instability) and enables FSR3 Frame Interpolation, significantly reducing hitching and smoothing out gameplay.
- Visual enhancements: This includes improvements to James' oily hair, reflections, and various graphic elements like anisotropic filtering and lumen lighting.
- Ray Tracing adjustments: Forces Ray Reconstruction for DLSS, which helps enhance lighting and reflections, all while stabilizing frame times.
- Screen stability: The mod includes fixes for screen strobing issues in the vanilla game, caused by DirectX Flip frame presentation, and disables Chroma64 DLL (related to Razer hardware), which is known to cause stuttering.
- Faster disk streaming: By enabling DirectX 12 PSO disk cache, the game loads faster and reduces the hitching caused by slow data streaming.
- Increased CPU memory: The mod raises temporary CPU memory from 50MB to 2048MB, giving your system more room to process data, which improves overall performance.
- Reduced fog jitter noise: By adjusting the fog history weight, it reduces fog-related jittering that can cause visual distractions during gameplay.
- Texture and shadow optimizations: The mod increases texture and shadow fade time, preventing annoying pop-ins and shadow-related hitches.
- Improved hair rendering: By increasing MSAA (Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing), the mod reduces pixelation in hair and other detailed textures.
How to Install (Two Methods)
- Download the mod and unpack it into your \SILENT HILL 2 folder.
- (Optional) Copy the provided Engine.ini to %LocalAppData%\SilentHill2\Saved\Config\Windows to customize settings like motion blur and DLSS presets.
- If your monitor does not support VRR, force VSync via your GPU control panel to prevent screen tearing.
Alternatively: Just install Vortext Mods then choose the Vortex download option. I generally use this method as it saves a lot of fooling around. It's also really good if you're new to modding games.
The Second Mod
Cutscene Improvements is a mod designed to fix several visual issues in Silent Hill 2 Remake's cutscenes, specifically those related to aspect ratios and framerate caps. The remake’s cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS and feature black bars on anything other than 16:9 resolutions, which sucks for anyone using ultrawide monitors.
- Black bars in cutscenes: Removes the black bars when using resolutions other than 16:9, ensuring that ultrawide monitor users get an immersive fullscreen experience.
- Unlocks the FPS: Lifts the 30 FPS cap on cutscenes, allowing them to run at higher frame rates. While some animations will still remain at 30 FPS due to game engine limitations, this mod greatly improves visual fluidity, particularly on modern displays.
- Flicker and ghosting fix: For those using OLED screens or VRR-enabled monitors, this mod fixes inverse ghosting and flickering caused by the low framerates in the base game.
How to Install:
- Download and unpack the mod into the \SHProto\Binaries\Win64 folder inside your game directory.
- To uninstall, simply delete or move the files from that directory.
Note: Unfortunately this mod doesn't have any option to use it with Vortex, so you'll need to use the manual installation method.
Important things to Remember when using Mods
Remember that when you are using mods it is quite possible for future game updates to break them. So if Silent Hill 2 Remake updates some of the mods you're using might break. That said, modders are usually pretty quick to fix their mods, so just check if any new updates have been released for your mods.