There's really no other way to put it. This game (and possibly franchise) is morally and creatively bankrupt. Between the shallow depictions of mental health whether there's dramatic zooms of the protagonist self harming or even going as far to have chapters end with you jumping off a building and the following interludes flash a suicide hotline message until the level loads or the awkward anime dub tier voice acting berate you with insults or commentary on your surroundings because Konami needs to remind you this is in a fact a serious game and they're afraid of leaving things to interpretation, I fail to see how the 2 hours I spent with this tech demo can leave me anticipation of the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake or "missing the point".

This whole experience ends up feeling like a parody of the thing it's trying to comment and I don't think that's the takeaway someone with diagnosed BPD should be feeling.

It almost feels silly to call anything else an RPG now that this exists. It's a perfect culmination of the idea of injecting stats and rolls and modifiers into a game that actually lets you play a role, to define who this amnesiac man is and how he relates to the world he inhabits.

And what a world: broken and tragicomic, Revachol comes off at first glance as a bitter satire written by a disillusioned leftist. But the deeper you dive, the more it opens up into something haunting and beautiful in its own right, with even a faint glimmer of hope hidden among the ruins. No people is truly broken, argues Disco Elysium, while they still have hearts to care for one another and arms to link against their oppressors.

was talking it over with a friend and we agreed that one of the smartest things this game does is to entirely elide questions of depiction and gratuitousness re: sexual assault and abuse by unfolding the violence almost entirely through threat, metaphor, and implication. the looming possibility is signalled by the very first interaction even, the encounter of our favorite skinny, vulnerable teenage girl Heather Mason with a bulking, growly strange man stalking her. the eventual unraveling of the "God" plotline obviously also scans as about sexual trauma, the violative experience of unwanted procreation without the explicit need for an assaulting figure (which of course ties into the parody of the Virgin Birth, again, not subtle but appreciated), and the central dynamic between Heather and men is defined by distrust, fear, and manipulation (the memo you read where even her benevolent father and blankfaced video game Good Dad Harry Mason confesses to wanting to murder Heather as a child is heartbreaking), while her relationship to the only other woman in the cast is defined by outright hostility engendered by their equally understandable if slightly manichean responses to unbelievable pain and suffering at the hands of a patriarchal and matriarchal figure, respectively. to really hammer it home the game pens you in to dark, cramped, filthy spaces right from the start, barely ever giving you an overworld to interact with: Heather Mason is not her father or James Sunderland, she's a 17 year old girl, railroaded through the terrifying world that the men of the series navigate more freely (this is also reflected in the games lack of traditional Silent Hill branching endings, at least on a first playthrough). maybe there's nothing interesting or new left to say about these games but i loved this so much i wanted to at least put something here to commemorate it

It's good, very good in some aspects.
Let's start with good stuff.
Traversal is better than ever, it is so entertaining and addition of wingsuit was a 10/10 idea, going from swinging, to gliding to nose diving and at the last second shooting web again never gets old.
I am pretty big fan of how they handled boss fights overall, they no longer rely on just finding a weakspot, doing something 3 times- gg you won.
MJ segments are also improvement over 1st game.
Game is ridiculously impressive with it's tech and ability to load all the assets without a single hitch, and fast travel speed elevates this wow efect even more.
Characters were mostly good, with ok dialogue and all of it was well acted with some typical marvel cringe stample all over it, highlight was seeing Peter and Harry interacting with each other.
Almost every single main mission in this game is a set piece, which is really impressive (impressive how deep Sony pockets are) but my brain was just shutting off after #15 big building collapsing while you are in an incredible gameplay segment of holding R2 to run.
Combat is whatever from mechanical standpoint. It is very very flashy and the tech Insomniac uses to make those animations blend so well together is impressive, but overall combat boils down to waiting for your abilities to recharge. Stealth is totally useless especially with how OP dodge. Skill tree in this game is just lazy, with most attack skill being "hold Square to do this attack, hold triangle after jumping" wow riveting.
Side content is pretty ok for the most part. Yes, it is Ubisoft checklist, but thanks to traversal being so good and combat being ok, it is still fun to participate in them. Standout quest was definitely Howard's. One of rare moments I felt some emotions from this game storytelling.
The thing I am most surprised about is how buggy this thing is.
When I boot up a Sony first party game I at least expect mostly bug free experirnce and especially from Insomniac's because all their previous game were not only tech marvels (hehe) but were bug free.
Here, I had game glitching out so many times. I got soft locked around 5 times and had to reload saves, I felt through City map twice, I had audio missing, I had scripts not playing correctly in scripted sequences and hitboxes on new late game enemy type were just horrible.
I was also very disappointed in Kraven which is so one dimentional. His only purpose was to set events of this game in motion, what a waste, especially when you compare Kraven to some really well done villains from first game.
Venom is whatever, sequence which introduces him is really dope and one of the highlightes of whole experience.
If you loved first two SM games you will most likely love this one as well, if you didn't, SM2 won't change your mind.
P. S
Insomniac, in SM3 get rid off Danikakast, holy shit it was so bad.