"i understood! i understood!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a red slider turtle.

TSC comes up as a really cool cyberpunk-y hardboiled story (cyberboiled?) about the evils of goverment and the messianic powers of the blooming internet in the, then thought, wild turn of the millenium. The cigarette smoke fills the air on this game just as it does on my room right now, as I write this.
Divided in two parts, Transmitter follows the work of the Heinous Crimes Unit, with bothcharacters and the player have to reconcile with the fact they are being functional to a conspiracy aimed to maintain the people in power forever. Placebo, on the other hand, fittingly explores the work of a freelance journalist and his interactions with said conspiracy and the consequences that come with that.
On a more deep level, I believe the themes of killing the past revolve around the idea of letting go of the burdens one contracts along the walk of life. Characters constantly have to face have to face moments where they have to put their past to rest, and even the game's narrative does this, sometimes refusing to elaborate on previous plotlines. Although I don't fully agree with the idea of letting the past rest, which in this particular [silver] case takes more of a "shoot the dog laying" rather than letting it sleep, I do admire the way Suda allows the burdens of yesterday to shoot him in the back if it allows him to face tomorrow.
Overall, it's a really cool package that asks you to vibe with it rather than understand it, something that I do think is repeated in most of the works of Grasshopper.

Reviewed on May 17, 2022


3 Comments


1 year ago

ok but smoking is bad

1 year ago

It builds character

1 year ago

Lets smoke weed (ganja) legally together.