Is it close to the Silent Hills of old? No not particularly.

Does it absolutely stumble on getting across some of its ideas and concepts? Yeah.

Are the chase sequences a bit rough? Yeah.

I still really fucked with this and everything it was doing. It gave me a dose of what I've wanted from Silent Hill for a long time, it had a vision and it sees that vision all the way through while trying to mix things up a bit.

I think it handles its themes of trauma and abuse trapping someone emotionally within cycles of self destructive and self distancing behaviors causing lashing out at anything that harms the ego and whatever normalcy one can cling onto fairly well.

I feel like even if it was a bit heavy handed at times (the beginning really tries to hammer home how depressed Anita is in ways that feel really corny) I cannot ignore the earnestness and the willingness to just fuckin try something here. The art direction, the atmosphere, the music, the tones.

No it's not Silent Hill 3 but it worked for me and captured me in ways that I really didn't expect. That last chunk of the game really fuckin hit me.

It was hard to have high expectations of a free Silent Hill game put out by Konami after their numerous gaming crimes - losing Kojima, cashing in on pachinko, Ascension, to name a few - but Silent Hill: The Short Message, a game about grief, suicide and abuse, is WAY better than it has any right to be.

I will admit that the game pinches from P.T and a little Serial Experiments Lain, with a trashy J-emo script that has all the subtlety of.. well, a corridor covered in abusive post-it notes. But I don't hate that, I vibe with it. Sure, I think it could've benefited from being in its native Japanese language rather than English, let alone even the illusion of being set in bloody Germany, as some of the bullying language feels cliche. But the handling of the heavy themes and conclusion it reaches about the victims have a strong emotional impact, and, I must add, a much healthier take than Bloober's offensive The Medium.

But now for the game's main strengths. The boys are back! Akira Yamaoka's score is understated but stirring, the sound design creepy and enhancing the presence of Masahiro Ito's menacing new monster that hobbles after you down corridors with a stop-motion jitteriness. The pursuit sections are reminiscent of Shattered Memories but much more effective, claustrophobic and panic-inducing - they can be difficult and sometimes frustrating but get by on their short length. There’s not a great deal else in terms of gameplay beyond wandering a dilapidated apartment block, but the grimy design and atmosphere are enough to enjoy just moving through the eerie space, uncovering the story in various gameplay ‘loops.’

Of course, it can veer into amateur territory - the drawings are tad too Tumblr, the acting is mostly strong but occasionally a bit off, those sections in school corridors are a bit too 2013 for my liking - but I suppose the game is not made by a bunch of Kojimas.

However, for the first effort in a couple decades from a Konami-led Japanese team, it’s a rather satisfying return to form for Silent Hill. It’s not perfect, but it didn’t need to be, especially not when it had Ascension’s act to follow.

I'm going to echo what everyone is saying, it's a master piece. The gold standard of a remake. It also doesn't even invalidate the original IMO too. I play them for different reasons.

REmake takes the original and amplifies the atmosphere by 100. The spencer mansion has never looked better. The prerendered graphics look amazing in their detail even 20 years later. Seriously I've always been a fan of prerendered backgrounds. The detail in every background is just oozing with life. It really looks lived in. Subtle animations like wind blowing, clock ticking, rain and lightning, curtains waving coupled with the amazingly well done remastered soundtrack really set the tone. Character models looks so good with all the extra processing power being put into them.

The game is a remake in all aspects except and that's the core gameplay. With all the changes the game received I'm super glad that the basics are the same. Limited ammo, lots of items with minimal inventory and the pacing of gameplay is even the same. The cinematic camera angles and tank controls still work like a charm. The new modern controls added in the remaster version totally break the game, but if that brings new players while keeping the core controls intact so be it.

So many new things where added to the game but at the same don't feel like bloat. They feel like they were always there. Like the grave yard, the Lisa Trevor parts and the added rooms inside the mansion. The game even tricks players that are too familiar with the original game by changing up some of the puzzles and playing with expectations on where your supposed to go. You still take the same basic path in the right order but how you get there and with what maybe different.

If I had to list one negative thing that I don't really like in this perfect recreation is the new voice work. Look I get the original voice overs where over the top and cheesy and that is never going work in a serious remake. The problem is I find the new work to be so dull and lifeless. There's no emotion in anything and everything sounds flat. It feels like they were afraid to have any range outside basic line reads. I think REmake 2 and REmake 3 do much better in that regard. At the end though it's nitpicking and doesn't hurt the experience at all, just thought I throw it out there.

In summary it's a perfect remake, that honors the original while improving upon it without changing it's identity.

Platinum # 30

Haven't really played a game that's able to so effectively pile on the stress in the way this one does. Design choices on top of design choices that seem perfectly hand crafted to interact with one another in such a way that you're almost never able to feel fully comfortable with anything you do, all of it working near-flawlessly in this approach, even when your first playthrough is on one of the easier difficulties. Basically what I'm saying is that this is a borderline magical game with how well it accomplishes almost everything it sets out to do with basically every decision made being one that further contributes to the experience as a whole in a positive way. With this said, the way that the game's player hostility feels is rather interesting, since despite how unforgiving it often is, there's an underlying element of the game still wanting to push you towards success, even if it's one that can often be hard to see, at least on the first few difficulties. It's a cool dynamic because it never really feels like you hit a point where your progress is severely hindered unless you play really terribly, it just always feels like everything is going wrong and you're able to only barely scrape by, making for a really effective experience with how you always feel on the backfoot.

The level design stands out to me as a really high point, with the mansion being borderline magical with how it plays out, being as small as it is while still expanding outwards in such a way that the amount you have left to do feels almost intimidating. The mix of tight corridors and more expansive rooms makes for a nice balance in how it feels like you're expected to deal with enemies, giving you enough opportunities to easily kite around while still providing those moments where you either feel forced to precariously bait out grabs to run around or sacrifice some of your hp to take a hit while trying to escape. This works well with the tank controls providing just enough imprecision to your movement to make the former option feel like a real risk to take, often leading to the 2nd outcome anyway, further making you carefully consider your options when the only way to get past the situation without using any resources not only will be quite difficult, but will also most likely lead to you having to do this in the same location repeatedly due to backtracking, which could ultimately lead to a worse outcome than just spending some resources to destroy what's in your path and prevent the issue from constantly resurfacing.

This type of decision making reaches its peak with the entire crimson head mechanic however, straight up being one of the greatest bits of game design I've seen with how much it's able to transform the feeling of navigation. Because of these, the idea of not killing a certain enemy becomes just as interesting as killing them, due to having to take into account how much kerosene is left lying around making it that you're having to expend a lot if you want to stop the crimson heads from appearing, not just with raw items, but also with inventory space, since if you want to make full use of this mechanic, it'll cost you either one or two inventory slots, depending on the character, or force you to backtrack constantly, either way feeling like quite an unfavourable, yet necessary outcome at points. I also feel like this works in forcing the player to heavily consider their surroundings and the layout of the mansion, since there are so many factors at play that are vital to keep in mind to avoid wasting a lot of what you have later down the line, since as it is, most interactions with an enemy can already feel extremely costly without a bit of luck on your side.

While this gameplay experience definitely settles down a bit once the player leaves the mansion, the atmosphere does more than enough to make up for it, while also still keeping a decent amount of this feeling of dwindling resources to go along with it. The art direction and camera angles particularly do a great job at this, especially with how breathtaking a lot of the backgrounds are, with the amount of movement that takes place in them despite being entirely pre-rendered being downright mindblowing. Basically every room is rich with detail, with this constant theme of decaying grandiosity pervading everything, whether you're exploring a mansion, a garden, or a lab, and I feel like it adds a lot to the weight of the situation while also leaning into a fantastic sense of mystery that slowly unravels as you discover more of the dark secrets of your setting. The camera angles are definitely a strong point for contributing to a sense of horror with the way it often feels like the cameraman put good money on the zombies killing you and wants to rig things in any way possible.

If you're not careful you will be hit by zombies around a corner that you couldn't see because of how everything is positioned, but due to how you already have a ton of stress put on you from all the other interactions that have eaten away at your resources, it's not like you can afford to try preemptively make the first move in case you're wrong and have just wasted even more than you already feel like you've had to. Basically, while the game didn't actively scare me more than a couple of times, there were very few moments throughout that didn't feel extremely stressful in one way or another, with even a 2nd playthrough being able to evoke similar feelings given how much inventory management is centred around balancing survival and having key items to progress, an impressive feat considering I expected knowledge about where most things were to have made it an extremely smooth experience, even with a higher difficulty setting. Simply one of the greatest games of all time, the amount of game locations I like more than Spencer mansion is probably countable on one hand.

This is the best introduction to the survival horror genre. Let me give some background to me, I am a complete pussy when it comes to the horror genre and I absolutely loved this game. I played through this game as Jill, which makes the game easier as she can carry more items than Chris. It instills a perfect feeling of terror and isolation with its atmosphere and level design. The puzzles are tricky and will require a walkthrough sometimes but are fun and intriguing. Jumpscares work because they aren't just instant deaths and give you a chance to defend yourself, which makes it more terrifying in my opinion. Enemies are fun to fight and have awesome designs. I absolutely love all of the lore and facts I learned about the Spencer Mansion throughout the playthrough. The soundtrack isn't your typical soundtrack as it serves more for the atmosphere. The save room is an awesome song and was stuck in my head the entire playthrough. The characters are very cool and create a feeling of a team exploring something new and terrifying together. This game has a learning curve but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a very fun game to play. Cannot wait to scream my lungs out while playing Resident Evil 2.

There's few games I revisit as much as REmake. It's become a tradition at this point to replay it every October, but since I have a big slate of games I want to get to next month, I decided to replay this one a little bit early.

Obviously it still holds up, I wouldn't come back to it annually if it didn't, but it's also hard to overstate how much it improves on the original Resident Evil. The entire mansion has been completely overhauled, with new puzzles, rooms, and enemies not only adding to the experience but improving it. The pacing is better, gameplay feels tighter, and the sequence in which puzzles progress feels far more fluid. Navigating menus (something you do a lot of in Resident Evil) is snappier, with the clicking and snapping sound effects that accompany navigation making them feel good to interact with. In general, the game benefits from some amazing sound design for a game released in 2002. Guns pop off with a satisfying punch, and the distant growls and groans of monsters provide both a sense of spatial awareness and foreboding.

My favorite addition is the Crimson Head zombies. In the original Resident Evil, which zombies you took out boiled down to whether or not you had enough ammo on hand to afford killing them. There was a certain layer of strategy there, forcing the player to decide if it was worth clearing out an oft-traveled hallway or continue to risk taking damage. REmake adds an extra level of anxiety to this by forcing the player to dispatch zombies either by exploding their heads or burning their corpse, or else they'll resurrect as more powerful 28 Days Later style zombies, transforming what was once a safe zone into a murder hall. REmake was the first survival horror game I played, and being so new to the genre and acclimating to the clumsy tank controls made Crimson Heads the most terrifying thing ever.

REmake is also one of the few games I can replay immediately after finishing a run. Finishing a casual playthrough and reacclimating to the mansion's layout is fun in itself, but the true meat of the game for me is taking everything I've learned and trying to plan the most efficient route for a second run. REmake also adds a slew of additional modes to augment subsequent runs, and trophies provide additional challenges like clearing the game with a knife only, or completing a run without saving. That fun of planning a second run then becomes planning a third run while considering invisible enemies and not healing, or routing around Real Survivor's non-magic boxes and going knife only. Despite coming back to this game over and over and over again, I'm always able to squeeze so much fun from it.

One area where the 2014 remaster doesn't quite hold up is in its presentation, which is a little ironic given the whole point of the project was to bring the game into HD. Some textures aren't scaled properly, leaving them blurry, and a few pre-rendered backgrounds just have a quality about them that feels off. Full 3D movement was also introduced in this version of the game, a godsend for people who hate tank controls. While this control scheme does make it easier to bait and juke zombies, it doesn't exactly play nice with the pre-set camera angles, making some screen transitions finicky. These are both minor complaints, however, but are observable weak points in the HD remaster over the Gamecube release.

The Resident Evil series is filled with so many great games, but none have ever topped REmake for me. And that's fine. I own this thing on like, three different platforms, plus I have it loaded onto my jailbroken Wii, and I have the ISO on two PCs and two external drives. The only way I will stop playing this game is if I die.

For all the survival horror that I've dabbled with over the past few years, this is the title that made me the most cognizant of the "survival" aspect. It’s this elaborate balancing act of juggling every limited resource at your disposal: ammo for bosses and enemies, kerosene to burn necessary corpses after downing zombies to secure routes, health items as fail safes, ink ribbons to save when deemed necessary, and most importantly, inventory space to minimize backtracking with the bare minimum (knowing what you’re likely to use up as you progress so you have enough room to forage). What’s key to all of this is that it’s often worthwhile not downing zombies at all to not only conserve ammo, but also prevent the possibility of a more dangerous Crimson Head when kerosene is not only limited but requires further planning for refueling and additional inventory slots (lighter + flask). It’s punishing, but in the best way possible; damage and death become instruments of observation to properly plan out backtracking and understanding exactly what goes where. Perhaps my favorite example of this in action was abusing the various doors in a room connecting the shed corridor with a safe room; by quickly going in and out of the entrances, I could not only reset a Hunter’s awareness and spawn, but also place myself in a position where I could immediately run at the Hunter to proc an attack and slip past every time. It certainly helps, regardless, that there’s plenty of leeway for careful experimentation, thanks to all of the scattered health items about the mansion (granted, often requiring careful planning to optimize grounded herbs in rooms and keeping enough inventory space open for trips). It’s also fairly firm at setting its boundaries by telegraphing enemy placement far in advance with rattling doors/windows to signify enemy shifts, background moaning when a zombie is present in the room, and even environmental noises like crunching fallen glass to make up for the lack of vision with fixed camera angles.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the horror has been neglected. If anything, I found this game far more unsettling beyond sudden surprises. It’s not so much the fear of the unexpected, but rather, the lingering fear of waiting for the other shoe to drop while you’re expecting the unexpected. They're scripted events, sure, but they're well disguised thanks to every room often acting as its own isolated microcosm without the presence of the protagonist (not to mention that it's pretty easy to get caught up in the middle of things and forget about each individual room, which makes it all the more viscerally shocking) and there's still a feeling of player control with careful planning and routing. This fits perfectly alongside its core philosophy of risk versus reward, the existential dread of having to backtrack through several zombie infested corridors when you realize you forgot an inventory key and having to constantly and deliberately throw yourself into tight situations just to save another trip across the map. It’s what makes this such an ideal speedrunning game: not necessarily because of satisfying movement or combat, but because Resident Evil is really a game about time management. Every second wasted tromping through another passageway is time that could contribute to a zombie reviving as a Crimson Head or another second spent replaying if you’re not willing to use that extra ink ribbon. The primal fear arising from guaranteed safety as a fleeting resource lends perfectly to the need for optimization; in that sense, pressuring players into constantly checking the map to avoid confrontations and getting lost goes hand in hand with spending as little time as possible, for nothing is more terrifying than having to rewind the simulations in your head for another go.

I can’t help but feel that every detail of this game was thought down to the bone, even the original tank control scheme. That’s right, I’m actually defending tank controls for once in my life… how the turns have tabled. Dodging enemies can seem tougher, but most are conveniently placed near corners and more open areas to give you the room necessary to dodge with a backstep/quick burst to the side if you’re willing to wait and bait committal attacks. More importantly, using tank controls lets you maintain your direction and momentum while running through different camera angles of a room. With alternate controls, you most likely have to hold down the joystick to maintain velocity and upon a new camera angle, will have to quickly retap to keep the intended direction with each new angle. This becomes paramount in tighter chase sequences, where even slight moments of stagnation can lead to damage/death, as well as one timed puzzle where I had to press a button and then quickly run through several fixed angles to get into position to push a statue. In addition, I found it rather difficult to reliably walk (as opposed to running full-time) with alternate controls over tank controls, which can absolutely backfire during an end-game sequence where running for a prolonged period can trigger an explosion during nitro delivery. Therefore, the circumstances created by the environment not only are doable with tank controls, but in fact necessitate the usage of such controls.

Everything just comes together as this tightly designed package. Puzzles have fairly evident tells and can be figured out with careful observation of the surroundings while facilitating the inventory scramble that plays so heavily to the game’s survival elements. The lore never feels overbearing or excessive, and does a great job weaving in hints for crafting approaches and figuring out exactly what has to be accomplished. There’s never an explicit timer on screen outside of the final ending segment, yet the game is great at creating circumstances where you’re forced to make decisions on the fly from environmental stressors and considering the mansion not just on a per room basis, but as a sum of its parts. I genuinely don’t think I have any gripes; it was more than happy to beat me down, but understanding its parameters to scale up against its challenges was an incredibly fulfilling experience. I’d damn well say that REmake is the most focused and cohesive survival horror experience I’ve ever played. Not just a perfect remake, but perhaps a practically perfect game.