This is the return of the long dormant franchise we’ve been waiting to see more of? This is the new era of Silent Hill? God, I had my reservations about Konami’s new push into bringing back the franchise, but there was an inkling of hope they’d get it right, at least somewhat. Consider those hopes dashed now, all thanks to this poor excuse of a web-series with an iterative monetization model that takes from, of all fucking games, Fortnite. Pay up, get the founder pass, and as episodes drop you’ll get the opportunity to paste a, um… “It’s Trauma!” sticker on the post board. Thank you Konami, you never fail to impress with the new lows you’re willing to go. Having Bloober Team take the reigns was questionable enough but SH2R has got to be their Hail Mary. Everything is riding on that game and if it’s anything less than GREAT you done fucked it up. Good luck!

I've just completed the first full week of content for this currently ongoing, live community experience that will reportedly take place over the next 6 months.

I think we can all agree that out everything that was announced as part of Konami's revival of the Silent Hill property, Ascension was among the most intriguing. Largely because none of us really knew for certain what it was supposed to be. Some kind of online Telltale-esque adventure series? A semi-interactive streaming TV show? It was a mystery even right up till the very day it released, leading to quite a confusing and frustrating launch for many (myself included) as they tried to figure out the basics of how they were expected to use the bloody app. A process the little tutorial video that greeted everyone sadly did not help much with. Looking back, I highly doubt a single person, no matter how skeptical, expected a final product so poor that it would legitimately and without exaggeration beat out the likes of Daedelic Entertainment's Gollum and Skull Island: Rise of Kong as the worst gaming had to offer in 2023, but that's exactly what we've received.

Essentially, the best way to describe Ascension is as a gradually unfolding, player-driven cinematic narrative that presents frequent opportunities for the audience to influence where the tale will go in the future via decision polls featuring a trio of options the viewer can vote on. Sounds kind of cool and compelling, right? Unfortunately, there are several things wrong with developer Genvid's take on this concept that completely annihilates any sense of fulfillment one could have gotten from it. Shockingly, the critical issue you'll hear mentioned the ​least by the swarm of angry participants is just how bad the writing is. Dialogue is terrible, conversations are unnatural as a whole, and the plot (which newcomers can watch prior episodes of at any point in order to catch up) literally begins right in the middle of a pair of tragic events with no context as to who the people involved are, what the deal with their respective cults and families is, or why we should care in the slightest. Naturally, this creates a big problem when it comes to casting our ballet in determining the ultimate fates of the various protagonists. Each choice is clearly marked to show that if chosen will lead those affected down a path to either suffering, damnation, or redemption, which not only removes the faintest shred of moral ambiguity, but without the aforementioned reasons to be invested it's impossible to give a single, solitary crap how they'll end up, defeating the entire point of this whole mess!

The issue its detractors DO complain about though is the monetization, and yes, it's as bad as you've probably heard. You see, rather than tallying the results of the voting periods by the simple and fair method of seeing which outcome the majority of individuals picked, they are instead determined by whichever one had the most "influence points," an in-game currency you can buy with IRL cash, poured into it. I will say that Genvid has provided means for players who understandably don't want to open up their wallets to grind for this necessary "IP" in the form of repeatable minigames, alongside daily and weekly goals. Some of which, such as lockbox and codebreaker, are genuinely fun and feel right at home in the Silent Hill franchise (others are of the generic match-3 or more variety). They even updated it recently so that those of us committing to the strictly free route have access to a larger selection of these optional diversions. Unfortunately, the bulk of content on this front and their subsequent rewards are sadly locked behind the $20 season pass, and it's just easier in general to amass a greater amount of this virtual wealth through using your real-world money on the direct microtransactions. Something the devs lied in an interview about and said wouldn't be possible by the way. So people who don't pay will always be less influential in the decision-making portion of the package than those do. Not to mention they won't ever have an opportunity to get their hands on a special "Golden Moment" as they are solely reserved for the biggest spenders. An idea that vaguely, if not blatantly reeks of NFT-esque scumminess.

Buying outcomes isn't the only use for accumulated IP, however. It can also be redeemed for tickets that can win your customizable avatar, that otherwise serves no purpose, a role in an upcoming scene. This would be a more enticing prospect if the assortment of interchangeable body features and clothing weren't so meager, causing the user-created characters to appear wildly out of place next to the regular cast. You will get the occasional freebie thrown out by the randomized reward system to help fill your wardrobe, but if you truly want to flesh out your collection of outfits and hairstyles to hopefully make an OC who doesn't look too stupid onscreen then you'll have to spring for the season pass and acquire the greater variety of appealing cosmetics contained within. Yet another ploy to try and separate you from your hard-earned dollarydoos...

Four paragraphs already and I haven't even got to the technical problems. The biggest motivation for watching the streams live, outside of the amusingly desperate (yet nonetheless boring) pre- and post-shows attempts to build hype and do some damage control that bafflingly drone on for longer than the actual 5 to 10-minute episodes themselves, is the multiplayer quick-time gameplay sequences. Your inputs in these non-canon segments don't have any effect on the regularly reused animated action running in the background, but the collective success or failure of everybody involved does impact the level of hope for whatever lead is featured that night. An element you'll want to stay on top of, as apparently it will be a factor in whether or not they ultimately survive this nonsense. Therefore, it's frustrating when these moments straight-up don't function properly. My first chance getting to play one of these was marred by the fact that despite the community's reported success, ol' boy Karl's hopefulness decreased anyways. Ain't that some ish? Had another time where nothing to interact with was ever displayed onscreen. Then there's the continuous glitch where the server fails to register/save how you've invested your influence points and resets things like it never happened, and the frequent annoyance of having to usually close and reopen the app in order to get the stream to work in full-screen mode.

I must also take a second to bemoan the loss of the public chat, a sorely missed source of stupid hilarity. It got shutdown almost immediately after being flooded with utter ridiculousness and totally justifiable ​bashing of the experience, not even living to see the second showing if I recall correctly. I'm fully convinced that the latter of the two is the sole reason it still hasn't been brought back as of this writing. While the ability to use text may be gone possibly forever(?), that hasn't stopped trolls from spamming the feed with incessant emojis and the other similar items remaining at their disposal . Scrolling through an absolute wall of the "shady" and "no way" stickers whenever members of the development team draw the short straw and have to act as spokespeople to and attempt appeasing the disappointed masses is always funny.

To summarize, this is a buggy, money-grubbing disaster where the story that's supposed to serve as the driving force is so poorly told that it doesn't make sense to the degree of borderline incoherency, and the scariest thing about it is how it tries to dig around in your pockets and couch cushions for loose change. It may also confirm my biggest suspicion/fear upon seeing projects such as Silent Hill f that Konami is going to be slapping the iconic horror juggernaut's name on projects with no real connection to its established lore, as outside of a small theory I've found referenced in a few places it's unclear how this connects to the larger fiction of the series, if at all. We haven't even really seen much of the surprisingly fittingly designed monsters outside of the QTEs yet. I will admit, we are currently still very early on in the event's projected lifespan and as I plan to tough it out until the conclusion, should circumstances improve and shift my opinion for the better or there be updates worth talking about I will write a follow-up piece with a new score to reflect this. Until that happens (and it probably won't) consider this my definitive review, because as much as the fanbase loves to complain about Homecoming, Book of Memories, the pachinko machines, and Bloober Team being handed the reigns of the SH 2 remake Ascension is unequivocally the worst thing to happen to the Silent Hill franchise to date.

1/10

Being a Silent Hill fan IS our Silent Hill.

I am still in shock that this is the first formal return of the franchise in over a decade. Even without the predatory monetization and crappy aspects of the UI, the story and pacing are a mess. If anything it will serve as an experiment on how stuff like this is an inherently bad idea. I would have preferred this game in a Telltale episodic format.

Check out my initial impressions:
https://youtu.be/gSythbFhMGs?si=LIKz1e_XjCUzLD2F

An upsetting start for Konami’s quantity-over-quality approach to their Silent Hill revival.

I won’t reiterate what’s already been said about the intrusive monetisation system, mind-numbing ‘puzzles’ and choppy animation. I will say the idea of a community based Telltale experience can work on other IP - The Walking Dead is kind-of all about group decisions leading to drastic consequences - but the true essence of Silent Hill is loneliness and isolation.

Granted, PT was, in some ways, community driven in its obtuse puzzles, but the experience was undoubtedly best played alone in the dark. Unlike PT, Ascension is simply not scary, at least in the way we want it to be! It is instead riddled with narrative cliches, dull characters and ineptly written dialogue. That said, even the best Silent Hill games overcome some of these aspects through animation alone. Take the limited expressions of James or Angela from SH2 for instance: so much of the emotion behind their scenes are conveyed through choice of character movement, camera angles and editing. Sure, Ascension has the daunting task of churning out 16 weeks (?!) worth of content and won’t have Kojima’s budget or tools for facial animation, but there are no excuses behind the consistently uninspired direction where most characters just stand and deliver clunky lines at a flat camera angle.

I could understand something like this going fine and maybe even unnoticed alongside the release of both the SH2 Remake and the movie, but starting the revival of a decade-dormant franchise with Silent Hill: Ascension casts a looming shadow of uncertainty over releases to come. We can only hope the worst is behind us.