So many components of the Silver Case are absolutely amazing. The dialogue and writing in general is good, the aesthetic and presentation is wonderfully executed, the characters are great and the Soundtrack is utterly fantastic. And when it comes together, especially for some of its better sequences, it's really something quite special, and the vibes throughout are wonderful. At it's best, the silver case is creepy and offbeat and covers a broad scope of topics with interesting ideas and "what ifs", and its incredibly compelling.
The thing that prevents it achieving greatness though, for my money, is the pacing and gameplay segments. The gameplay segments are just flat out shit. They control badly, and mostly consist of you being stopped every single step you take to hear something unneccessary. I get Suda is a dude that loves his downtime and slowing things to a crawl to allow time for reflection and shit, but in the silver case it just breeds frustration for me, in scenes that could be the game at it's best. Lifecut should be an amazing chapter full of revelations and things paying off, but instead it's lumbered with the worst gameplay sections in the entire game and in general, things just taking too long.
The Placebo chapters I also find pretty weak. Im almost Glad that I missed them entirely until case 3 of transmitter because Placebo 1 in particular is absolute misery. They do help clear the fog of the transmitter chapters but they're so unreasonably long and the gameplay sections are so ludicrously nothing that I found it hard not to lose attention attention at times.
All in all TSC is really not much longer than No More Heroes or even Travis Strikes Again, and whilst it does cram more in that time it fails to really be as impactful to me as either of those games whilst also feeling about twice as long as it really is.
But I do think it's a good game. The vibes carry it super hard, as do a couple of the characters and the superb presentation, and it's best chapters and moments are utterly exceptional. Its just, in a sense, a game that almost feels like less than the sum of it's parts at the end of the day for me, which is a real shame.
Also, brb gonna try telling people "i've killed my past" as an excuse for not giving them back the 50,000 yen I owe them.
The thing that prevents it achieving greatness though, for my money, is the pacing and gameplay segments. The gameplay segments are just flat out shit. They control badly, and mostly consist of you being stopped every single step you take to hear something unneccessary. I get Suda is a dude that loves his downtime and slowing things to a crawl to allow time for reflection and shit, but in the silver case it just breeds frustration for me, in scenes that could be the game at it's best. Lifecut should be an amazing chapter full of revelations and things paying off, but instead it's lumbered with the worst gameplay sections in the entire game and in general, things just taking too long.
The Placebo chapters I also find pretty weak. Im almost Glad that I missed them entirely until case 3 of transmitter because Placebo 1 in particular is absolute misery. They do help clear the fog of the transmitter chapters but they're so unreasonably long and the gameplay sections are so ludicrously nothing that I found it hard not to lose attention attention at times.
All in all TSC is really not much longer than No More Heroes or even Travis Strikes Again, and whilst it does cram more in that time it fails to really be as impactful to me as either of those games whilst also feeling about twice as long as it really is.
But I do think it's a good game. The vibes carry it super hard, as do a couple of the characters and the superb presentation, and it's best chapters and moments are utterly exceptional. Its just, in a sense, a game that almost feels like less than the sum of it's parts at the end of the day for me, which is a real shame.
Also, brb gonna try telling people "i've killed my past" as an excuse for not giving them back the 50,000 yen I owe them.