proud repulsion; the wriggling extremities of capital and hyperneurotic shoot-to-kill police horror viewed thru a queasy dutch angle. the malignant hypnotic wave of the gig economy, conditioned response, consumer slop, microplasticked newborns, get-rich-quick schemes, and salacious newsreel highlights as accelerated further thru nihilistic excess

indebted to bataillean self-laceration and mystic economism; transformative violence, sacrificial hedonism, and refusal of poise undercut by knowingly grotesque laughter. trauma and transgression as freefalling elevators toward the most terrestrial outcomes; absurd monuments erected to the unwell; flickering lighthouses and garbled siren songs drawing shipwreckers into the same crashes again and again until they find an exit

organs spilling out and lining your pockets, stock markets juddering senselessly and pointlessly, bank accounts engorging and deflating. every exchange, every action inherently transactional in nature; shared psychosis hitting fever pitch

work/life balance as infinite on-call uniformity

body as pure reflection of environment

self as perfect corporate weapon

Looking back on the games I played over the course of my childhood, I've noticed that some of my most memorable gaming expirences came from Rare. Before I discovered Banjo-Kazooie, I played and beat the GBA port of Donkey Kong Country 2 and the DS remake of Diddy Kong Racing, but out of those two games I found Diddy Kong Racing DS to be much more interesting. I frequently looked up information online on how to unlock everything that the game had to offer. Apon doing so, I eventually discovered that there was a whole other version of the game that came before it with a few characters that weren't in the DS version. This is how I discovered the existence of Banjo. It wasn't until I connected my Xbox 360 to the internet for the first time a few years later that I would rediscover Banjo-Kazooie and download the demos of this game and its sequel Tooie. Not long after, I was able to purchase both of them and enjoy them to my heart's content. The Banjo-Kazooie games quickly became some of my all-time favorites, leading me into developing a fascination for the developers that made them. I've even attempted speedrunning this game on the 360 version multiple times with my best time being around 5 hours. Having just finished another playthrough of this masterpiece, I will say this is easily Rare's best collect-a-thon and one of the best 3d platformers ever made.

There are a lot of positive things to say about Banjo-Kazooie. The graphics are nice, the characters are funny & memorable, the worlds are enjoyable to explore, and the size of said worlds are just right. One big issue with some of the games that came after this one such as Donkey Kong 64 & Banjo-Tooie are that the worlds are just too damn big and require a lot of backtracking. WIth Banjo-Kazooie, all the objectives & goodies are scattered throughout the levels in a way that isn't intrusive. The only exception being one jiggy you'll have to backtrack for in the middle part of the game, but unless you're aiming for 100% completion it is totally optional.

As far as negatives go, the controls can be a little confusing. It could be since my last playthrough was a couple years ago, but I had some trouble remembering the imputs for a few moves or just accidently doing the wrong thing. It was never something I thought about until I played this version but that's probably because of the obtuse design of the controller. The other issue is something that the 360 version fixes which involves having to recollect the Jinjos and musical notes if you died. It can be very aggrivating to go through the process of getting them all again, especially if you die in any of the later worlds. However, the reason this issue exists is because of hardware limitations so its somewhat excusable.

Banjo-Kazooie is Rare's most iconic IP and rightfully so. Its tight level design, beautiful worlds, and memorable cast cement this game as the best 3d platformer on the N64. Between Banjo-Kazooie & Mario 64, I'd say the bear & bird duo gave the Italian plumber a run for his money.

Horay a new Silent Hill game which is obviously inspired by P.T. and it has been leaked years ago and its free but it's not. Wait what? Yes, Sony marketed this as a F2P game but decided to hide it behind a PS+ subscription paywall, at least in Germany they did. It's like saying "You can watch Stranger Things for free on Netflix" without mentioning the fact that you need a subscription for it. Or saying the stuff in the game pass is free, no it's not. 'Cause you are paying for the subscription.

I have started playing the SH games just a few years simply because you can't just buy them on Steam or PS4/5. What I liked about Silent Hill The Short Message are the set pieces which we're very beautiful and interesting. The design of the Cherry Blossom Monster from Masahiro Ito was awesome and hearing the score from Akira Yamaoka in the background was also great. Good to have them both back. But that's about it tbh. The storytelling mostly through notes which I'm not a fan of because it's the laziest way of storytelling. Dubbing in the live action scenes was also not the best and why including them in the first place ? The gameplay is pretty much none existing, you walk through a building collect notes and there is a chase sequence after every 20-30ish minutes. These chase sequences are just trial and error until you find the right order in which you have to go through the doors. Sadly the Facial expressions are pretty bad and the performance is terrible.
Overall this game did absolutely nothing for me, the storytelling is too much into your face for a SH Game and on top of that the monster was more annonying than scary not. Also how is this set in Germany? This looks nothing like Germany, it's just America but not Germany. But I can see why some people like it. I'm still really excited for SH2 Remake.

Games I finished in 2024 ranked

There seems to be a prevalent expectation that as games evolved, they also became exponentially more approachable. Higher budgets resulted in smoother graphics and fewer bugs. More complex controls (adding left/right triggers, then adding one/two joysticks, then dabbling with motion inputs, etc) gave players a firmer grasp over their characters. AI became more predictable as their algorithms became more intricate to capture a wider range of responses. In a sense, as the technology expanded, the resulting products seemingly became more streamlined to better suit the player’s needs while more thoroughly capturing a developer’s vision.

Team Ico has never been about following tradition, however. If anything, the evolution of their titles embodies the regression of player control, choosing to instead utilize technological advancements not just to refine its premise via "design by subtraction" as chump has pointed out, but to deliver an entirely new experience altogether. Ico was a classic tale of boy meets girl; the girl had to be freed from her cage and pulled around the castle, as the boy protected her against everything in her way to prevent her demise. Shadow of the Colossus, however, was a story concerned with the struggle over control. The lone wanderer, in his quest to revive Mono, hunts down various several-story colossi capable of swatting him about like a fly. In the resulting desperate dance of death, he at first struggles to climb their hulking figures, hanging on for dear life until he discovers their weak points and stabs the colossi while they helplessly flail about. In other words, it's a game about trying to regain any semblance of control until you realize after the fact that the only shadow left was the literal shadow cast by Wander over their fallen corpse.

The Last Guardian then, can be thought of as the natural evolution of Team Ico titles, in that it melds previous design sensibilities and thrives off of disempowering the player throughout its entirety. Trico, the player’s companion and a cross between cat and bird, is essentially the analog to Wander’s horse in Shadow of the Colossus, Agro. Fumito Ueda designed Agro as a companion rather than just a vehicle, and had his team develop specific movement algorithms that would allow Agro to steer herself without the player’s explicit control, forcing players to put their trust in their steed during certain fights emphasizing bow aiming. Ueda and his new team at GenDesign iterated upon this idea, explicitly creating environments where the player was forced to rely upon Trico’s actions to progress and thus develop dependency between the boy and his companion.

While the game can be thought of as an inversion of Ico in this sense, its design influence upon The Last Guardian should not go overlooked, particularly in how the game captures Ico’s physicality. Ico’s key strength was establishing a sense of presence through minimalist puzzles that lacked overly gamey elements, namely in how Ico interacted with his surroundings. Players are subtly guided into climbing chains, pulling levers, sitting on stone sofas to save, and most importantly, holding down R1 to hold Yorda by the hand around the castle and pull her out of danger whenever captured. The Last Guardian innovates upon this by combining several of the traversable elements and the companion into one. To better navigate the vast ruins, the boy must guide Trico and utilize their tall body of climbable feathers in order to scale heights, while occasionally dragging around their large tail and dangling it over ledges to safely climb down. Most importantly, you get to pet Trico whenever you feel like it to comfort your friend in both their happiest and most emotionally taxing moments. In both Ico and The Last Guardian, the player’s constant contact with both the environment and their companion keeps them firmly rooted within its constructed sense of reality by regularly reminding them of their companion’s physical presence.

This physicality would not be as significant without the lessons learned from Shadow of the Colossus however, not just regarding AI behavior but also specifically in how it adapts the game’s sense of scale. Trico is large, and the boy is small. As mentioned previously, Trico can utilize their size to lean against walls and give the boy a step up, but they can also utilize their weight to hold down large chains and swipe away at imposing bodies of armor. Meanwhile, the boy is much more agile and can fit into otherwise inaccessible small spaces by Trico, squeezing through narrow tunnels and gaps in metal gates to pull switches and let his partner through. This obvious difference in size creates consistent room for contrast, not just in how the two characters differ in terms of functionality but also in terms of their scale when measured against the traversed liminal spaces of the ruins, constantly transforming from immense empty rooms to constrained and suffocating tunnels and corridors.

What is particularly interesting is not just The Last Guardian’s disempowerment or sense of scale, but rather what it manages to achieve with said elements and the resulting contrast to establish interdependency between the two characters and solidify their relationship. The combat, an almost complete inverse of Ico’s combat, is the most obvious example. Rather than defending Yorda by whacking shadow enemies with a stick, the roles have been reversed, in that the player must rely upon Trico to guard against scores of possessed armor as to avoid getting kidnapped himself. Even so, the game plays around with this idea of vulnerability, shifting the onus of responsibility about as the boy often finds himself in positions where he must actively support or protect Trico, such as disposing of glass eyes that scare his friend or scrambling to pull a nearby switch to lower a bridge and give Trico room to climb up to safety. The game is even willing to occasionally break its own rules to demonstrate how this sense of caring evolves past its defined guidelines. In almost any other game, this mechanical inconsistency would be regarded as a flaw, but it is this sense of doubt that creates room for the relationship to build from in the first place, and is perhaps the game’s most understated strength.

This is not to say that The Last Guardian was bereft of limitations regarding the execution of its ambitious scope. The most pressing challenge that Ueda and his team faced was how to balance its constructed sense of reality with regards to player expectations; that is, it had to find meaningful ways to commit to its vision of establishing the relationship between the boy and Trico while also acknowledging and appeasing players that would otherwise get lost or frustrated. Perhaps the most obvious downgrade from Ico is the presence of constant button prompts appearing on-screen to alert the players on how to better control the boy and instruct Trico; while the frequency of the prompts lessens over time, it is a slight disappointment that the game doesn’t simply force the players to experiment with inputs and commands as a more subtle and trusting substitute. This downfall however, is an anomaly amongst The Last Guardian’s other shortcomings, as it manages to successfully disguise many of its other concessions and limitations. There’s a classic “escape from the collapsing structure” sequence where all you do is hold forward and jump, but the game gets away with it because the player is used to being framed as a helpless participant. There’s occasional voice-over dialogue hints whenever the player has been stuck for a while in the same area, but it feels far less intrusive than Dormin’s repeated and booming hints in Shadow of the Colossus because the game has already established itself as a retrospective re-telling from the now grown boy’s point of view. Trico doesn’t respond immediately to the boy’s commands when being told where to go, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t function like clockwork and would need time to spot and process the situation from their own point of view, so the lag in response feels justified. It doesn’t matter that certain isolated elements of the game would crumble under scrutiny. What matters is that the situational context to allow players to suspend their disbelief is almost always present; in other words, the illusion holds up.

I’m still learning more about the game to this day. There are so many little details that I wouldn’t have spotted upon a first playthrough, and it’s an absolute joy finally getting to gush upon spotting them in replays. Of course it makes sense that you can’t just issue specific commands to Trico at the very start as a sequence-break despite not being taught by the game; after all, Trico hasn’t had time to observe you and mimic your actions to carry out such commands. Of course the hostile creatures that look exactly like your friend behave similarly; how can you then use your preconceived knowledge of their physiology to aid your friend in a fight against their copycat? I also can’t help but appreciate how GenDesign condensed so much learning within its introduction; in the first ten minutes alone, you’re hinted on how to later deal with the bodies of armor (the magical runes that appear before waking up are the exact same as the runes that appear when grabbed, and are dispelled in the same manner of furiously mashing buttons), you get to figure out how Trico’s eyes change colors depending upon whether they’re mesmerized or hostile, and it quickly establishes the premise of building up trust with a very wary creature that’s more than likely to misunderstand or ignore you at first. Combine all of these nuances with the game’s ability to destabilize and diversify playthroughs via Trico’s innate curiosity and semi-unpredictable instincts, and you get a game that becomes easier to appreciate the more the player familiarizes themselves with its inner workings.

I think a lot of criticism for The Last Guardian ultimately comes down to less of what we perceive the game is and more of what we perceive the game isn’t. It’s not a fully player-controlled puzzle-platforming game like Ico, it’s not a puzzle-combat game with spectacle like Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s certainly not a classic companion escort-quest game where you can just order Trico around like a robot and expect automatic results every time. Instead of focusing on the progression of more complex controls and puzzles, The Last Guardian is focused on the progression of a seemingly more complex relationship. I’m not going to pretend that everyone will get something out of this game, as it definitely requires a good deal of patience and player investment to meet the game halfway. It’s certainly more difficult to appreciate given its lack of influence unlike Ico or its lack of exhilarating boss encounters unlike Shadow of the Colossus. That said, it’s this element of danger in its ability to commit to its vision while alienating impatient players that makes it such a compelling title once it finally clicks. Many before me have pointed out how powerful the bond between the player and Trico felt upon learning from others that improperly caring for Trico results in your companion stubbornly ignoring the player’s commands; after all, volume swells cannot exist without contrast to provide room for growth. Perhaps this is why at the end of the day, I find myself transfixed by every word that Fumito Ueda has to offer. In an era where developers feel overly concerned with the best and brightest, he doesn’t seem concerned about what video games mean so much as what video games are. I can only hope that someday, he and GenDesign will return to bring us a new title that captures our imagination as thoroughly as many of his works already have for me.

Bater em PIRATAS LOBOS FUTURISTAS é gostoso demais!

(O Dreamcast é um dos consoles que MENOS JOGUEI na vida, conheço pouquíssimos games. Por isso irei tentar jogar alguns jogos dele e aceito sugestões).

Dynamite Cop é um beat n’ Up 3D com quick time events em pequenos momentos. A história é surreal num nível que beira o engraçado: Lobos Piratas Futuristas (???) sequestram um navio com 2 mil pessoas incluindo a filha do presidente. Você e sua equipe são enviados pro navio (Podemos escolher entre 3 personagens sendo 2 homens e 1 mulher).

A gameplay é o grande destaque do jogo. É satisfatório descer a porrada em todo mundo, fora que o cenário das fases são totalmente destrutíveis e interativos (Você pode pegar tudo do cenário pra usar como arma). As armas de fogo também tem uma mecânica muito boa incluindo até uma arma que é um MÍSSEL ANTI AEREO.

Os quick time events são apenas usados como transição de uma fase para a outra, todos muito iguais e sem nenhuma criatividade. Outro ponto negativo é a falta de criatividades nos chefes (Apenas o Boss final é de fato difícil e desenvolvido).

O jogo tem praticamente 1 hora e entregou o que se propôs: Ser um jogo onde você não precisa pensar muito.

PRÓS:
- Jogabilidade ótima.

CONTRAS:
- Quick time events desnecessários.
- História é apenas background.

A gorgeously presented tale about love, war, free will, and fate in all of its beauty, ugliness, joy, and misery.

My honest to goodness first Vanillaware game I've ever dipped into personally (previously watched someone play "13 Sentinels", which inspired me to start looking into Vanillaware), and what a game to start on.

However, before I start gushing about the game endlessly, I just wanna take a moment to talk about some of my minor complaints about the game in a relatively objective manner. To start with, despite the excessive variety the game has (which will be talked about later), I feel that that bosses, both the Mid and Chapter End variety, end up being repeated more than I'd like. Sometimes storylines for the characters have entirely unique encounters (including certain player character bosses), but more often than not you'd be hard pressed to go through a character storyline and NOT re-encounter a fair number of bosses. It's not noticed at first, but definitely more present as the game goes on, with the Armageddon chapter literally being a five End-Boss gauntlet with each of the five characters (you pick which character to use per boss in the run) that must be completed at LEAST four times if you want to see all the cutscenes. The other nitpick sadly happens to be the voice acting. Not the quality of it, as it voices are absolutely top notch, but the script used by the characters can pendulum swing wildly between Shakespearean theater to schoolhouse play. Any given cutscene can be elegant, beautiful, heartfelt, harrowing, triumphant, sorrowful, etc and then a cutscene or two later the dialogue feels a stilted or cheezy (creating some unintentionally funny moments that were probably supposed to be more emotional). An often joked about line between me and my wife (also a fan of the game), is when Cornelius shouted "I have a magic sword!" upon hearing a rather beefy situation dump over the war between the Faeries and King Odin's forces, as if there was a line omitted that would have otherwise made it sound less jarring and narmy. To be fair, most of the good dialogue tends to belong to important characters, and most of the narm charm belongs to side or minor characters, but it trades every now and then. The last thing is that, despite one of the most interesting characters lore wise is present through the game and drops hints about more background info, her personal story instead is a slightly repetitious lore exposition campaign rather than the more personal story that the prior four characters would have. Sure, we do get some personal story, but it's normally quite sidelined by backstory about the world and talk of the big prophecy already talked about at length through the game.

Despite all of this, though, this is STILL very minor in the grand scheme of things. It's still a beautifully woven tale, presented with absolutely dazzling and graceful visuals and artwork, with storytelling that at least half the time sounds like professional theater. It's fascinating to partake in this Norse inspired story as it unfolds slowly and reveals more about how the world of Erion works. Meeting the vast array of inhabitants of the land from humans to valkyries to dwarves to faeries to fire spirits to the beast-cursed Pooka, along with variety of flora and fauna that populate the natural and unnatural worlds. Visiting the largely unique and exquisite locations that greatly contrast with each other in aesthetic, climate, and purpose. And fighting against a large cast of foes aiming to put your current character into an early grave in some of the slickest 2D combat that I rarely see outside of head-to-head anime fighters (hell, even the special moves that you unlock during your journeys can be re-mapped as fighting game commands for extra combo-style nonsense).

The game's presentation, regardless of the minor issues above, is just so close to pitch perfect that it might as well be, and I'm not even purely talking about the visuals here, which, I shall mention again, are absolutely stunning. I'm more referring to the absolutely jaw dropping amount of detail and care that went into this game. From animations, item effect use, character strength and weaknesses during combat, strong homages to other game genres, the mouth watering food-porn, and even the "main menu" in the game. Actually, let me get into that last one. The main menu of the game, after the title screen menu, has the player take control of a little girl in a blue dress, rummaging around an attic filled with books and knickknack, and reading these stories and documents as the game continues to progress. Hell, each transition to major chapters (usually the swaps between cutscenes and gameplay) presents itself as if it were lettering in a fairy-tale storybook, and every historical note found in game transitions to the bookshelf to be read, which can be re-visited by the little girl herself to review the documents separate from story progression. It's such a small piece of the game that just adds so much on top of an extra whimsical charm to an already very whimsical game (despite dark story themes).

Then, there's the combat. Holy crap, the combat. I touched upon it before, but seriously, it's such a delicious feast of violence and character with every slick move, every special utilized, every enemy juggled, and every boss triumph. Animations are as smooth as they are graceful, feeling like they're coming from a top quality arcade game, with all of the precision and control that comes with it. Every hit feels satisfying. Every finisher is heavy. Every special and dazzling with a large pool of utility, especially when mixed with other specials. And the RPG mechanics compliment the action gameplay extremely well, making it feel like a perfect blend of tactics and action. And to think you get FIVE different characters to play with that play WILDLY different from each other. It's kind of insane how much a player can actually do in the game with such vast kits between that many characters. Oh, and movement for the characters is pitch perfect too. Not too quick, and not too slow, but each character has their own personal method of speeding up if the player needs to rush.

This game is a special one. If you ever have the chance to play it, do so. Even if you're the kind of person to one-and-done it, it's a joy to go through from start to finish, and for those that want more than a single runthrough of essentially FIVE DIFFERENT CAMPAIGNS, there's new game plus, a special survival boss gauntlet, and a new difficulty for those that are seeking a challenge that demands near perfection.

So this year I was going to make a conscious effort to work through my backlog. Buy less games, play more etc. That quickly fell apart in the first month however I've done decently at playing them so far and the Odin Sphere remaster Leifthrasir is one of the older PSN purchase I have yet to play . I decided it was a good title to finally finish on my 2024 games played list.

Odin Sphere is the third Vanillaware title I've played at the time of writing. The first was Dragon's Crown, a game I truly hated but perhaps approached wrong expecting a four player Guardian Heroes. The second was 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim which I utterly adored for it's keep you guessing sci-fi story. (First quick review I wrote on Backloggd actually) It's fitting then that Odin Sphere would sit somewhere in the middle between them as a game I like but with a lot of flaws preventing me loving it and hard to actually recommend.

So lets get the positive aspects out in the open first as this game does have a lot of good going for it. Firstly the artwork and animations are pretty stunning. Vanillaware is pretty famous for it's layered 2D art style and animations. The characters and enemies all stand out and the usage of colour and style makes it feel like a painting in motion. To carry on the presentation side of my positive compliments, the whimsical soundtrack is stunning. I especially like the theme song but it's all gorgeous wrapping up Odin Sphere into a great looking and sounding package.

I actually had to double check this was originally a PS2 game because even as a remaster it just doesn't feel like it. Equally it just doesn't play like it came from that console. The combat animations and battles are all so smooth chaining from moves to move. This isn't an insult to the PS2, it was an amazing system, just a compliment to Odin sphere's visuals and animations. When in combat the characters have a large amount of moves with more unlocking as the game progresses. It allows you to chain various moves and skills into large combos. Hitting a group of enemies into a huge combo with perfect blocks to keep the chain is initially really fun. I'm saying initially because this is where my praise of Odin sphere starts to breakdown a bit unfortunately. The game is based around five characters:

- Gwyndolin, a Valkyrie Princess.
- Cornelius, a prince cursed into a beast form.
- Mercedes, a fairy Princess.
- Oswald, an orphaned knight with a cursed sword.
- Velvet, a forest Witch.

Similar to Vanillaware's later title 13 Sentinels each character has their own story arc playing the game from different perspectives before a final chapter linking the full story together. In principal the idea is great. Vanillaware themselves proved this can work wonderfully as a concept. Here it is extremely flawed though. My biggest issue is there is no variety between each character play through. They have different moves, weapons and some unique skills on a couple of them but they are fundamentally the same. When you take that into account along with the fact that each one of them plays through the same 6 locations fighting the same 20 ish enemies and same bosses and no matter how gorgeous Odin Sphere is, and no matter how nicely it plays it just becomes tedious. You have to play all five scenarios to see the ending and by the 4th character I was just feeling burnt out of it all.

Perhaps because it's an action RPG there is a greater downtime between the story sections that could have kept the mystery going for me to want to push onwards but I feel the narrative behind the game overall just isn't strong enough to justify the multiple perspectives. There isn't a huge mystery that gets unveiled or a surprise twist. Each scenario explains a few things more but I didn't find any of it compelling. Everything around the multiple protagonist formula here undermines the story and the mechanics. Some of the story arcs on each character don't quite match with some odd reasons to make sure the character does visit the snow mountain or lava kingdom etc. Having a food resource cooking mini game for levelling is a neat little idea but gets boring having to save ingredients and feed each character as a core way to level them up every time. Exploring never has anything new on different characters, same levels, same equipment. This feels like a 6 hour game padded out to a 30 hour game and the fairy tale esq setting and lore aren't strong enough to carry that.

I hate typing this as I wanted to love Odin Sphere like I did 13 Sentinels. I am however grateful to it for being the game that put Vanillaware on the map, the game that is almost like a later prototype they built on. I'm glad I played it, it's well made, and looks and plays wonderfully it's just lacking meat on it's bones.

I wish you really could just grow sheep from trees.

+ Gorgeous art design.
+ Fun , fast and fluid combat system.
+ Pleasant whimsical soundtrack and great voice acting (I played it in Japanese).

- The game loop is extremely repetitive and the story cannot carry nearly the exact same content from a slightly different view point. Only one real negative but it's a big one.

Silent Hill: The Short Message is the first Silent Hill game I've ever played. I know a decent amount about the original four and PT, but I have never had the opportunity to actually play through them.

With that being said, the beginning 20 minutes of the game almost lost me. I felt like the game was trying to spoon feed the message of the overall experience so quickly and without any ounce of subtlety, which, is a big part of what I know the original four games are pretty good with.

Though as I kept playing, the interactions between the characters, the music, and some of the environmental design, were actually doing a decently well job of getting me invested. There was a specific section towards the end of the game that I won't spoil that genuinely had me like "Damn, that's pretty fucked up"

The gameplay had me pretty uninterested though, as it's a lot of "Click on the interactable, read it, then move on." There's also exactly one puzzle in the entire game, and I solved it by guessing. It felt like this game needed at least a couple more, to break up the loop of walking from note to note, then the occasional chase sequence.

Overall, the message of the game is nothing you haven't already seen before, and has been done a lot better. But what's here actually felt like they were genuinely taking it seriously. Like testing the waters for a brand new game in the future. I do feel they did get the feeling of Silent Hill down.

And as long as they figure out what works and what doesn't, I think there's a good possibility for the next Silent Hill game to be really solid.

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.