This game deserves proper critique as much as it deserves its praise.
Gameplay is poorly designed. Ammo, inventory space, level design and respawning enemies are all SUFFOCATING. These elements don't work well together and just frustrate you.
Signalis just poorly replicates old mechanics, while forgetting why these elements worked in the first place. Most ps1 RE games had 8-slots inventory while Signalis tightens it to 6, but also constantly drops at you quest items(Like Silent Hill did) that are far more common than in RE. Because of that backtracking reaches insane levels of tedium. Add to that tight corridors filled with enemies that will respawn later on and it becomes even worse. I had far more fun with majority of psx survival horrors despite them being 20 years older than Signalis.
But despite all of that you can swallow it up and gameplay, while annoying, still will be... serviceable. After all, game tries to be story focused. But story isn't that good either.
Remember principle of "Show, not tell" technique? Well, Signalis OVERuses and UNDERuses it at the same time. Let me explain, there's two primary sources of storytelling in Signalis:
1. Vivid dreamy incomprehensible cutscenes with hundred hidden meanings
2. Ten thousand notes and journals that just infodump on you everything with no context.
Remember Silent "two hour videoessay" Hill 2? People keep analyzing it decades after, I know comparing Signalis to THE Silent Hill 2 is unfair, but the story is simple and perfectly comprehensible without German/Chinese knowledge and reading King in Yellow. Silent Hill KNOWS when to be subtle and when to be blatant. Good luck with understanding Signalis though, because game just tells you to screw yourself and figure everything out by yourself.
Story itself isn't bad, but the game is AFRAID to tell you anything. It comes off as pretentious 2deep4u Evangelion wannabe, instead of presenting cohesive storytelling. It's just blueballing you with introducing a lot of cool stuff like replikas' past lives or cosmic horror, but doesn't provide any fricking answer, all is left is fans' theories. Hell, you won't even know why you ended up at Sierpinski in the first place!!!
The game has positive sides, like outstanding art direction or unique lore, but people just straight up ignore fundamental problems that prevent it from being "instant classic" or "greatest silent hill game since silent hill 3". But ig because lesbian representation is so rare, people treat it like angel simply because it has WLW story(Which is thankfully executed really damn well, but introduced WAY TOO LATE).
I really wanted to love this game. Sadly, I couldn't.
Gameplay is poorly designed. Ammo, inventory space, level design and respawning enemies are all SUFFOCATING. These elements don't work well together and just frustrate you.
Signalis just poorly replicates old mechanics, while forgetting why these elements worked in the first place. Most ps1 RE games had 8-slots inventory while Signalis tightens it to 6, but also constantly drops at you quest items(Like Silent Hill did) that are far more common than in RE. Because of that backtracking reaches insane levels of tedium. Add to that tight corridors filled with enemies that will respawn later on and it becomes even worse. I had far more fun with majority of psx survival horrors despite them being 20 years older than Signalis.
But despite all of that you can swallow it up and gameplay, while annoying, still will be... serviceable. After all, game tries to be story focused. But story isn't that good either.
Remember principle of "Show, not tell" technique? Well, Signalis OVERuses and UNDERuses it at the same time. Let me explain, there's two primary sources of storytelling in Signalis:
1. Vivid dreamy incomprehensible cutscenes with hundred hidden meanings
2. Ten thousand notes and journals that just infodump on you everything with no context.
Remember Silent "two hour videoessay" Hill 2? People keep analyzing it decades after, I know comparing Signalis to THE Silent Hill 2 is unfair, but the story is simple and perfectly comprehensible without German/Chinese knowledge and reading King in Yellow. Silent Hill KNOWS when to be subtle and when to be blatant. Good luck with understanding Signalis though, because game just tells you to screw yourself and figure everything out by yourself.
Story itself isn't bad, but the game is AFRAID to tell you anything. It comes off as pretentious 2deep4u Evangelion wannabe, instead of presenting cohesive storytelling. It's just blueballing you with introducing a lot of cool stuff like replikas' past lives or cosmic horror, but doesn't provide any fricking answer, all is left is fans' theories. Hell, you won't even know why you ended up at Sierpinski in the first place!!!
The game has positive sides, like outstanding art direction or unique lore, but people just straight up ignore fundamental problems that prevent it from being "instant classic" or "greatest silent hill game since silent hill 3". But ig because lesbian representation is so rare, people treat it like angel simply because it has WLW story(Which is thankfully executed really damn well, but introduced WAY TOO LATE).
I really wanted to love this game. Sadly, I couldn't.
AstroboyMario
2 months ago