this game is cool as hell. it is also weird as hell. narratively it is extremely obtuse and a tad too densely packed with ideas that confuse the hell out of me, but by god is it engaging nontheless. the central mystery and narrative and how the information is slowly revealed to the player is unmatched, and the lain-like prescience of suda51 to come up with a chapter like kamuidrome is incredible. the game feels like it goes crazy. playing it kind of sucks, but it just would not be as special if the controls werent unintuitive. characters are incredibly memorable and this has to have one of the best, most immersive uses of a player character in history. the style of high quality pictures interspersed with low quality, grainy videos throughout make for a very singular experience. the soundtrack is neat. placebo is a bit of a slog, but makes up for it by being much more grounded compared to the utter insanity of transmitter. the more clear-cut narrative moments are impactful as hell too. i think i may be in love witth suda51

During the 90s, Japan had one of the most interesting outputs in its pop culture. The country was going through the shitter, the bubble had burst and the economy was falling down the drain, many elders resenting modernization, as they saw it as the harbinger of ruin for the traditional values of the nation, and many young people blaming the so-called baby-boomers for causing the economy to, inevitably, shift this way. Technology, Japan vanguard’s industry and pride and joy for many years, was now a symbol of a world hurrying towards its demise; authors across many media between Kurosawa Kyoshi, Okazaki Kyoko, Oshii Mamoru and so on, all lived through this period on a wave of pessimism and skepticism toward the future. Humanity was going to end, and humanity was to blame for it.

Enter stage left Suda Goichi, dropping The Silver Case just at the turn of the century, in the year 1999, as the ultimate side-note of this societal decline. The world of the Silver Case is bleak, unsettling, sad, weird, oftentimes the characters will talk and make little sense to each other between slurs, asides and weird mental lapses (the subpar translation not really helping with this one), and the whole cast seems completely lost rationalizing what’s going on.
The plot revolves around a murder case (plus several other investigations) that slowly unravels into a much more complex web of intrigues and twists, so convoluted that, whenever a character appears to know exactly what has happened and why, it sounds almost farcical. Everyone simultaneously understands and ignores what is actually going on at all times, the mood is made of pure confusion and people sounding absolutely sure of what they are talking about, whilst to the players is conveyed the feeling that nothing ever makes sense. It really oozes the confounded angst of living through a decade of dark age and social isolation. The cast ultimately doesn’t matter, they might share cute, poignant and touching vignettes between them but there is no singular central character that ever shows any emotion or growth; most of them are passive actors in a play that has to be acted for the sake of the world having to keep turning around.
Young people find solace in their shared loneliness and turn to the internet to feel accepted and comforted while the elderly fight to handle the strings of a wooden puppet they once built but it’s already rotten and fallen to pieces. There is a lot to unpack in The Silver Case and how much of its despair was subsequently answered, by Suda himself, in Flower, Sun and Rain a couple of years later. If The Silver Case reads like the societal collapse of morality and reason seen in the post-apocalypse of Eden: It’s an Endless World, then Flower, Sun and Rain is the peaceful twilight where life matters in the here and now of the post-apocalypse in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.

Kill the past, it will never make much sense the more you think about it, once you acknowledge it it’s already time to move on.

Crime in the new millenium

My very first look into Suda51's works.

What a ride. More than a game I'd say it's an experience even if the term is a bit overdone by now. Even if I'm not that big into VNs, this game made fan of the genre and Suda51's work in general.

It's the style, the writting and some of the characters that kept me playing from start to end. Even if the game starts slow in the first three chapters, it quickly picks up the pace by the third and by the fourth is just pure insanity after another.

Not to mention is not only text based with some images and that's it, game often changes how it tells the story. Can be through animated videos or real life videos, or even CGI. Text boxes and images are deformed depending on the situation and it works incredibly well, making scenes dynamic. Though, you'll have to use your imagination to fill blank space more often that not since while you are playing, no one will be actually presented on screen. On the 3D sections I mean.

The story was really convoluted and only starts to making some sense by the end. Strangely enough it has some similarities with Metal Gear Solid 2 main storyline, regarding the flow of information, the internet and how it can shape the society. Even if it doesn't go very deep with those themes, I think it was a worth first attempt by the writting and scenario team, specially knowing this game was made before the new millenium.

Gameplay wise is, there. Can be somewhat tedious to control and hard to grasp as first, hell it was for me since I was playing on keyboard. It really feels like a old game, where actions are totally separated from context. An unecessary extra step or two is for the most part always requiered to get where you want to go. For the most part you'll following orders or a set path and exploration is kept at a minimal.

I don't know. But I do really like this game overall. Can´t state enough but the writting feels so natural, specially the relationship between Sumio and Tetsu and how Sumio changes overtime while Tetsu tries it's best to keep him on track. Good stuff.

So in short. A remaster of a 1999 game, localized to english in the best way possible. Great characters, great writting, comfy music and a good sense of style. I'm definitely going to check Suda51's other works, in the future.

one day I will write a proper essay and/or make a feature-length youtube video on my favourite video game but for now here's some notes:

- I have never played a game that so effortlessly deconstructs it's own medium while marrying gameplay and story and themes until this game

- Neoliberalism + the police state + the information/digital age on blast

- all of tokio's segments hit harder in post-covid 2023

- kaumi is the demon of the info age, the human manifestation of the violence of the state

- a story about power and where it lays

- if we take neoliberalism to be the capitalism of "choice" in that it exploits freedom, then mechanically and thematically, the silver case is a direct confrontation of the dichotomy between freedom and power. we can take video games to be the arch artform of the neoliberal era, a form that gives the audience the chance, the freedom to make choices, the freedom to create their own narratives in the worlds laid before them. Visual novels/Japanese adventure games generally offer the player different kinds of narrative choices to affect the world laid before, the silver case actively pushes against this. in both scenarios, "transmitter" and "placebo", we play as two characters not in control of their own narratives, powerless to affect any change. the most amount of choice we have mechanically is to walk around a 3d environment and follow, for the most part, very rigid instructions. as we learn towards the end of the game, these characters' narratives have been affected before the we even pressed start. when we play a videogame, the choice given to us is obviously an illusion, boundaries always programmed in, our freedom is always limited despite many times being actively sold to us by PR as enticing freedoms. a competiton of freedoms.

- when we explore the 3d environments, no persons exist within them, simply objective markers. within the environments produced by the state + the financial markets + land developers we are alienated to the other occupants, only the images of a person is presented to us.

- the music bangs

- the loud typing sounds make us constantly aware of 1. the primary mode of communication in the digital age 2. the often overwhelming, sometimes annoying abundance of information in our age 3. that someone (suda5, masahi ooka and sako kato) has wrote this all out for us to engage with, likely on a keyboard

- much of the tediousness is wholly intentional, integrated with game's themes of information abundance and the bureaucracy of the state as a form of power. but it also has the effect of lulling the player into it's world, repetition can be a powerful sedative to those willing to give in. it's Tarkovsky-esque lol

- just like sick UI/UX design how can you not love it pal
(more maybe later, need to play the 25th ward now)

I am so conflicted. Aesthetically, this game is absolutely genius. There is no arguing that. The writing in several places was fantastic and so refreshingly human, but honestly in others, it felt... hard to grasp? From kamuidrone on, the story made perfect sense to me in what it was trying to do, but artistically, I really can't think what Suda was going for in the early chapters. The same also applies moreso to the placebo campaign. The gameplay segments are almost entirely tedious, the text scroll sound is grating and style over substance seems to be the winning philosophy... but the game also stunned me at moments, had me pause to admire the visual diversity and craftsmanship and possibly broke my writers block.

The Silver Case, ultimately, begs the player to be critical. To be critical of government, police, and most importantly of one's self. What does it mean to commit a crime, when the governments that define "crime" are themselves criminal? Since completing this game, I've been constantly thinking about the case Lifecut. About how the masks of the Heinous Crimes Unit slowly slip away, revealing that despite their apparent individuality, they are nothing but pawns to be used for the higher powers surrounding the story. They side with the law, and die for it. They die to protect the truth of their master's misdeeds, and commit criminal acts without being labeled "criminal". It's only by embracing that which is deemed "wrong" by society that one is able to kill their past.

The Silver Case lauds individuality, but also depicts how dire the need for community is in a world shaped by the Internet. Tokio Morishima starts his half of the game as a person who is largely squandering his potential to be great. He sits in his shabby apartment, checking his email, chain smoking and talking to his turtle. It is only through his connections with Erika and the bartender at Jack Hammer that he is able to reach his true potential. He transforms from a slimy tabloid reporter into an almost sagely presence in Lifecut. He rejects the Internet, and finds what really matters in the real world.

It’s really hard to wrap my head around the insane amount of themes and images invoked in this game. This game has my utmost recommendation to anyone with the patience to keep up with a visual novel created in 1999.

“I feel weird. Someone died in my building, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear the sound, I wasn’t told by someone else living here: I first knew of it via my computer. It doesn’t feel real.”

- Tokio Morishima, Hana

+Super cool aesthetic, this game could be about literally nothing and it would still be one of the most visually memorable experiences in gaming.

+Really interesting period piece about the internet age during it's dawn that still rings true to this day on how we perceive crime and the police in modern times, up there with Serial Experiments Lain with stories about the dawn of the digital era that predicted the future.

= Though I liked a few characters in the cast, remembering their names when all I had was half a second to see a pixelized, opaque lettering of their names made the story a lot harder to follow than it had any right to be for the sake of doing something different, this game is the biggest argument for all text heavy games needing a backlog.

-You could not pay me to give a fuck about this gameplay, I honestly feel like this should have been a visual novel instead because every instance of interactivity feels like an absolute nuisance, something as basic as turning around, walking somewhere or having a scene transition could take as long as 15 seconds. The puzzles having an insta-solving button should tell you how much of an afterthought they are.

-The final chapter in particular is filled with padding thinly disguised as suspense and whoever thought it was a good idea to walk through 10 towers individually to search for a sentence's worth of text can eat the pinkest part of my asshole. And that's not counting the placebo chapters which are just some guy reading emails about the case you just played and spoon-feeding you exposition emails in case you were sucking on your thumb instead of reading the chapter you were playing, all of that culminates in a game with a cool as fuck beginning and ending, but with a very dragged out middle.

While my complains are more wordy than the positives I feel like other reviews have said enough about the positives of the game so it's only fair I highlight the more problematic sides of The Silver Case. I've heard Flower Sun and Rain and The 25th ward get better on that regard so I'm looking forward to finally recognizing Suda51 as the auteur he is.

lend me 50,000 yen

aesthetically very reminiscent of jrpgs of its contemporary from the late 90s with a cool as fxck aesthetic ala racing lagoon. chapter select is depicted as dj deck cant get any cooler than that. the way the assets are put together throughout the vn with the portraits of the characters, backgrounds, and dialogue placed/layered throughout the screen gives off the feeling of a real time evidence board mixed with surveillance recordings; fitting for a story about solving crimes. plot being broken up by cases with an accompanying evidence report chapter is a good way for the story to maintain mystery while also delivering just enough information so the player isn't too lost. it is almost like the player themselves is also a detective trying to figure it all out. it got to the point where i became one of the characters with how seamless i would wake up and log on to the computer to read my emails and feed my pet turtle. dialogue got me actually laughing out loud and the ost is effective. however, its age shows with how clunky the controls were during the exploration and puzzle bits which took a bit to get used to but became second nature eventually. i welcomed how slow the game was sometimes but i do understand that it is not for everybody. imperfect game but the imperfect can be considered perfect by virtue of its imperfection (lol) so thank you Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. recommend if u wanna be cool tho cuz only cool people played this game

Too much to say about this one, really, which usually means that it will end up becoming one of my favorite things ever a couple of years from now.

All the style it has - and if there is something that nobody can deny is that this game has style - serves its themes perfectly.

Like a slow cinema police procedural, the amount of thematical twists this manages to pull off is astonishing, particularly when you consider the "gameplay" and how it lulls you a certain flow, giving you agency as quickly as it takes it away from you. You can row, but there's only a single path that river can take.

Masahi Ooka is a genius from writing something so well structured as Placebo.

Now to dust off the trusty DSi with my R4 card to finally understand what the fuck was going on 13 years ago when I triedplaying Flower, Sun and Rain and turned if off after 1 hour.