The 51lver Case:

Do you like books? I personally am very mixed on them, on one hand they have some of the most compex stories and they feel much more personal compared to the other art forms, on the other hand however a page being covered with full of text and nothing else makes me tired to the point where I am focused on finishing a chapter so that I can be done with a book rather than the actual story itself. Visual novels seemed to be fixing every issue I have with reading books; having their own atmosphere, sound design, stylish visuals and gameplay segments to spice things up. As much as I like how visual novels sounded it took me a long time to try some examples from the genre and without a doubt The Silver Case and it's sequel 25th Ward are easily my favorite ones amongst them, they single handedly made me interested in them all over again.

The first thing you will be delighted with The Silver Case once you start playing is without a doubt the aesthetic and the style it has. The menu is like a DJ controller board and every case and reports have their own theme songs playing on the menu. The soundtrack and aesthetic in general is just shouting 90's and I just love it. Every case also has their own art style, not to go into much spoilers but in one case where it's all about visiting somebody's past, the whole case is black and white. In one case about the internet crimes and sketchy websites the whole background is full of green digital codes and loading screens the game is full of details like this which you'll appreciate.

The sound design and the OST is just incredible, no surprise coming from Masafumi Takada he worked on litterally every game I am either interested in or loved playing bro how did I not know you also worked on God Hand, Akira Yamaoka also worked on it too like damn it was bound to be something unforgettable. Can't go without saying the mix between 3D visuals for the environments and the hand drawn visuals for the characters is full of style and life, I just couldn't get enough of it; it's beatiful.

The Silver Case shines the most with its complex narrative, there is a mysterious atmoshpere and it takes place in a world where you really can't trust anybody but you need to if you really want to move on in life. You take control of well yourself, a character you name and you found yourself working in the Heinous Crimes Unit solving some rather interesting crimes. This game is also the start of the famous "Kill The Past" franchise, my first exposure to this franchise was killer7 and that game impacted me probably more than any game did and I just needed to play more from this franchise (please somebody localise Moonlight Syndrome). Kill The Past is an important phrase throughout the whole game, some characters will need to face their past to move on wheter they get rid of it or save it, its a major part of the story you'll need to figure out. The ending of this game will destroy you- just like Killer7 the Suda51 magic is so powerful...

Let's talk storytelling, a topic I legit can't stop talking about when it comes to videogames. The game is divided into 2 parts, cases which you play as yourself as I mentioned and investigate crimes with the other members of the Crime Unit, most of the main story happens here but there are also reports where you take control of Tokio Morishima (best character btw), and to earn a living Tokio is working for some organization as a freelance reporter searching information about some of these crimes and not only you learn extra information here if the cases came off as too complicated and trust me they will but these reports sections have their own characters and stories that ties into the main story in very cool and unexpected ways. I also generally liked the fact that the story had 2 different perspectives, for example since Tokio is always at the computer and not investigating you'll see how e-mails, online chats are structured, how the public learns the news you already know of from the cases. It's also surprising how well the game aged, it originally came out in 1999 for Japan and this is just a remake of that version. A lot of the political topics this game tackles are still as correct as they were and it also makes me wish more modern games would tackle these topics.

For a narrative focused game like The Silver Case the gameplay mostly does it's job, you can't really move freely it's kind of like killer7 where you are on rails and you'll mostly get in contact with stuff while investigating and with some occasional puzzles, there is also exploration wheter you ask bunch of people several questions or just explore a building and honestly it's not that fun to the point where you might say "I'd rather read", the on rails gameplay doesn't really match that well with the exploration but I am the guy who was fine with Silent Hill 4's escort missions so yeah... I didn't really care and it managed to be interesting at times, I am trying my best to convince you the gameplay is fine but it depends on your tolerance.

With a crazy genius fictional world, incredible storytelling and characters The Silver Case manages to be one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time, no game I've played from the current generation has came close to taking risks The Silver Case takes. Suda51 did it again huh, Flower Sun and Rain and that #Case 4.5 book is next and I can't wait to play them. All and all I can't recommend The Silver Case enough, it's an exceptionally interesting and mindbending experience you won't regret playing.

The Silver Case, ultimately, begs the player to be critical. To be critical of government, police, and most importantly of one's self. What does it mean to commit a crime, when the governments that define "crime" are themselves criminal? Since completing this game, I've been constantly thinking about the case Lifecut. About how the masks of the Heinous Crimes Unit slowly slip away, revealing that despite their apparent individuality, they are nothing but pawns to be used for the higher powers surrounding the story. They side with the law, and die for it. They die to protect the truth of their master's misdeeds, and commit criminal acts without being labeled "criminal". It's only by embracing that which is deemed "wrong" by society that one is able to kill their past.

The Silver Case lauds individuality, but also depicts how dire the need for community is in a world shaped by the Internet. Tokio Morishima starts his half of the game as a person who is largely squandering his potential to be great. He sits in his shabby apartment, checking his email, chain smoking and talking to his turtle. It is only through his connections with Erika and the bartender at Jack Hammer that he is able to reach his true potential. He transforms from a slimy tabloid reporter into an almost sagely presence in Lifecut. He rejects the Internet, and finds what really matters in the real world.

It’s really hard to wrap my head around the insane amount of themes and images invoked in this game. This game has my utmost recommendation to anyone with the patience to keep up with a visual novel created in 1999.

“I feel weird. Someone died in my building, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear the sound, I wasn’t told by someone else living here: I first knew of it via my computer. It doesn’t feel real.”

- Tokio Morishima, Hana

The Silver Case is an experience that makes me understand how Grasshopper Games have managed to cultivate such a cult following. This game is a mix of gameplay ideas and narrative moments that remain unique in the contemporary interactive media market.

Kamui Uehara is one of fiction's most interesting, enigmatic characters representing the fact that while one can kill of the person, they can never kill off the idea that he represents.

The Silver Case is one of those games that does not leave your head even days after completing it, It festers and requires you to think about its commentary and that I think is one of the most beautiful things a game can make you do.

Kill The Past.

This game had a shoestring budget, made by a guy who's not that well known and with a newly established company in the middle of a shitty economy crash for their country

what's his plan for his first videogame that will put him on the map?, creating one of the most unique, bizarre, obtuse, funny and thematically interesting games for the time

The Silver Case feels like a project that everyone aims to do at their youth, using all the inspirations they gather into a neat package (in this case, Serial Experiments Lain, Twin Peaks, David Lynch Flicks) to create something with a theme they personally resonate right down to their core, for this is "Kill The Past"

Though, with Youth also comes a lack of experience.

a lack of experience which can be spotted plenty of times, a lot of stalling for certain sections (those 10 towers weren't necessary)

Dropped plot points, since the story simply doesn't care about those details, its fully focus on telling its own theme properly above any conventional Storytelling.

The Placebo sections can be aggravating with how much you do the same thing over and over again while covering old ground that can be deduced by just playing the Transmitter Sections and it only pays off at the tail end of the game.

the game is very frustrating since this will test your patience to your limits, but you will get rewarded by getting an interesting story worth chewing on in the end

i only recommend this to those already highly invested to Suda51 or want to see how all his motifs started

This was a LOT to swallow honestly, but I do think I really liked this game
we'll circle back around to that after i get most of what I say out in the open
So i've already played killer7 and no more heroes 1 by this point and youd think that would already be enough under my belt to prepare me for the shit that happens in this game, but you would be wrong! and i would be wrong!

And im glad i am! because it just shows again that suda really does just go off with making shit he wants to
thats why all his shit is so Special to the point where even if there's connecting themes and such, each one of these shits has a different feel,vibe and end goal progression while still maintaining this 'Kill The Past' mantle
The music and sound design are so fucking good and the way the UI pops out like computer programs is so tantalizing to my retinas. This game boasts 2d art, 3d ps1 cgi and FMVs of whole ass real people and locations to convey this unique flavor I dont think ive seen done before. On top of this I also really like the dialogue it can be so immensely funny, sometimes it feels on accident with how humorous some things can be in this game because i was overall having that more than a serious gritty story i was sinking my teeth into.. lots of mysteries yeah! but.. ill get to that..

It's just im tapering myself off because for as much as im singing praises right now

I REALLY REALLY wish I could dicksuck this game, I REALLY REALLY DO but.. there's some problems i have

For starters, Im already not too fond of visual novels as a medium for my games
I like when there's interactivity involved.. maybe a puzzle here or there or using the bulk of the dialogue to it's advantage
I feel ALMOST none of that here with this game, it mostly just felt like I was reading an interactive web graphic novel which is so cool but also..
It was on occassion more than once where I was like "do i Really wanna keep playing this game though... do i Really like this that much" and then something interesting happens in the story or a revelation or something that makes me think about it a bit more and what could happen and im snapped out of it.

Though more often than not there's so many moments in this game where I feel like i wouldve benefited from keeping a log
or some kind of journal to quick look and brush up on things thatve happened previously, its a remaster of a PS1 visual novel so its not really like i expected the world of it with quality of life things thatre commonplace now

it's just also I put off writing this review because ive been scrambling to fill in the gaps of my knowledge and bits where i was confused getting cleared up lolol. Which is STRANGE because I feel like I was more palpably confused about THIS than killer7, which by all intents and purposes doesnt make any fucking sense because this has 10 times the dialogue killer7 even has. I think its the fact that my theorizing and such amounted to next to nothing with this game and that knocked the wind out of my sails about it, silly as it sounds. Like I won't really go into spoilers here but there's numerous occassions where i've put two and two together because im insane Or because of my prior expectations from killer7

and then all of a sudden the game just kind of walks stark ass naked in my face with my theory proven right like halfway through the game or even earlier than that
So then im sitting there like.. the fuck? then where is this gonna go? And then in the final couple cases it felt like i was getting the plot dumping of the century like the game had taco tuesday and laxatives ala mode stuffed up it's brain and i was seeing it all bounce forth

This was a double edged sword feeling to me because while I do think the narrative of this game is really good i think its absolutely fair to say that retaining certain things that may or may not be relevant later on to the story is something that not everyone is gonna be able to do, shit i was barely able to but maybe thats because this game didnt hit a very specific stimulant in my brain
And thats not necessarily it's fault in particular
What is its fault is that I think that this doesnt really feel like an adventure game or a puzzle game like the genres slapped onto it imply and its just feels like a cool, stylized visual novel

The puzzles I just could not care about whatsoever and I think its actually kind of funny in retrospect that just tapping a button solves them if you really just only care about the story, which ADMITTEDLY i started to only care about the story!

This is all why I said i think I like The Silver Case rather than I think i LOVE the silver case or that i LOVE the silver case, I think characters like Tokio, Sumio, Kusabi, Morikawa and Hachisuka are interesting characters but I think i walked away from this game with specifically Tokio and Kusabi as favorites overall. i think there's something that just wasnt.. igniting in me like i wanted to happen with this game and my expectations were loud while this is very much an inside voice game so to speak, in the fact of the matter that it's gameplay is subtle.. its nuance with its writing.. is subtle
It's very open and upfront about the thinkpieces on crime, cops, and how changing shit from the inside doesnt work out and how often times government will manufacture something to keep higher power regardless of the intent..

but, yeah. btw I was so confused at some points infact that Im embarrassed to admit I didnt connect two and two that Tokio in Transmitter and Tokio in Placebo were the same guy. like. probably my dumbest moment ever when i realized that by Parade LMFAO

final thoughts: if youre keen on visual novels as one of your favorite mediums of games then you have absolutely no reason to skip out on this but if youre lukewarm or neutral on the genre this may not hit the same as some of suda's other stuff. i fully understand why this was one of his breakout magnum opus, but go into this expecting a nearly completely narratively driven experience and Please
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!! REMEMBER YOU CAN SCROLL UP AND DOWN WITH YOUR MOUSE, THERE WAS SO MANY TIMES WHEN I WAS WALKING UP AND AROUND AND I FORGOT YOU COULD DO THAT IN THE GAME AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

EDIT: I don't think this really represents my opinion on the game anymore. In the 8 months (fucking hell...) since I finished this I've grown a lot more fond of it. I still think the writing is kinda clunky tho (Although from what I've heard that might be an issue with this translation)


I don't really get the undying praise for it but I'm glad it exists.

The way it uses naming a character after yourself is very interesting more games should do something like that.

Visual and Aural masterpiece but outside of kamuidrome and parade i didn't really find much of the writing in Transmitter that interesting. placebo chapters were comfy tho.

I think playing this over the course of like 5 months definitely hampered my experience a bit lol, might like this more on a replay who knows ¯\(ツ)/¯

ENG:

The stars know everything. I remember
a song like that. But the fact that they
know everything is a sad thing. There are
more things in this world that it’s
better not to know.

The Silver Case is a visual novel. One of those that barely has any gameplay. It’s hard to say it even has mechanics, even for the few puzzles it has, the game gives you a handy button to automatically resolve them. Yes, I say this as a negative. I don’t like the almost non-existent gameplay it has, for the first few hours I felt a bit bored ‘cause I was reading on and on, getting interrupted at every step I made to explain the one or two important mechanics, and it didn’t felt like anything was going on with the plot. I also say this as a negative, the start of the game is a bit slow and as a tutorial it’s not that great either. It doesn’t even has a choice-making system, so your role as a player is rather tiny. For the first hours, I thought I wasn’t gonna like it, and had it been any other game, it could have been that way. The fact that the game doesn’t seems to do any real effort to involve the player as part of the world (although it does some stuff I won’t tell), means that all the effort is carried by the narrative, and turns out that this is one of best narrative I’ve had the pleasure to experience in a video game.

The beginning, and here I refer to the first one or two hours, is rather slow and at first it doesn’t seem to add much to the overarching narrative. To not be that boring, the game presents the narrative in a more dynamic way than most VNs, with different pictures, colours and scenery, and from time to time, it lets us walk and interact with the world in a very limited way. It looks like the beginning is setting up the ground for a typical crime thriller about catching a serial killer, but as it goes on, things are not what they seem and a more sinister reality is hidden beneath the surface. I don’t want to start spoiling the plot, so let’s talk about characters. Their characterization is excellent. They’re pretty much just text attached to static images, but their personalities and how they’re written makes them differentiable from one another. So differentiable that I ended up giving most of them a unique voice while reading. Even the Barman (yes, that’s how they name him), which has a minor role, is an interesting character. Kusabi must be, without a doubt, the best character in the game, alongside Tokio Morishima. Both are great characters to me, each in their own way. Kusabi is the typical cop that is always bitter and never smiles; Morishima is a nobody that gets involved in all this mess without knowing why or what are his objectives. Kusabi, although not the protagonist, he might as well be, but Morishima is actually the main character of his own story. Because yeah, the story is split in two. There’s Transmitter, where you follow the investigation carried out by the HC Unit (Kusabi & Co.), but there’s also Placebo, where Morishima investigates whatever the HC Unit puts their noses in. Transmitter has us in the most Noir side of the story while Placebo has us in the most personal, day to day life of a dude who apparently doesn’t have anything to do with all this crap besides being paid to dig on it.

As the story goes on, it’s not entirely clear what is actually going on or where is it leading to. The narrative is deliberately obtuse to evoke the feeling of mystery, and makes everything feel like a big puzzle to solve although it’s extremely linear. It’s true that by the end, everything seems to be more or less resolved with some loose ends, but before getting there, all is shrouded in an aura of mystery and you never exactly know what is real and what is not, what is true and what not, or how much truth there is in what we’re being told. Once the second third is over, the game takes a wild turn really hard to predict and it’s then when you start to realize what this is all about. The game turns from a simple crime investigation to what I can best describe as surreal existentialism. It’s then when the game seems to ask itself almost philosophical questions about fate, what it is to be a human being, the meaning of life, and probably more stuff I might have overlooked. All of this is left in the background as secondary ideas as they don’t get much development, but they don’t need to, because The Silver Case is not about (just) those ideas. What The Silver Case is actually about, is truth. Not about the importance of truth or something similar, at least not just that, but truth in more general terms, as a concept in a philosophical sense I’d say. Crime thrillers have always been about truth after all. In this case, the truth is much more crude than the hidden intentions of a serial killer. Truth might take you to places and to see stuff you wouldn’t think possible, and in the end, it may turn out that it was best to not know it. Truth would have ended showing up sooner or later with no prior warning anyways, and by then you need to be prepared to face it. It’s here where the “Kill The Past” thing originates from. As I stated early in the review, the beginning of the game is rather slow and seemingly uneventful, but there’s a moment in the game where everything sort of clicks and starts making sense. The more you search for truth, the harder it gets to draw where it starts and ends and how far things are gonna go. There are more things in this world that it’s better not to know, and you’ll understand at some point. They say ignorance is bliss. It may be true after all.

ESP:

The stars know everything. I remember
a song like that. But the fact that they
know everything is a sad thing. There are
more things in this world that it’s
better not to know.

The Silver Case es una novela visual. Novela visual de las que no tienen jugabilidad ninguna. De hecho, a duras penas se puede decir que tenga mecánicas, y encima, los pocos puzzles que tiene ni siquiera hace falta que los resuelvas tú, ya que el juego pone un botón bastante cómodo para resolverlos por ti y que no tengas mucho que hacer. Sí, esto que comento es algo negativo. No me gusta la casi nula jugabilidad que tiene, durante las primeras horas llegué a estar un tanto aburrido ya que solo leía y leía, además me cortaban constantemente a cada paso que daba para explicar las una o dos mecánicas importantes, y tampoco sentía que estuviese pasando nada. Esto también es un comentario negativo, considero el inicio del juego un tanto lento, y como tutorial tampoco es nada del otro mundo y puede llegar a aburrir. Por no tener, no tiene siquiera un sistema de toma de decisiones, con lo que tu papel como jugador es bastante minúsculo. Durante las primeras horas pensaba que no me iba a gustar, y si hubiese sido cualquier otro juego, seguramente así hubiese sido. El hecho de que el juego no parezca hacer ni el más mínimo esfuerzo en involucrar al jugador como parte del mundo (aunque sí que tiene algunas cosas que prefiero no desvelar), significa que todo el trabajo lo va a tener que hacer la narrativa, y se ha dado que es una de las mejores narrativas que he tenido el placer de vivir en un videojuego.

El comienzo, y aquí me refiero a las primeras horas, resulta un tanto lento y en principio no parece añadir mucho a la narrativa principal. Para no aburrir tanto, el juego presenta su narrativa de una manera más dinámica que en la mayoría de NV, con diferentes planos, colores y escenarios, y de vez en cuando nos deja caminar e interactuar de manera muy limitada con el entorno. El inicio parece sentar las bases de lo que sería el típico thriller de atrapar a un asesino en serie, pero según avanza la trama, las cosas no son lo que aparentan y cosas más siniestras se esconden bajo la superficie. No quiero adentrarme mucho en spoilers, con lo que voy a hablar un poco de los personajes. Me parece excelente la caracterización de cada personaje. Pese a que no sean más que texto adjunto a imágenes estáticas, sus personalidades y la manera en la que están escritos hace que sean muy diferenciables unos de otros. Tan diferenciables son que yo mismo acabé poniendo voces específicas a casi todo el elenco mientras leía. Hasta el Barman (sí, se llama así) es un personaje interesante, y eso que lo ves poco. Kusabi tiene que ser, con diferencia, el mejor personaje de todo el juego, junto a Tokio Morishima. Ambos me parecen personajes excelentes, cada uno a su manera. Kusabi es el poli que está siempre amargado y que no sonríe nunca; Morishima es un cualquiera que se ha visto envuelto en todo esto por azares del destino sin tener del todo claro cuál es su objetivo. Kusabi, si bien no es el protagonista, bien podría serlo, y Morishima si que es el protagonista de su propia trama, porque sí, la historia está dividida en dos. Por una parte tienes Transmitter, donde sigues los quehaceres de la HCU (Kusabi y compañia), y por otra está Placebo, donde Morishima investiga en paralelo y por cuenta propia todo lo que tiene algo que ver con lo que la HCU investiga. Transmitter nos lleva a la parte más policíaca de la historia mientras que Placebo nos acerca, de manera muy personal, al día a día de una persona que en principio no parece tener razones personales para estar involucrado.

Conforme la historia sigue adelante, no queda del todo claro qué es lo que está pasando o a dónde va a parar todo esto. La narrativa es deliberadamente obtusa en según que aspectos para evocar la sensación de misterio, y hace que se sienta todo como un gran puzle a resolver pese a que sea extremadamente lineal. Ya por el final, es cierto que todo queda más o menos resuelto, aunque sí que deja algunos cabos sueltos, pero hasta llegar ahí todo está envuelto en un aura de misterio y nunca termina de quedar claro que es cierto y que no, que es real y que no, o cuanta verdad hay en lo que nos cuentan. Ya terminado el segundo tercio, la historia da un cambio radical que es muy difícil ver venir y es entonces cuando empiezas a entender de lo que va en realidad. Da un giro que pasa al juego de una simple resolución de un caso criminal a lo que mejor puedo describir como existencialismo surrealista. Es ahí cuando empieza a hacerse preguntas cuasi filosóficas sobre el destino, lo que es ser humano, el sentido de la vida y algunas cosas más que seguramente habré pasado por alto. Todo esto queda en un plano secundario ya que no se desarrolla lo suficiente, pero no lo necesita, ya que The Silver Case no va de (solo) esos temas. De lo que en realidad trata The Silver Case es de la verdad. No de la importancia de la verdad o algo así, al menos no solo de eso, sino de la verdad más a rasgos generales, como concepto en un sentido filosófico diría yo. Los thrillers criminales siempre han sido sobre la verdad, después de todo. Y en este caso, la verdad es mucho más cruda que las intenciones secretas de un asesino en serie. La verdad puede llevarte a lugares y hacer ver cosas que no creerías posibles, y puede que al final resulte que lo mejor era no saberla. De todas formas, la verdad acabará llegando tarde o temprano y sin previo aviso, y para entonces hay que estar preparado para saber cómo afrontarla. Es de ahí de donde viene lo de “Kill The Past”. Si bien, como al principio dije, el comienzo del juego resulta un poco lento y no parece aportar mucho, hay un momento en el juego en el que todo hace clic y empieza a tener sentido. Cuanto más buscas por la verdad, más difícil es dibujar dónde empieza y dónde termina y cómo de lejos va a llegar todo esto. Hay cosas en este mundo que sería mejor no saber, y en algún momento lo acabarás entendiendo. Dicen que la ignorancia es una bendición, quizás sea cierto después de todo.

One of those games where the hype you had for the game kinda overcomes what the game itself is. I'd known of this game for a pretty long time and was enamored with the art style/aesthetics and general story telling but there wasn't any official access for it in NA until fairly recently.

Having finally gotten around to it, it's a solid enough adventure title but isn't lacking in flaws. I think the biggest stopping point for some will be the controls. The examination, interaction, and just general movement in the game is a bit clunky and confusing. If you can stick with it and get past that there's a pretty compelling narrative to be found. I can't help but feel if this was more widely available at the time of original release that this would be as notorious as MGS2 in terms of plot.

Glad I finally gave this a go even if it didn't blow me away completely.

[Review in English and pt-br]

One of the most important games I have played in my life, which shows IN 1999 how this medium can be used to narrate a surreal and absurdly authorial storyline. It is amazing how many things are said in this game without the need for words, all you have to do is interpret. In The Silver Case, we get to know several characters in a greater depth than their words alone can do, because their behavior, the artistic trace of the portraits of other characters they see, the soundtrack that can even be cacophonous, all this is an extremely conscious choice for this purpose.
This story is dense, it's political and also intimate, but it becomes a little difficult to recommend to the "casual" audience because unfortunately the gameplay was not updated in the remaster/remake, continuing to be very bureaucratic in the way of receiving commands and having its plot demanding certain actions from the player to advance in the script, so it ends up being something that only players with experience with adventures games and/or games with a larger than usual amount of text will really experience. But for those who do: Kill the Past and move on, see the light ahead and kill the darkness you project onto the path.

Um dos jogos mais importantes que joguei na vida, que mostra EM 1999 como essa mídia pode ser usada para narrar um enredo surrealista e absurdamente autoral. É impressionante a quantidade de coisas ditas nesse jogo sem a necessidade de palavras, basta interpretar. Em The Silver Case, conhecemos diversos personagens em uma profundidade maior que suas falas sozinhas podem fazer, pois o seu comportamento, o traço artístico dos retratos de outros personagem que eles enxergam, a trilha sonora que pode ser até mesmo cacofonia, tudo isso é uma escolha extremamente consciente para esse fim.
Essa história é densa, é política e também íntima, mas se torna um pouco difícil de se recomendar para o público "casual" porque infelizmente a gameplay não foi atualizada no remaster/remake, continuando a ser bastante burocrática na forma de receber comandos e tendo seu enredo exigente de certas ações do jogador para avançar no script, então acaba sendo algo que apenas jogadores com experiência com jogos adventures e/ou jogos com uma quantidade maior que o comum de texto vão experimentar pra valer. Mas, para aqueles que o fizerem: Mate o Passado e siga em frente, enxergue a luz adiante e mate a escuridão que você projeta no caminho trilhado.

Suda51 made "MGS 2" 2 years before Hideo Kojima, but we didn't know that until 2016. Writing in this game is godly, best internet and political based narrative in any game. I still can't believe suda wrote this game 21 years ago.

Sadly gameplay wise it's very outdated and barely playable.

Update: On a retrospect, this lacks a lot. But I still love the Silver Case nonetheless just not as much as I used to

SUDA51's first game, The Silver Case is a pretty fucking out there meditation on crime, life, perfection, and blasting cigs in front of your computer all day while talking to your pet turtle. The story develops a bit like a Pynchon novel: the player flounders around and attempts to make sense of vast political and industrial conspiracies that may or may not exist. The gameplay such as it exists is rather limited and repetitive, but perhaps this is intentional on behalf of the developer. The characters live repetitive and boring lives. Tokio is a piece of shit dirtbag. The humor is kind of juvenile, tons of fucks flying around. Yet there is a well-constructed mystery at the center of it, one that demands to be explored.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I've observed in SUDA51 games is his intense awareness that his work is being read. I think this comes to a head in his most recent game, Travis Strikes Again, which is something of a love letter to the medium of games generally as well as his previous work, but this tendency is observable here as well. As Tokio and the Heinous Crimes Unit attempt to piece together the mystery of Kamui Uehara and The Silver Case, a friendly bartender explicates the idea of "the perfect reader." The reader who is perfectly positioned--who has the proper context and background knowledge--to enable them to really understand what a writer is saying. This nods to the game's bifurcated story, a player will not understand anything playing only one half. But it's an awareness by SUDA that his games are being read, thought about, analyzed.

This game isn't for everyone. I found the salty, lazy nature of Tokio and the HCU charming, but I can see why other people might just be annoyed. Women are not treated very well here. Some may take issue with how a lot of the political intrigue remains beyond the understanding of the player, mysteries are not entirely resolved. For me at least, the game is just so weird, it gets to you in unexpected ways. Plus great music. Flower, Sun, and Moon next.

So many components of the Silver Case are absolutely amazing. The dialogue and writing in general is good, the aesthetic and presentation is wonderfully executed, the characters are great and the Soundtrack is utterly fantastic. And when it comes together, especially for some of its better sequences, it's really something quite special, and the vibes throughout are wonderful. At it's best, the silver case is creepy and offbeat and covers a broad scope of topics with interesting ideas and "what ifs", and its incredibly compelling.

The thing that prevents it achieving greatness though, for my money, is the pacing and gameplay segments. The gameplay segments are just flat out shit. They control badly, and mostly consist of you being stopped every single step you take to hear something unneccessary. I get Suda is a dude that loves his downtime and slowing things to a crawl to allow time for reflection and shit, but in the silver case it just breeds frustration for me, in scenes that could be the game at it's best. Lifecut should be an amazing chapter full of revelations and things paying off, but instead it's lumbered with the worst gameplay sections in the entire game and in general, things just taking too long.

The Placebo chapters I also find pretty weak. Im almost Glad that I missed them entirely until case 3 of transmitter because Placebo 1 in particular is absolute misery. They do help clear the fog of the transmitter chapters but they're so unreasonably long and the gameplay sections are so ludicrously nothing that I found it hard not to lose attention attention at times.

All in all TSC is really not much longer than No More Heroes or even Travis Strikes Again, and whilst it does cram more in that time it fails to really be as impactful to me as either of those games whilst also feeling about twice as long as it really is.

But I do think it's a good game. The vibes carry it super hard, as do a couple of the characters and the superb presentation, and it's best chapters and moments are utterly exceptional. Its just, in a sense, a game that almost feels like less than the sum of it's parts at the end of the day for me, which is a real shame.

Also, brb gonna try telling people "i've killed my past" as an excuse for not giving them back the 50,000 yen I owe them.

lend me 50,000 yen

aesthetically very reminiscent of jrpgs of its contemporary from the late 90s with a cool as fxck aesthetic ala racing lagoon. chapter select is depicted as dj deck cant get any cooler than that. the way the assets are put together throughout the vn with the portraits of the characters, backgrounds, and dialogue placed/layered throughout the screen gives off the feeling of a real time evidence board mixed with surveillance recordings; fitting for a story about solving crimes. plot being broken up by cases with an accompanying evidence report chapter is a good way for the story to maintain mystery while also delivering just enough information so the player isn't too lost. it is almost like the player themselves is also a detective trying to figure it all out. it got to the point where i became one of the characters with how seamless i would wake up and log on to the computer to read my emails and feed my pet turtle. dialogue got me actually laughing out loud and the ost is effective. however, its age shows with how clunky the controls were during the exploration and puzzle bits which took a bit to get used to but became second nature eventually. i welcomed how slow the game was sometimes but i do understand that it is not for everybody. imperfect game but the imperfect can be considered perfect by virtue of its imperfection (lol) so thank you Grasshopper Manufacture Inc. recommend if u wanna be cool tho cuz only cool people played this game

One problem I have with VNs is that they always feel me too much like novels, while the visual ascpect always somewhat lacking in my eyes. The silver case fixes that problem with me with cutting a lot of fluf VN dialogue as well as having the coolest visual style imagineable.

But what's a novel without a good story and the silver case brings that in spades with 2 different campaigns that focuses on 2 different views, the authorities within the 24th wards and the civilains within it. Possible one of the best denpa works I've consumed right next something like SEL or the documentary "The New God".