5 reviews liked by bennn
This review contains spoilers
A frustrating work of art that might go too far in the pursuit of ludonarrative resonance at the cost of being a fun game to actually play. Having to replay the game 5 times is a lot. The changes per route are minor yet are worth it for the added bits of story alone. Though I don't see the point of replaying the entire opening of the game as young Nier in route E. It probably could've started with us playing as Kainé immediately after route D. It's likely just padding because Kainé's section of the story, whilst the peak of the game narratively, is only like 2 hours long.
The idea behind the route system is genius but as I mentioned, not exactly fun. As we keep seeing these scenes over and over again it creates a synergy between the player and Nier in how cold and uncaring to extraneous nonsense we become. Increasingly only focused on the end goal of rescuing Yonah/beating the game. Showing less and less sympathy to the sob stories around us despite their voices Increasingly getting louder. Coming to a head with the access of the final ending being behind sacrificing all that makes you, you. And of course, Kainé ultimately reclaiming you because she can't shake the impact that the player had on her in progressing her story. It's undeniably a genius marriage of game design and narrative theming mixed with some very near 4th wall breaks. The issue is that it's simply unfortunately a slog to get through the game itself and I wouldn't blame people who drop the game even before finishing route A.
A huge percentage of the game is tedious 2000s era fetch quests consisting of running back and forth across empty, uninteresting maps. The combat being brain dead button mashing in addition makes matters worse. That goes without even mentioning the fact that to gain access to endings C/D/E you have to grind to high heaven in all manner of monotonous at best, straight up bad at worst, side quests in order to collect all 33 weapons. I don't even understand why that was even needed unless I missed something. I kept persevering though, just as the game wanted me to.
I will never forget the story it told and the characters it centered around. Kainé means so much to me personally. Her personal struggles, her dysphoria, her journey as a whole... it just moved me. As did the other characters like Emil and brother Nier, Weiss, Devola and Popola and even shades like Louise. And of course the Gestalt Nier and Yonah. Individually these all tell parables of what it means to have or lose a will to live, holistically they come together to form an interconnected web that commands you to pay attention and truly highlight the sanctity of having control over the direction your own life takes.
The twin sisters, Gestalt siblings and Louise are tragedies in that they wanted to take control of their destinies but whether through programming or nature or sheer misfortune they failed and had to stay the course that was laid out for them to it's bitter end. They served as warnings. Kainé in particular is special to me partly because of how close she was to being a walker of that path yet just as the player overcame monotony to see her new future, so did she.
She and Emil were reborn from the ashes of the ghosts of their pasts thanks to us/Nier and it's so beautiful that their actions led to our identity being reclaimed and Nier being reborn. These three (and Weiss) are instantly one of my most cherished parties in gaming. A real and true found family.
This game is certainly flawed. It's certainly dated. But I would without question say that it was all worth it in the end. I can't give it 5 stars off the bat because it really is that much of a slog. But as time moves on, I'll only have the memories of the story in my mind so it'll probably go higher the more I weigh on it.
The idea behind the route system is genius but as I mentioned, not exactly fun. As we keep seeing these scenes over and over again it creates a synergy between the player and Nier in how cold and uncaring to extraneous nonsense we become. Increasingly only focused on the end goal of rescuing Yonah/beating the game. Showing less and less sympathy to the sob stories around us despite their voices Increasingly getting louder. Coming to a head with the access of the final ending being behind sacrificing all that makes you, you. And of course, Kainé ultimately reclaiming you because she can't shake the impact that the player had on her in progressing her story. It's undeniably a genius marriage of game design and narrative theming mixed with some very near 4th wall breaks. The issue is that it's simply unfortunately a slog to get through the game itself and I wouldn't blame people who drop the game even before finishing route A.
A huge percentage of the game is tedious 2000s era fetch quests consisting of running back and forth across empty, uninteresting maps. The combat being brain dead button mashing in addition makes matters worse. That goes without even mentioning the fact that to gain access to endings C/D/E you have to grind to high heaven in all manner of monotonous at best, straight up bad at worst, side quests in order to collect all 33 weapons. I don't even understand why that was even needed unless I missed something. I kept persevering though, just as the game wanted me to.
I will never forget the story it told and the characters it centered around. Kainé means so much to me personally. Her personal struggles, her dysphoria, her journey as a whole... it just moved me. As did the other characters like Emil and brother Nier, Weiss, Devola and Popola and even shades like Louise. And of course the Gestalt Nier and Yonah. Individually these all tell parables of what it means to have or lose a will to live, holistically they come together to form an interconnected web that commands you to pay attention and truly highlight the sanctity of having control over the direction your own life takes.
The twin sisters, Gestalt siblings and Louise are tragedies in that they wanted to take control of their destinies but whether through programming or nature or sheer misfortune they failed and had to stay the course that was laid out for them to it's bitter end. They served as warnings. Kainé in particular is special to me partly because of how close she was to being a walker of that path yet just as the player overcame monotony to see her new future, so did she.
She and Emil were reborn from the ashes of the ghosts of their pasts thanks to us/Nier and it's so beautiful that their actions led to our identity being reclaimed and Nier being reborn. These three (and Weiss) are instantly one of my most cherished parties in gaming. A real and true found family.
This game is certainly flawed. It's certainly dated. But I would without question say that it was all worth it in the end. I can't give it 5 stars off the bat because it really is that much of a slog. But as time moves on, I'll only have the memories of the story in my mind so it'll probably go higher the more I weigh on it.
Silent Hill 2
2001
Content Warning for Attempted Suicide, Terminal Illness, Death, and Chronic Illness
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It’s September 2011 and I’m seventeen years old when I try to kill myself. There are two ponds near my parent’s house. It’s like 4 AM. I like to be out this early. Nobody else is awake, and they won’t be for a while. It’s like the whole world belongs to me. I wander around between the neighborhoods, along the roads, and in the fields. In ten years these will be fresh real estate properties but today they’re still farmland. This hour and a half is the only time the anxiety quells. The real world never knows peace. There’s a dread that accompanies every action and every moment; living in that house, going to school, hanging out with my friends (are they my friends? They are but I won’t be able to understand that until I’m healthier). I’ll always have to go back home. I’ll never be able to articulate what’s happening to me. The pressure is too intense. I don’t plan it, but, the pond is right there, and it’s deep enough, and early enough that no one will hear me. Not having a plan is what saves my life. Turns out impromptu self-drownings are difficult to pull off when the water is still and not THAT deep. So, it doesn’t work, and I’m soaked, and grateful to get home and hide the evidence before my parents wake up, but I don’t feel BETTER. I feel despair, still. There’s no way out. I wish I could just climb up the stairwell, out of this. I wish I had the clarity to understand what was wrong with me.
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What do you even say about Silent Hill 2? To say that it’s one of the best video games ever made feels simultaneously obvious and like I’m underselling it, right? Fuckin, uhhhh, Resident Evil 2 is one of the best video games ever made. Ace Attorney 3 is one of the best games ever made. Come on! When we see people talk about old games that they like they’ll so often say stuff like “it holds up really well for its age” or some similar comment that implies that progress is the same as quality. This is, of course, nonsense. I wouldn’t say video games are better as a medium in 2021 than they were in 2001; on the whole and in the mainstream I would say they’re demonstrably worse in almost every way – how they look, how they sound, how they feel. Silent Hill 2 was a AAA game. What do we get now instead? Far Cry 6? The fuckin, THE MEDIUM? We’ve lost everything in pursuit of bad lighting and looking like a mediocre episode of whatever was popular on HBO three years ago. Silent Hill 2 looks great and sounds great and fuck you it plays great too it feels good and even the puzzles are MOSTLY FINE. MOSTLY. Listen I’m saying this is the all time best video game I’m not saying it fuckin ended world hunger.
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It’s October 2012, I’m nineteen and I’m sitting in a business communications class when I get the text confirmation that Sam’s brain tumor is back, again. It’s not the first time, and I know that there’s nothing left to do, he’s going to die. It’s fast, untreated. He’s one of my best friends, and the only person I know from home who went to the same college as me, but we live really far apart on a big urban campus and I haven’t seen him as much as I’d have liked to. Now he’s gonna spend the rest of his time with his family back home. When I see him next it’s at a hometown charity event for his family in December. He’s unrecognizable physically, and he can’t speak. The event is at our old catholic elementary school, in the gym, where in the years since we graduated they’ve painted a giant tiger on the wall. It’s the school mascot. I feel incredibly awkward around him and spend most of the time away with our other friends. I only speak to him briefly, and when I do it’s a stupid joke about the tiger mural. These will be my last words to him. I do know this will be the case, I think. Later that month I’ll be one of his pallbearers. I spend a lot of time angry and ashamed of myself for not being better to him, not knowing how to act or what to say. I’m about to drop out of school for reasons financial and related to my mental health.
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So what DO you say about Silent Hill 2? That it’s a masterpiece? That it’s the most well-conceived and executed video game ever made? That every detail of it dovetails into every other in a legitimately perfect cocktail story, presentation, and play? That the performances, cinematography, soundscape, all of it are untouchably top of their class? That when Mary reads the letter at the end I WEEP because it’s one of the best pieces of acting I’ve ever heard? That if I ever meet Troy Baker it’s ON SIGHT? These things are all true. We all know it. Everybody knows this. It’s Silent Hill 2.
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It’s August 2019, I’m twenty-five and I’ve just managed to graduate college in time to move to a new city with my partner as she enters her third year of medical school. That’s the year they kick you out of the classroom and you start going to the hospitals to do your real hands-on training month to month. I’m job hunting unsuccessfully and we’re living exclusively off her loans, when what seems at first like a pulled lower back muscle becomes a fruitless early morning ER trip (five hours, no results, not seen by a doctor) becomes an inability to get out of bed becomes a forced leave of absence. Without a diagnosis she can’t get disability accommodations. While on a leave of absence we can’t have her loans, and in fact we have to pay them back. We’re getting desperate, thousands of dollars in debt, and I take the first soul sucking job I can find. It takes almost a full year of visits to increasingly specialized physicians but eventually my partner is diagnosed with non radiographic axial spondyloarthritis, an extremely rare condition that culminates in the fusion of the spinal column. We can treat the pain, sort of, but it’s only a matter of time until it’s likely to evolve into a more serious condition, she’ll never have the strength or stamina she had before, and the treatment options are expensive and difficult. Her diagnosis doesn’t even officially exist as a recognized condition that people can have until September 2020.
Suddenly I am a caretaker and everything is different now. Obviously our mood is stressed from the financial dangers, but she’s in pain, terrible pain, constantly for months. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat. There’s nothing I can do. It’s exhausting to live like that. She’s depressed. On good days we try to walk outside but good days are few and far between, and grow fewer over time, and her body makes her pay for the walks. She’s on drugs, a lot of them. Do they help? It’s unclear. They don’t make her feel BETTER. Nobody knows what’s wrong with her. Her school thinks she’s faking, they’re trying to concoct ways to get her kicked out. She wants to die. It breaks my heart. She’s everything to me, all that there is. She has literally saved my life. And I can’t help her. But it’s exhausting for me too. I don’t want to admit this, not even privately, to myself. It is hard to be the person who is leaned on, especially when the person you love can’t give anything back. I’m tired. I’m not angry, and I don’t think I’m resentful. But I’m tired. I feel shame for thinking about it, for acknowledging it. I know it’s silly to feel the shame but it’s there. I do find a job eventually, thankfully, but it’s still a long time before we get a diagnosis, much less an effective treatment. Even after things settle somewhat, it’s a hard year. And there are hard times to come.
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Ever since I first played it as a teen, Silent Hill 2 is a game that has haunted me through life, like a memory. It struck a deep chord with me when I was too young for that to be fair, too young to identify why I could relate to these people and their ghosts. I used to think this was a special relationship that I had with the game, the way you kind of want to think you have these when you’re younger, but the older I get the more I recognize this as part of growing up. Silent Hill 2 doesn’t resonate with me because I’ve encountered situations in life that closely mirror that of the protagonist. I mean, Angela’s story resonates deeply with me despite little overlap in the specifics of our family traumas. Silent Hill 2 touches me – and most of us – so deeply, because it has such a keen understanding of what it feels like to be Going Through It. It is a game that knows what it is to grieve, to despair, to soak in the fog, and also, maybe, to feel a catharsis, if you’re lucky, and you do the work.
I’ve been Angela, parts of her. I’ve been Laura too. I’ve had more James in me than I would prefer. I suspect all of us have these people, these feelings in us, to some degree or another. We collect them as we get older. That’s just part of it. Silent Hill 2 isn’t a happy game, but it’s one that Gets It, and lets us explore those spaces in a safe and cathartic way. It does this about as well as any piece of media I’ve encountered, on top of being so excellent at all the cinematic and video game stuff. But that’s really what makes it what it is. The empathy, and the honesty. I think it’s beautiful.
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It’s September 2011 and I’m seventeen years old when I try to kill myself. There are two ponds near my parent’s house. It’s like 4 AM. I like to be out this early. Nobody else is awake, and they won’t be for a while. It’s like the whole world belongs to me. I wander around between the neighborhoods, along the roads, and in the fields. In ten years these will be fresh real estate properties but today they’re still farmland. This hour and a half is the only time the anxiety quells. The real world never knows peace. There’s a dread that accompanies every action and every moment; living in that house, going to school, hanging out with my friends (are they my friends? They are but I won’t be able to understand that until I’m healthier). I’ll always have to go back home. I’ll never be able to articulate what’s happening to me. The pressure is too intense. I don’t plan it, but, the pond is right there, and it’s deep enough, and early enough that no one will hear me. Not having a plan is what saves my life. Turns out impromptu self-drownings are difficult to pull off when the water is still and not THAT deep. So, it doesn’t work, and I’m soaked, and grateful to get home and hide the evidence before my parents wake up, but I don’t feel BETTER. I feel despair, still. There’s no way out. I wish I could just climb up the stairwell, out of this. I wish I had the clarity to understand what was wrong with me.
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What do you even say about Silent Hill 2? To say that it’s one of the best video games ever made feels simultaneously obvious and like I’m underselling it, right? Fuckin, uhhhh, Resident Evil 2 is one of the best video games ever made. Ace Attorney 3 is one of the best games ever made. Come on! When we see people talk about old games that they like they’ll so often say stuff like “it holds up really well for its age” or some similar comment that implies that progress is the same as quality. This is, of course, nonsense. I wouldn’t say video games are better as a medium in 2021 than they were in 2001; on the whole and in the mainstream I would say they’re demonstrably worse in almost every way – how they look, how they sound, how they feel. Silent Hill 2 was a AAA game. What do we get now instead? Far Cry 6? The fuckin, THE MEDIUM? We’ve lost everything in pursuit of bad lighting and looking like a mediocre episode of whatever was popular on HBO three years ago. Silent Hill 2 looks great and sounds great and fuck you it plays great too it feels good and even the puzzles are MOSTLY FINE. MOSTLY. Listen I’m saying this is the all time best video game I’m not saying it fuckin ended world hunger.
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It’s October 2012, I’m nineteen and I’m sitting in a business communications class when I get the text confirmation that Sam’s brain tumor is back, again. It’s not the first time, and I know that there’s nothing left to do, he’s going to die. It’s fast, untreated. He’s one of my best friends, and the only person I know from home who went to the same college as me, but we live really far apart on a big urban campus and I haven’t seen him as much as I’d have liked to. Now he’s gonna spend the rest of his time with his family back home. When I see him next it’s at a hometown charity event for his family in December. He’s unrecognizable physically, and he can’t speak. The event is at our old catholic elementary school, in the gym, where in the years since we graduated they’ve painted a giant tiger on the wall. It’s the school mascot. I feel incredibly awkward around him and spend most of the time away with our other friends. I only speak to him briefly, and when I do it’s a stupid joke about the tiger mural. These will be my last words to him. I do know this will be the case, I think. Later that month I’ll be one of his pallbearers. I spend a lot of time angry and ashamed of myself for not being better to him, not knowing how to act or what to say. I’m about to drop out of school for reasons financial and related to my mental health.
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So what DO you say about Silent Hill 2? That it’s a masterpiece? That it’s the most well-conceived and executed video game ever made? That every detail of it dovetails into every other in a legitimately perfect cocktail story, presentation, and play? That the performances, cinematography, soundscape, all of it are untouchably top of their class? That when Mary reads the letter at the end I WEEP because it’s one of the best pieces of acting I’ve ever heard? That if I ever meet Troy Baker it’s ON SIGHT? These things are all true. We all know it. Everybody knows this. It’s Silent Hill 2.
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It’s August 2019, I’m twenty-five and I’ve just managed to graduate college in time to move to a new city with my partner as she enters her third year of medical school. That’s the year they kick you out of the classroom and you start going to the hospitals to do your real hands-on training month to month. I’m job hunting unsuccessfully and we’re living exclusively off her loans, when what seems at first like a pulled lower back muscle becomes a fruitless early morning ER trip (five hours, no results, not seen by a doctor) becomes an inability to get out of bed becomes a forced leave of absence. Without a diagnosis she can’t get disability accommodations. While on a leave of absence we can’t have her loans, and in fact we have to pay them back. We’re getting desperate, thousands of dollars in debt, and I take the first soul sucking job I can find. It takes almost a full year of visits to increasingly specialized physicians but eventually my partner is diagnosed with non radiographic axial spondyloarthritis, an extremely rare condition that culminates in the fusion of the spinal column. We can treat the pain, sort of, but it’s only a matter of time until it’s likely to evolve into a more serious condition, she’ll never have the strength or stamina she had before, and the treatment options are expensive and difficult. Her diagnosis doesn’t even officially exist as a recognized condition that people can have until September 2020.
Suddenly I am a caretaker and everything is different now. Obviously our mood is stressed from the financial dangers, but she’s in pain, terrible pain, constantly for months. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat. There’s nothing I can do. It’s exhausting to live like that. She’s depressed. On good days we try to walk outside but good days are few and far between, and grow fewer over time, and her body makes her pay for the walks. She’s on drugs, a lot of them. Do they help? It’s unclear. They don’t make her feel BETTER. Nobody knows what’s wrong with her. Her school thinks she’s faking, they’re trying to concoct ways to get her kicked out. She wants to die. It breaks my heart. She’s everything to me, all that there is. She has literally saved my life. And I can’t help her. But it’s exhausting for me too. I don’t want to admit this, not even privately, to myself. It is hard to be the person who is leaned on, especially when the person you love can’t give anything back. I’m tired. I’m not angry, and I don’t think I’m resentful. But I’m tired. I feel shame for thinking about it, for acknowledging it. I know it’s silly to feel the shame but it’s there. I do find a job eventually, thankfully, but it’s still a long time before we get a diagnosis, much less an effective treatment. Even after things settle somewhat, it’s a hard year. And there are hard times to come.
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Ever since I first played it as a teen, Silent Hill 2 is a game that has haunted me through life, like a memory. It struck a deep chord with me when I was too young for that to be fair, too young to identify why I could relate to these people and their ghosts. I used to think this was a special relationship that I had with the game, the way you kind of want to think you have these when you’re younger, but the older I get the more I recognize this as part of growing up. Silent Hill 2 doesn’t resonate with me because I’ve encountered situations in life that closely mirror that of the protagonist. I mean, Angela’s story resonates deeply with me despite little overlap in the specifics of our family traumas. Silent Hill 2 touches me – and most of us – so deeply, because it has such a keen understanding of what it feels like to be Going Through It. It is a game that knows what it is to grieve, to despair, to soak in the fog, and also, maybe, to feel a catharsis, if you’re lucky, and you do the work.
I’ve been Angela, parts of her. I’ve been Laura too. I’ve had more James in me than I would prefer. I suspect all of us have these people, these feelings in us, to some degree or another. We collect them as we get older. That’s just part of it. Silent Hill 2 isn’t a happy game, but it’s one that Gets It, and lets us explore those spaces in a safe and cathartic way. It does this about as well as any piece of media I’ve encountered, on top of being so excellent at all the cinematic and video game stuff. But that’s really what makes it what it is. The empathy, and the honesty. I think it’s beautiful.
Resident Evil 4 VR
2021
They make your hands disappear anytime you go near Ashley to prevent you from being inappropriate
but you can still lovingly caress the merchant with your big meaty hands without hinderance, so get fucked Zuckerberg
but you can still lovingly caress the merchant with your big meaty hands without hinderance, so get fucked Zuckerberg
Silent Hill 2
2001
''Holy shit this game was scary'' I said to myself in pure daylight with the blinds wide open under a blanket with warm coffee with the game volume low and a podcast playing in the background with the gameplay set to easy
Silent Hill 2
2001
This review contains spoilers
Finally, a standard 10/10, like yup, this game's perfect.
Being honest, I almost had nothing to write for this, but not in a way where I took nothing from/having nothing to say about the game, but rather, Silent Hill 2's over 20 years old, what am I gonna add onto it y'know? However, now having beaten it and gotten "In Water", I can definitely add just a bit to the pile, I hope.
Because, wow, if I had played this at say, 16, without going through what I've gone through now, I probably would've just said the game is a wonderfully written sad time. When now, the game certainly feels like something very personal to me.
Man that letter hits like a bus huh? Mary's voice actress's delivery of that might be one of the best performances I've heard in a hot minute, and that's considering other performances in this like James or Angela. Regardless, saying that the letter was effective isn't what I'm here to say, but more how it, and the entirety of James's and her relationship are scarily accurate to reality.
Yes, you can have your good moments, blooming as it does normally, yet, SH2 is certainly more fixated on the bleak aspects, the days where help isn't wanted, where the only thing that can be fixated on is the unfairness of the world. How sometimes, the only thing you look at is the ceiling, cause you're still just in bed at the end of the day, and not getting better.
It's also worth saying that the game clearly shows that Mary had her bad days too, I usually feel like stories like this can lead to the one suffering being angelic, even though going through something like that can lead people to lashing out, and actual strain on a relationship.
That being said, certainly not taking the James approach, he's lowkey a bitch.
Being honest, I almost had nothing to write for this, but not in a way where I took nothing from/having nothing to say about the game, but rather, Silent Hill 2's over 20 years old, what am I gonna add onto it y'know? However, now having beaten it and gotten "In Water", I can definitely add just a bit to the pile, I hope.
Because, wow, if I had played this at say, 16, without going through what I've gone through now, I probably would've just said the game is a wonderfully written sad time. When now, the game certainly feels like something very personal to me.
Man that letter hits like a bus huh? Mary's voice actress's delivery of that might be one of the best performances I've heard in a hot minute, and that's considering other performances in this like James or Angela. Regardless, saying that the letter was effective isn't what I'm here to say, but more how it, and the entirety of James's and her relationship are scarily accurate to reality.
Yes, you can have your good moments, blooming as it does normally, yet, SH2 is certainly more fixated on the bleak aspects, the days where help isn't wanted, where the only thing that can be fixated on is the unfairness of the world. How sometimes, the only thing you look at is the ceiling, cause you're still just in bed at the end of the day, and not getting better.
It's also worth saying that the game clearly shows that Mary had her bad days too, I usually feel like stories like this can lead to the one suffering being angelic, even though going through something like that can lead people to lashing out, and actual strain on a relationship.
That being said, certainly not taking the James approach, he's lowkey a bitch.