How to Silent Hill 2 (2024): Melee E. Dombrowski

by Rian

Hopefully using his last name instead of his first name helped with the spoiler tags. If you want to find out who the boss is for yourself now is the chance to avert thine eyes. Silent Hill 2 came out in 2001, and there are simply too many medias influenced by the legend itself, so I was one of those people who knew about the boss beforehand without playing the original.

The boss in question is Eddie Dombrowski. The video starts at where I realized I would be out of ammunitions before I can take down the boss with guns, and starts attacking with the pipe at 0:40. There are two problems with his boss fight: 1. the remake wanted to build more robust combat system that turned out to be similar to Homecoming than anything else, 2. the boss arena and the areas leading up to the arena are filled with bullet sponge puzzles. I didn’t know anything about the boss fight itself, only that Eddie will turn against James at one point, so when I was thrown into the freezer with only a health drink as a handout, I was bamboozled.

And this is why I would rather call my playthrough only a proof of concept. I suspect it is possible to defeat Eddie with only the melee weapon, just incredibly impractical. The AI tactically manages distance, either attacking from range in the darkness, or sneaking up to melee attack or parry. Both form of attacks deal rather heavy damage, and lack of lock-on coupled with obstacles —the meat bags— make the chance of landing the melee attack against Eddie rather slim, not to mention how fast he is.

The point I am trying to make is that it is not impossible to defeat Eddie without guns. It is technically not a “soft lock” per-se. It’s simply the question of convention, where the boss fight is clearly designed for gun fights, but the game doesn’t have the modern hand holding mechanics to enable it. Soon as I ran out of ammunitions, I was wondering if I should wait until the game will spawn in the ammunitions in the dark corner of the room, or just go all-in with the pipe as a last resort. Apparently the game didn’t think any sane players would do this either, because in the following cinematic, Eddie is definitely shot in the chest, not his skull bashed in with a pipe. No doubt more seasoned player will be able to pull it off either way; dodge all the incoming fire, land the hits without misses, then swiftly dodge again from Eddie’s counter attacks.