This town has been taken over, too. By countless, faceless ghosts. ▋
The Silver Case at its surface is a story of what can happen when you try to kill your past. Can you kill the past? Play the games and find out, but it is an indisputable fact that attempting to do so will lead you into strange directions, which is what lies beneath the surface. More likely than not your past will end up changing you. Consumed by the past. Consumed by the darkness. This is why it has to be killed, or else it kills you.
The 25th Ward is a twist in perspectives of how the past is tackled by different people. Some face it head on, some have to find it, some are so consumed by it that they are unaware of what it truly is. These are Matchmaker, Placebo, and Correctness respectively (at least that’s how i interpreted it). Just like the original game, all of the storylines bounce off one another while still filling in each other’s story gaps in a focused on-the-edge-of-your-seat way.
I’m gonna be real with y’all I have almost no fucking idea what to write next. I broke up my play sessions to give myself time to absorb the story. I spent two days after finishing it contemplating what the hell I was even going to write, and now I’m here. Sitting alone in my living room listening to Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies in somber over a video game. I still don’t know what to say. Video games have impacted me heavily in the past but none as strangely and uniquely as the Kill the Past series so far. The 25th Ward is the perfect embodiment of Suda’s expression in the industry and how far he can go. A complexity of ideas and themes intertwined to articulate, at its core, human ideologies. It’s all paced so well that when I reached the end I thought, “That’s the end?” but not necessarily in a negative way at all. Every point the game strove to get across was proven effectively, I was just a bit sad to see one of my favorite video game stories come to a close. I wanted more because it was so amazing. Admittedly I also wanted more time to figure out what the fuck had happened for the last 13~ hours lol. I wish I could go more in depth but if I did I would probably be spouting nonsense regarding spoilers and whatnot.
What I CAN explain though is the expertly arranged presentation and soundtrack. The boxed-in contemporary style of the original game is modernized and accentuated to an extreme. This could possibly be my favorite visual style of any video game. Background elements are now more distinctly interesting and support the themes of the current chapter even better. The color palettes used are also a lot more colorful which I’m absolutely down for. The artists for each of the storylines did spectacularly; I especially love the art style used for Correctness with its black and white pastel tones accompanied by infrequent splashes of color to make everything pop. Everything is just a marvel to look at. The typewriter sound is unchanged just the way I like it. I find it to be an insanely satisfying sound that’s just the cherry on top of everything else the game has to offer. The soundtrack is exactly what I love in electronic music and it's incredibly fitting. Love beat bumpin’ shit like the classic Metropolitan Edge and groovy Galaxy Glitch Groove by Akira Yamaoka of Silent Hill fame, while also vibing hard with Sandalwood and DRIFT. Every track hits me in the feels in incomparable ways. All of this is in tandem with one another becomes, what I feel to be, an unparalleled artistic composition in gaming.
The 25th Ward: The Silver Case is a wildly intense game that will continue to float around my brain for a long time. If you couldn’t tell already, this is everything I loved about the original Silver case and more. There’s honestly nothing I would change about it. Every character is identifiable and the writing stays consistently engaging throughout. Love Jabroni, love Tokio (as usual), love Osato (he’s a little bit of a quirked up white boy). This is a video game for me. It doesn’t conform to industry standards and does its own thing in an astounding manner.
I wish a great rain would fall on this town. And that everything would melt in the rain and be washed away. To the bottom of the ocean. ▋
The Silver Case at its surface is a story of what can happen when you try to kill your past. Can you kill the past? Play the games and find out, but it is an indisputable fact that attempting to do so will lead you into strange directions, which is what lies beneath the surface. More likely than not your past will end up changing you. Consumed by the past. Consumed by the darkness. This is why it has to be killed, or else it kills you.
The 25th Ward is a twist in perspectives of how the past is tackled by different people. Some face it head on, some have to find it, some are so consumed by it that they are unaware of what it truly is. These are Matchmaker, Placebo, and Correctness respectively (at least that’s how i interpreted it). Just like the original game, all of the storylines bounce off one another while still filling in each other’s story gaps in a focused on-the-edge-of-your-seat way.
I’m gonna be real with y’all I have almost no fucking idea what to write next. I broke up my play sessions to give myself time to absorb the story. I spent two days after finishing it contemplating what the hell I was even going to write, and now I’m here. Sitting alone in my living room listening to Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies in somber over a video game. I still don’t know what to say. Video games have impacted me heavily in the past but none as strangely and uniquely as the Kill the Past series so far. The 25th Ward is the perfect embodiment of Suda’s expression in the industry and how far he can go. A complexity of ideas and themes intertwined to articulate, at its core, human ideologies. It’s all paced so well that when I reached the end I thought, “That’s the end?” but not necessarily in a negative way at all. Every point the game strove to get across was proven effectively, I was just a bit sad to see one of my favorite video game stories come to a close. I wanted more because it was so amazing. Admittedly I also wanted more time to figure out what the fuck had happened for the last 13~ hours lol. I wish I could go more in depth but if I did I would probably be spouting nonsense regarding spoilers and whatnot.
What I CAN explain though is the expertly arranged presentation and soundtrack. The boxed-in contemporary style of the original game is modernized and accentuated to an extreme. This could possibly be my favorite visual style of any video game. Background elements are now more distinctly interesting and support the themes of the current chapter even better. The color palettes used are also a lot more colorful which I’m absolutely down for. The artists for each of the storylines did spectacularly; I especially love the art style used for Correctness with its black and white pastel tones accompanied by infrequent splashes of color to make everything pop. Everything is just a marvel to look at. The typewriter sound is unchanged just the way I like it. I find it to be an insanely satisfying sound that’s just the cherry on top of everything else the game has to offer. The soundtrack is exactly what I love in electronic music and it's incredibly fitting. Love beat bumpin’ shit like the classic Metropolitan Edge and groovy Galaxy Glitch Groove by Akira Yamaoka of Silent Hill fame, while also vibing hard with Sandalwood and DRIFT. Every track hits me in the feels in incomparable ways. All of this is in tandem with one another becomes, what I feel to be, an unparalleled artistic composition in gaming.
The 25th Ward: The Silver Case is a wildly intense game that will continue to float around my brain for a long time. If you couldn’t tell already, this is everything I loved about the original Silver case and more. There’s honestly nothing I would change about it. Every character is identifiable and the writing stays consistently engaging throughout. Love Jabroni, love Tokio (as usual), love Osato (he’s a little bit of a quirked up white boy). This is a video game for me. It doesn’t conform to industry standards and does its own thing in an astounding manner.
I wish a great rain would fall on this town. And that everything would melt in the rain and be washed away. To the bottom of the ocean. ▋
17 Comments
disgusting silver creatures. get out of my sight!
Can I kill past(analysis)???
god
did you do all 100 endings?
i didn’t 😭 idk if i will i don’t have the time lol
cheat engine is a life saver i was straight up on 20x speed and just powering through it i have "60" hours on my file. only took me 3-4 hours tho (including lunch break)
what ending(s) did you end up doing tho?
what ending(s) did you end up doing tho?
i did only one lol. the one where you meet sumio in lospass. i wish i could use a cheat or some shit but i’m on console, i’ll probably just look up the true ending or something on youtube
ah that sucks. a lot of endings are really really funny and i don't feel like i wasted my time with the endings themselves. a lot of them aren't even endings, theyre just suda talking about batman canon and comedians for like 5 short lines. i would at minimum recommend doing the ending where you kill the two guys simultaneously (i think thats the right one), its basically the canon ending. sumio ending is my personal favorite tho, so.
yeah haha i love wacky shit like that, now that you mention it i’ll try to do at minimum a handful of them myself, including that one you mentioned. thx for the tips
no problem. also did you read chapter 4.5 of the original silver case? i kinda skipped it before but im reading it now (on fftranslations) and its really interesting i always liked sakura, and this one is about her right before joining hcu
i’m reading it too actually lol. it’s a really good read so far
yeah, i kinda wish i read this when case 4 was fresh on my mind tho. are you gonna play the rest of ktp (killer7, nmh1, nmh2, kurayami dance, tsa:nmh, nmh3)? suda51 had a gorilla grip on my mind for a solid month but im taking a break before shadows of the damned so i dont get burnout before nmh3 comes out on pc
def gonna play all the other shit as long as i don’t stay broke for the next couple months. trying to play k7 right now but honestly it’s not grabbing me. might skip to nmh1 if i can get my hands on a copy
really? k7 is one of my top 10s. ig the game isnt for everyone. id try playing kevin some more if you arent already, hes def the most fun.
its definitely not for everyone but i really like the liminality of it all and i think the story is amazingly cryptic. id at minimum recommend a longplay and skip the gameplay parts if it bores you. theres this one essay on gamefaqs about this one guys personal interpretation thats like 170 pages long but its genuinely one of the best reads ive ever had. oh well.
No More Heroes 1 is a grand time and 2 is just 1 but a little worse and not written by suda (still worth playing). TSA is prolly the worst of his games (gameplay is boring as FUCK) but the story is really interesting and is an amazing way to bring together like everything GHM has ever made.
its definitely not for everyone but i really like the liminality of it all and i think the story is amazingly cryptic. id at minimum recommend a longplay and skip the gameplay parts if it bores you. theres this one essay on gamefaqs about this one guys personal interpretation thats like 170 pages long but its genuinely one of the best reads ive ever had. oh well.
No More Heroes 1 is a grand time and 2 is just 1 but a little worse and not written by suda (still worth playing). TSA is prolly the worst of his games (gameplay is boring as FUCK) but the story is really interesting and is an amazing way to bring together like everything GHM has ever made.
if i don’t end up playing the rest i’ll def watch all the cutscenes or somethin. love the story, atmosphere, etc. just not a shooter guy at all unfortunately.
neither am i tbh, which might be why it took such a strong impression on me gameplay-wise. the on rails part is really neat
Lex
2 years ago