+Super cool aesthetic, this game could be about literally nothing and it would still be one of the most visually memorable experiences in gaming.
+Really interesting period piece about the internet age during it's dawn that still rings true to this day on how we perceive crime and the police in modern times, up there with Serial Experiments Lain with stories about the dawn of the digital era that predicted the future.
= Though I liked a few characters in the cast, remembering their names when all I had was half a second to see a pixelized, opaque lettering of their names made the story a lot harder to follow than it had any right to be for the sake of doing something different, this game is the biggest argument for all text heavy games needing a backlog.
-You could not pay me to give a fuck about this gameplay, I honestly feel like this should have been a visual novel instead because every instance of interactivity feels like an absolute nuisance, something as basic as turning around, walking somewhere or having a scene transition could take as long as 15 seconds. The puzzles having an insta-solving button should tell you how much of an afterthought they are.
-The final chapter in particular is filled with padding thinly disguised as suspense and whoever thought it was a good idea to walk through 10 towers individually to search for a sentence's worth of text can eat the pinkest part of my asshole. And that's not counting the placebo chapters which are just some guy reading emails about the case you just played and spoon-feeding you exposition emails in case you were sucking on your thumb instead of reading the chapter you were playing, all of that culminates in a game with a cool as fuck beginning and ending, but with a very dragged out middle.
While my complains are more wordy than the positives I feel like other reviews have said enough about the positives of the game so it's only fair I highlight the more problematic sides of The Silver Case. I've heard Flower Sun and Rain and The 25th ward get better on that regard so I'm looking forward to finally recognizing Suda51 as the auteur he is.
+Really interesting period piece about the internet age during it's dawn that still rings true to this day on how we perceive crime and the police in modern times, up there with Serial Experiments Lain with stories about the dawn of the digital era that predicted the future.
= Though I liked a few characters in the cast, remembering their names when all I had was half a second to see a pixelized, opaque lettering of their names made the story a lot harder to follow than it had any right to be for the sake of doing something different, this game is the biggest argument for all text heavy games needing a backlog.
-You could not pay me to give a fuck about this gameplay, I honestly feel like this should have been a visual novel instead because every instance of interactivity feels like an absolute nuisance, something as basic as turning around, walking somewhere or having a scene transition could take as long as 15 seconds. The puzzles having an insta-solving button should tell you how much of an afterthought they are.
-The final chapter in particular is filled with padding thinly disguised as suspense and whoever thought it was a good idea to walk through 10 towers individually to search for a sentence's worth of text can eat the pinkest part of my asshole. And that's not counting the placebo chapters which are just some guy reading emails about the case you just played and spoon-feeding you exposition emails in case you were sucking on your thumb instead of reading the chapter you were playing, all of that culminates in a game with a cool as fuck beginning and ending, but with a very dragged out middle.
While my complains are more wordy than the positives I feel like other reviews have said enough about the positives of the game so it's only fair I highlight the more problematic sides of The Silver Case. I've heard Flower Sun and Rain and The 25th ward get better on that regard so I'm looking forward to finally recognizing Suda51 as the auteur he is.