this is the worst kind of direct sequel. gameplay loop is essentially identical but it has almost nothing to do with the previous game story/continuity-wise.

nintendo has always been allergic to lore but there is no time this has been more obvious than this time around.

they completely tapped out on what was good and what was bad about botw and just made the same game with some added crafting mechanics that can be fun but arent very practical to the core gameplay.

So I don't own a PS5, but I'm very much a fan of Silent Hill. Lucky for me, a good friend of mine does own a PS5, and we decided to get a few beers, sitting down for this short little horror game. I wasn't expecting much after what I heard about it. Wow, this was so bad it kinda became hilarious. It's one of the worst walking simulators I have ever played, and the writing was beyond trash. And I know this will not mean anything to English speakers, but as someone who's second language is German, the attempt to set this in Germany was hilariously incompetent. Not only does it not look anything like Germany at all, but every piece of writing in the game was littered with spelling mistakes I would have bullied people in pre school for. PS1 games from the 90s would be ashamed of how bad they fucked up, not even joking. I love drawing in my Skizzezzen Buch and being part of the Neuzugäng.

We probably took way longer than most people to reach the end because we had to pause every 5 minutes to just riff on what we were seeing. When it finally hit me that they called one of the central characters Maya Hindenburg, I actually got up and left the room. My brain couldn't handle it. That's like setting your game in the US and naming someone John Guantánamo, or calling a Japanese character Miyamoto Nagasaki. This must have been created by AI, no way this was approved by a real person in the year 2024. Anyway, if you're not convinced Silent Hill is dead, here's more evidence of its beaten and bloody corpse with Konami squeezing every last penny out with a fucking vice. Man, Silent Hill 2 Remake is going to be hilarious.

Yikes?

With a surprise release, The Short Message got a lot of people talking, and understandably so with it being related to Silent Hill. I jumped in with cautious optimism, thank goodness for that. The environments looked great, with the graffiti everywhere and the general atmosphere. The only thing I’d nitpick regarding the visuals was the character HAVING HER HAIR UNDER HER GLASSES? As a spectacled person I found it a bizarre design choice.

As for the meat, gameplay-wise it took a lot from other psychological horror titles with walking around doing very little. Repetitive chase sequences spiced it up a bit, with one chase in particular being a horrid experience. It reminded me of many indie games—unfortunate, yes, but it didn’t do a whole lot to stand out from the crowd and instead relied on the big name attached to it. The narrative on bullying and social media, while prevalent today, was extremely heavy-handed to the point the protagonist was downright unlikeable. Let's face it, depression is common, bullying is common, the pressure of social media is common; it didn't deserve praise for including all those topics in the shallow ways it did. People, real people, actually have nuance and depth.

About as hit and miss as it gets. I appreciated the message and elements of the execution of this quite a bit, but it gets weighed down heavily by some pretty poor writing. The constant “fake deep” dialogue, mainly from the main character, made my eyes roll most of the time.

Really wasn’t a fan of the gameplay at all either. It takes a lot of inspiration from P.T. (definitely threw a few references to it throughout the game) with its walking sim horror gameplay, except they decided to throw in a bunch of shitty chase sequences, which became kinda frustrating by the end. This two hour demo has about 6 chase sequences with basically the same environment and monster that chases you.

Graphically, the games environments are absolutely stunning, almost photorealistic at times. The art direction really makes for some memorable shots as well. A lot of care was obviously put into that aspect.

I was getting hopeful that the game was going to switch it up and move towards the more occult-based story that the first and third games focused on. You begin finding articles referencing witches and curses, however, it doesn’t amount to anything other than making the protagonist question the suicides that the game is centered around. Ultimately, that aspect doesn’t get explored at all.

Overall, a little bit of a disappointment. Apparently Konami themselves developed this, which makes me a bit concerned that this is the direction they are hoping to take the franchise. I still have some hope for Townfall and f though, as they have some strong names behind them, so I’m praying that they don’t take the surface level approach to psychological horror that this game/demo did.

I do feel insecure when I play an absolute classic and I'm not completely enamoured by it. A lot of my love for Mario comes from Galaxy onward. I do really like the original Super Mario Bros. and I love playing all the styles in Mario Maker but SMB3, Super Mario 64 and now Super Mario World don't fill me with the adoration they probably deserve. As dramatic as all that sounds, I still did enjoy the game. It is very fun. The level design is great and the influence it has had on gaming is undeniable. It is remarkable how many secrets there are in the level. There are so many secret exits to levels that in some ways, I found exhausting but it does add a lot of depth to it. I did find myself getting frustrated with the game which I can admit was a skill issue. I never fully grasped the movement options with the cape. It doesn't control like Mario Maker which was hard to get used to. I tried not to use save states but there definitely were some of the later levels that I gave into the temptation. The platforming is great though and having some challenge is nice after coming from Wonder. I wish I could appreciate it more but I can still see it is a fantastic game.