If Alone in the Dark 2 doubles down on the worst parts of its predecessor, Alone in the Dark 3, at the very least, expands on what I most happened to enjoy out of… what was otherwise a rather frustrating follow-up. Key to this is the choice in setting: as a compliment to the pirate themed Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3 goes full spaghetti western, taking you to a full-on ghost town in the middle of the Mojave, fighting zombie cowboys, interacting with… perhaps not the most sensitive depiction of Native American culture. It’s certainly rather unique — compared to the areas typically used even in today’s survival horror — and the game compounds this with a rather irrelevant, oftentimes silly tone. Anything can happen, and the game is not afraid of you not taking it seriously. There’s a section where you reincarnate as a cougar and you kill werewolves. Dropping down holes is the most Looney Tunes animation and it’s a coinflip whether doing so will kill you or let you progress. Carnby states that his current situation has left him Alone in the Dark at least, like, three separate times. It’s goofy as hell, and it’s such a blast. So much of the fun was just seeing what the game was going to do next.

As far as the actual plot goes, you play as Edward Carnby, one of the player characters of the first game, ascended to being the main protagonist in the second. Dubbed the ‘Supernatural Private Eye’ after his previous successes, Carnby receives another case: the disappearance of a film crew in a ghost town, amongst their number Emily Hartwood, the other player character of the first game. Heading into the town to investigate, Carnby soon finds that a curse has overtaken Slaughter Gulch, and a gang of zombie outlaws has taken over the ghost town and dispatched the film crew. Alone, and with no method of escape, Carnby must now delve into the depths of Slaughter Gulch, finding his way through, finding help where he can, all in hopes of eliminating the curse over the ghost town and, hopefully, being able to rescue Emily.

Gameplay-wise, Alone in the Dark 3 certainly feels much more iterated than previous entries. While combat returns, and while it’s still… not quite amazing, it’s dialled way back compared to 2’s constant enemy encounters, and there are also a couple changes that make it much less annoying for the player. Your animations (at least until the endgame…) are much quicker, reducing the chance that a given enemy will just stunlock you to death, you have customizable difficulty modifiers that let you fine-tune things to your choosing, and differing kinds of enemy encounters: ones where your goal is less to shoot what’s on screen, more to solve a puzzle to get them off your back. While I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say I fully liked it, it’s certainly an improvement, and I’d certainly say I preferred fighting enemies here than fighting them in either of the first two games. I also enjoyed the upgrades made to the way the game delivers its background lore. While the pages and pages worth of books were… okay enough to manage in previous games, Alone in the Dark 3 varies its approach: sometimes the pages will be annotated with pictures. Sometimes you’ll get some film and you’ll see a projection of previous events. Sometimes it’ll be addressed directly to you. While the tomes of yore are still present, they’re juxtaposed with other methods of delivering the background lore to you, varying the approach and making it so much more easily digestible.

For every step forward, though, a few are taken back. Scrounging around for items feels so much more finicky than it ever did previously. Even if you can see an item on a table or cupboard or desk, you must use the Search command to initiate a lengthy animation when just walking towards it was enough to work in previous games. The process of using them also feels so randomly specific. You can have the item you need, you can know where to use it, and you’re still going to waste time trying to use it and failing because you haven’t found the exact spot and position the game wants you to use it. Sometimes I felt like the game was glitching out and not letting me progress despite having the correct answer, which really played well when the game started actually glitching out and forcing me to reload near the end. Puzzle solutions feel like they’ve become more esoteric: I think the whole thing with the miner you have to whip/specifically kill with a gold bullet has been covered well enough, but as a whole I’m… not sure how I could’ve solved some of these puzzles, at least without major trial and error. There’s a moment where you have to jump from platform to platform to avoid falling into a river of lava (don’t ask, I don’t know why either) with a core mechanic being to jump on certain pillars to make more pillars emerge from the ground. You reach the end, with one more pillar you need to raise… which doesn’t come up. Is the answer to the conundrum to, say, go back and jump on one of the side pillars you skipped? No, stupid, obviously you need to use the amulet in your inventory you’ve already used before so a Native American man can teleport you across to the end of the cave. Obviously.

(I do also think the game veers a little long: the last third really feels like it should get to the climax quicker. this is more a minor thing imo because this could’ve just been the stress of wanting to beat the game before I had to go to class compounding on me but it really feels like you’re spinning your wheels right up until the end. given that you start getting bottlenecked by combat around this point, given that the game starts glitching out and at some points softblocking you, it’s… sure not a winner. at least gameplay-wise.)

At the very least, though, all the steps back are made up for by all the little gameplay improvements. And even beyond that, the well-realized setting and the bizarre, anything-can-happen tone really boost the game, in both quality and entertainment value. I… tragically wouldn’t go so far as to say I fully liked it — the combat still hasn’t quite aged well, and that last segment truly does its best to end the game on a sour note, length aside — but god did I have fun. Both Alone in the Darks 2 and 3 aren’t generally well remembered as the original nowadays — both because of how hard they diverge in terms of genre, and because the original is just that influential in the history of survival horror — and while I’d say the second is best left that way… I’d definitely make a case for this game. If not a reappraisal — I don’t think it could bear that sort of scrutiny — at least let it be known just how off-the-walls this game can get. It’s certainly a piece of entertainment. 6/10.

Alan Wake is all about stories and creativity, but it struggles with language. Both games center around reality-warping meta-narratives which shed light on the author’s disorganized psyche, but an abstract conflict like this is difficult to portray either visually or interactively. The visual motif it uses to do so is probably the most simplistic and traditional one of all: darkness and light. Light of goodness, shadow of despair, it’s been in use for literally thousands of years, and for a nontraditional story like this, it at least works as a familiar foundation to ground understanding. The interactive language meanwhile is equally simple, but in a way that feels less purposeful.

A game about creativity, self-doubt, and the nature of reality is, for some reason, presented by way of a third-person shooter, with a dynamic difficulty system generous enough to preclude any sense of survival horror. These shooter mechanics exist mostly as a way to create a sense of pushback, rather than actually representing the conflict that drives the narrative. However, I do have to give it some credit, as it actually does come close to doing so with the design of its enemies. Most of them are faceless shades, which stand around in the midst of other identical, but harmless, shadowy figures. At the start of the game, you’ll find yourself waving your flashlight from spot to spot, hoping to find foes amongst the fakers, but that’s as far as the mechanics ever push you. If you use a healing item, you can be certain that within two item boxes, you’ll find a replacement, and if you used all your ammo, you’ll instantly find more. The interactive language it’s using is, again, incredibly simple, just meant to slow you down, not to have much actual relevance to the story.

But of course, that’s the reason why we’re here in the first place; it’s hard to portray a struggle against the self in a way that can be experienced from without. It’s what brings us back to the darkness-and-light motif, an idea general enough for an audience to reflexively understand, but this generality creates a feeling of hollowness in its message. With this theme being the core of its visual and narrative identity, the only language it had to convey the fulfillment of a character arc was in the shedding or embracing of inner darkness, which flattens the nuance of a mature plot into a finale that feels like a kid’s cartoon, telling you to just believe in yourself.

That’s what I mean when I say the game struggles with its language; its genuinely interesting plot and narrative themes are let down by the methods chosen to communicate them. This is the same way I felt while playing Alan Wake 1 and Control as well, like Remedy’s boundary-breaking impulses are forcibly being restrained by the need to speak in marketable terms. That’s, ironically, why I’ll just keep buying these games. I want them to know that they’ve proven themselves, that they’ve reached their audience. I’m here, I’m listening. I want them to confidently say what they have in mind, to finally speak without reservation.

Ah,Celeste, how much I missed being so bad at playing you...

The fact this was developed in little over a week makes me think that the team at Maddy Makes Games, on top of being masters at design, are capable of bending time and space. Fragments of the Mountain puts a beautiful bow tie to what was already an amazing 2D platformer and an outstanding story, a little treat that feels reminiscent of low poly platformers and the original Celeste itself.

Seeing this collection of memories of the mountain in 3D warms my heart and playing through this sort of open little world —that in retrospect really reminds me of the archipelagos in Bowser's Fury or if all of the Bowser Stages were placed around Tall Tall Mountain from Super Mario 64— is the definition of a blast. Madeline's move set lends itself perfectly to 3D, and even some new tricks are added that fit perfectly and really open up the potential for shmoving. Like yeah, going through the challenges normally is super fun, but it's even more fun to do a little bit of level-skipping and getting a strawberry you REALLY weren't supposed to, if a 3D platformer has those kinds of moments, then you know it's good...

Even at 64 too bits the challenge still feels the same, which at some points it can go a little bit against it since the control never feels as precise as its 2D counterpart, and as much as I love the tape levels and their Mario Sunchine sounding-ass theme, it sometimes feels like you either get the exact angle with the camera you need, or youa re completely screwed... wait a minute... it's exactly like Sunshine now that I think about it!

But what Fragments of the Mountain also has is the heart; never mind how lovably goofy Madeline and the rest of the returning cast look, but the dialogue (which to be honest I didn't expect to be any going in) between these lovable figments, the amazing Lena Raine's OST that brings me back to a childhood I never had and what's possibly the single most adorable Special Thanks section I've seen in my entire life make Celeste 64 far more than a simple tribute, and while it also isn't a full continuation, is amazing endnote that I hope to see one day followed up, and I'd love to see more of this tridimensional small world.

I got my ass kicked, yes, but I welcome it, it's good to have one last little adventure collecting strawberries, flying through feathers and collecting cassette tapes; it's a good final farewell to this mountain, before moving on...

Konami has remembered that they're supposed to be a video game company and thus have greenlit a bunch of new Silent Hill games, including this short free release, The Short Message. Being free is this game's greatest attribute and only saving grace. On paper there are some interesting ideas here. They attempt to tackle themes of teenage isolation, social media, mental health, but do so with the grace and subtlety of a sledgehammer. I think the game's biggest issue is that they try to tackle too much at once, without really saying anything at all. The game is mostly a walking simulator through a rundown apartment(?) with some horrible monster chase sequences thrown in. Your character is tormented initially by feelings of insecurity, which turns into themes of self-harm and suicide, then she's to blame (according to her) for the death of her friend, then her own mother neglects her, and then they introduce the idea of a witch's curse for good measure. It's just incoherent. It doesn't help that the player character is incredibly grating. It's a bit harsh to say that given the personal struggles she's going through, but I found her to be completely unlikeable and unsympathetic. If anything, I think I'm being too kind on this game. The only reason it's not lower is due to it being free and less than two hours long. This game has nothing to offer and I cannot recommend it at all.

I love this game’s visual design. It’s tragically rather undercut by how the lighting is wayyyyyyyyy oversaturated — and washes out everything it touches — but there are so many cool things here otherwise. The abandoned apartments feel so grotty: all the litter everywhere, the layers of graffiti covering the walls, the layers of dust and mold and mess that lends so much character to the world around you. The design of the monster is so evocative — how it seems like the cherry blossoms are trying to burst through its skin — and I’m a fan of how, by design, you’re never quite able to see its full image, at least not for more than a glimpse's worth. I love how the flashback cutscenes showing Maya so effortlessly segue between graphics and what looks so convincingly like FMV, really helping to contribute to the idiosyncratic, off-kilter vibe the game takes whenever we go to the past. I’m not quite sure how much of this is meant to be a tech demo — or whether this really is just meant to stand on its own — but if the aim was to show off its engine it certainly succeeded on that front, even if it’s more the artstyle itself that stands out over its graphical fidelity. And even if it really could have used an option to lower the brightness.

It’s a bit sad, in that case, that I’m rather less into most everything else. Particularly the writing. There’s promise in the premise: I could certainly see a world where I really vibe with what the game has to offer, but I think where this game is let down most is by its dialogue. There’s no subtlety. The game will spell out everything a particular moment is trying to communicate just in case you might not get it. It kinda suffers from a lack of patience, too. There’s this one segment that earnestly does the PT-style looping hallway in a way that gels super well with what’s going on thematically, setting the stage to perfectly represent the downward spiral you know is coming... then the game proceeds to throw you straight down to the bottom, having things immediately go wrong and having the whole thing only end after, like, three loops. Things and themes are brought up and then never quite mentioned again, and while one of those is the kind of painful portrayal of social media and The Gen Z Quest For Likes which I was happy to see go, there’s some stuff that really felt like it needed to be addressed or expanded on which… wasn’t. You’d think that if there’s a scene where (I think) the main character grabs a razor to cut her wrists, with the scars on their arm indicating that this is a rather routine thing, that that might… come up later, but if you thought that, you thought wrong. It just kind of happens. And unless there was something I missed… it never gets brought up again. Feels like a bit of an oversight.

(also: the game is set in Germany and yet… the characters are going to college? but can’t actually go to college because they… have to pay tuition fees? the americans might not realize that other countries don’t work the same way the US does, but trust me, we’ll notice your cultural assumptions :V)

The script never feels particularly naturalistic, either. Characters go through stuff and talk about the stuff they go through like it’s some sort of cyberbullying PSA, and… as somebody who went through some of the sort of stuff some of the characters here did, it never really felt like my experience. I know that it’s loosely going for heightened reality — I don’t think the game was literally suggesting that our character walked down her school hallways every day while random jocks yelled “Go away!” and “Slut!” and shoved her towards the lockers — but if the game is really trying to sell this as a real thing people go through, I feel like maybe there could’ve been an ear towards having the bullies say things bullys actually say. If you’re going to talk about how The Gen Z Quest For Likes makes people feel alienated and inferior from their peers, maybe don’t make it seem like you’re making fun of it instead. If you’re trying to treat the complicated and nuanced topic of suicide and mental health with the care and respect that’s required… Look, I wouldn’t necessarily say this game is as triggering on the subject of mental health and suicide as others made me think it might be (it never goes as far about it as, say, something like 13 Reasons Why or Doki Doki Literature Club ever did) but also it was insanely funny just how many times they throw the content warning disclaimer at you. Like, I read through it when I started the game. You don’t have to show it again every time you portray something that could be a representation fucky-wucky. It just kinda makes your case worse.

There’s other things, as well: the chase sequences were kind of annoying to play. They’re like this weird looping maze you have to brute force until you find the arbitrarily correct way through and also the monster will just suddenly appear from in front of you and immediately kill you if you can’t react in time and I haaaaaated having to do them. Overall, though, I’m… rather mixed on this. In a way where it really could’ve been something I liked, as well. Because while visually the game is rather adept, below the surface… god the writing really betrays it, especially the slipshot way it handles its delicate, complicated thematic material. If this is a teaser of the future of the Silent Hill franchise, it’s… certainly indicative of what’s to come. In more ways than one.

Though I thought very highly of Dead or Alive, my attempt to pinpoint when the 3D fighting game genre came into its own (or "got good" if you want me to be less polite) has now taken me a few months back to Soul Edge or Blade or whatever the hell you want to call it.

Soul Calibur and DOA are pretty much neck-and-neck for me, and whichever series I prefer changes with the weather. I was hoping that these initial releases would be different enough in terms of quality that I could easily point to one as being better, but it turns out this is not the case!

Sure, Soul Blade differentiates itself by focusing on weapons and even has a surprisingly robust story in the form of the very funnily named "Edge Master" mode, but I think I prefer the weight of Dead or Alive's characters and how that game paces combat. Soul Blade has a deeper combo system, but Dead or Alive is easier to pick up and play. Dead or Alive has jiggle physics, but Soul Blade has Voldo-- there's a lot to weigh here!

That said, Soul Blade released on consoles first, so for the purposes of my completely pointless experiment, it has DOA beat. I could take this back even further and try Tekken 2, but I've played the demo enough times already and I'm not especially impressed by how it feels. Look, it's a weak excuse, I know. I just need to free up some time so I can figure out how the hell you chain Taki's Critical Edge into an actual combo so Sophitia can stop beating the absolute piss out of me. Google is not being helpful, every old GameFaQs and Reddit thread I find basically just says "do it better." Do what better!? It's not in the manual! OH FUCK SOPHITIA IS RUNNING RIGHT AT M-

Just some quick thoughts for this one, apologies if it's a little scatterbrained.

As a game this is probably the most ""content"" for your dollar that you could possibly get out of a scripted game and I'm truly blown away by how much effort it must have been to put this whole thing together. Dondoko Island is a minigame with more mechanics than 98% of the games I play each month. If that were all there is to say then I'd be giving it a 10/10 - and I understand that everything after this point is going to make me sound like an insane person to 85% of people playing this - but the truth is that this game (like Y7) is so hell-bent on being silly at all times that it often undercuts itself when it comes to dramatic tension or consistency of plot/characters - again! Genuinely, if the Ichiban games just knew how to solve their tonal issues then I'd be giving this game an extra star, if not more. Classic Yakuza goofiness works best as a break from the drama - it's less effective when the cutscene establishes a legitimate, serious threat to your loved ones and then immediately warps to your female party member decked out in a coconut bra and maracas strumming a ukulele at a guy with a beach ball for a torso.

Some things (the combat and chain attacks, Hawaii, every non-Sujimon minigame) are miles better than they were in Y7, but the game also loves to tell the same jokes over and over so things that are initially endearing (seonhee fangirling over kiryu) become extremely grating by the end. I also think Yakuza Gaiden works better as a farewell tour for Kiryu because it's not just crammed into a game about someone else in a city he's barely been to - having Kiryu reminisce can be fun at points but so many of the locations are completely arbitrary and having Kiryu go "Remember all the times Date rescued me in a helicopter?" because he walked into a cafe feels dry and artificial, not fun. I'm almost resentful that so much of the focus is placed on him in this story when his main purpose for most (not all) of it is to be a cool friend who people on the street constantly recognize. The big Kiryu checklist wavers between being interesting (reflecting on basic things Kiryu never got to enjoy because of his insane life of constant fighting) and mind-numbing (do you remember the dancing minigame in Y0? how about the fishing minigame?). Ultimately though, it's part of a larger push to make these characters feel like they have lives outside of Ichiban's adventures (Ichiban included) and it works wonders... when it works at all. Tomizawa shines particularly brightly as someone whose drink links highlight a life that's been uprooted in a way that ties into the main plot while remaining personal to him and exposing more of his character. Saeko and the other women, however, mostly get these nothingburger chats that are about Ichiban or how cool Kiryu is or how stressful it is to run a business.

Also: It needs to be better about signposting when you're about to switch protagonists. At one point it splits your group between two locations and warns you that you're going to need good gear because there's some combat coming up, but it doesn't tell you that it's going to switch you to the other group first, leading me to 75 straight minutes of fighting with a party that is severely underpowered because I read the warning and assumed I'd be fighting with the group I was currently controlling.

Also also: I'm still not a fan of the enemies they cook up in the Ichiban games. A lot of them are creative and fun and a lot of them really, truly are not - it's cool to see what attacks they assign to random day jobs, it's not funny or interesting when the fat guy in ill-fitting clothes hits you with a big hot dog or the Chinese mafioso performs acupuncture in the middle of a fight. That shit is so fucking boring, dog. Ichiban could really use a better imagination.

I realize that this might seem overly negative for the rating I've given. I enjoyed myself for the vast majority of its runtime, but so much of this just collapses in on itself for me when I give it any thought at all. I'm still in awe at the production value here - this game blows my mind in much the same way that 2D mode in Dragon Quest XI did - they simply did not need to go so hard in crafting a big video game buffet. Combat has only seen a few changes but the changes that have been made take it from something I tolerated in Y7 to something I truly enjoy (as long as I'm not underleveled). Y8 addresses so many of the concerns I had with Y7 but about once an hour I'm reminded that the Daidoji faction is transparently complete nonsense (in the same way the Florist used to be), that the Drink Links still insist on having One Big Problem that each character must solve that ends in a fight (which means each character only gets to talk about a single thing during their moments in the spotlight), that both the English and the Japanese dubs feel inappropriate for the setting at least 50% of the time. There's a lot to like about this game and for significant chunks of it - mostly while I was ignoring the story - I was considering just giving it 5 stars and calling it a day, but the more I think about it, the less appropriate that feels.

a triumph for scenario design aficionados. hour after hour of slices of the real world perfectly aligned into a playground of roving militants and hapless civilians. rarely does a game ever make its missions feel properly explorable while keeping it taut and linear at the same time, and yet deus ex routinely weaves both together. for every point A to point B underground lair with traps laid out in sequence there is a completely open venue, such as the suffocating catacombs and their dimly lit hallways giving way to the Champs-Élysées avenue of paris, with a bakery to pilfer contraband drugs from, a hostel with full bar access, and an arms dealer's loaded apartment, all off the beaten path from your main objective. military bases and science labs retain the layout you'd expect had you ever toured one, and you'll find that locker rooms, rows of cubicles, and break rooms feature just as prominently in the dungeon crawling as warehouses with guards patrolling or tightly wound mazes of laser tripwires and turrets. the authenticity and legibility of these areas comes first, and yet more often than not the designers still manage to weave in appropriate challenges without violating each location's fidelity in the process.

and really, dungeon crawling is the name of the game here, more or less. at least half of the game takes place in some sort of complex with a destination and a set of non-linear gates along the way, all of which serve as hinge points for the player to choose which resources to expend. the "immsim" label comes from just how many resources have all gotten slammed together in your control: lockpicks and "multitools" for bypassing security, ammo for many different varieties of firearms, bio-energy for utilizing your augmented abilities, and a slew of consumable items meant for tanking bullets, running past enemies undetected, or breathing under water for long periods of time. at its most taut, the game generally puts some sort of barrier up in your way and then a way around it, with the direct option being something like combat or picking a lock and the indirect option being finding a vent or waterway to circumvent the barrier. with enough of these situations back to back, the game hopes that you'll avoid sticking to one gameplay style in order to preserve your resources in that area for later when they seem more necessary; you can't crack every door with lockpicks, so you'll probably have to get your hands dirty or crawl on your belly here and there if you want to keep your picks for when the alternative is, say, running through a irradiated area. the nice part of this is that it truly does work: I explored, snuck around, and fought off enemies all in equal measure throughout the game through entirely organic response to each of the situations. the downside is by endgame the resource economy has completely turned in your favor assuming you've been rotating all of your options, making decisions on resource expenditure past a certain point much more about cleaning out your inventory rather than rationing.

when the game is firing on all cylinders, you'll get something like bunker III from the aforementioned catacombs. the area is two large rooms with a camera and turret tracking you at the back of the first room right in front of a cell full of hostages, multiple floors connected by stairs with archways for cover in the second room, and a back hallway swarming with rocket-strapped operatives where the camera/turret controls and a key to the next reside; a waterway additionally connects the front of the first room with the back of the second room. here you have actual tradeoffs to deal with: just grabbing the key and skipping the whole area by going through the waterway works, but the coverage in the back hallway can be intense depending on the AI's behavior, and your direct path to the key is blocked by strategically placed crates as soon as you leave the waterway. gunning for the security controls instead is feasible, and you can leverage the fact that hacking computers (sometimes?) pauses enemies for a bit to quickly run out, disable everything, and hop back in the waterway. you could also sneak in from the front and use an augmentation that hides you from cameras to avoid triggering the turret, and if you rescue the hostages with lockpicks instead of locating the cell key and leave the area early, you'll get the next area's key from their camp leader anyway. when the game constructs situations like these, they not only make the discrete tradeoffs impactful on the flow of a given level, they also weave it into the actual second-to-second movement, stealth, and combat as well.

at its worst it's the opposite: individual rooms with a guard or two and maybe a computer system or locked door stitched together by long hallways that inoculate each scenario from one another. in these sections the main appeal is exploration, either through finding nooks and crannies hidden from view or by reading the many "data cubes" with flavor text strewn around. it can still be exciting, especially earlier on when you don't have tools to detect enemies through walls and the suspense of moving around still persists. later in the game when one has more abilities at their disposal, breaking apart puzzles or barriers by jumping over them with enhanced height, moving large crates to use as stairs with enhanced strength, or shooting down doors with a mastered rifle ability can potentially make the monotony less apparent. some of the barriers don't fare quite as well due to a lackluster implementation: the hacking, for instance, is more or less free even with minimal upgrades, and for every camera you have to actually maneuver around there's at least four you'll disable without thinking just because the security terminals are easy to access. if the mission locations didn't adhere to the small details of real environments or didn't have cute little secrets in vents and lock-boxes, these issues would likely overcome the holistic experience and result in tedium.

the tiny details extend further than objects in the world as well. from early on when one of your augmented colleagues begins spontaneously complaining about getting the wrong can of soda from a vending machine, I had hoped that the scripting for the NPCs would stay high quality, and it absolutely persisted to the final moments of the game, when a civilian mechanic distraught by my actions pulled a gun on me behind my back. the tight pacing of the levels compared to a full open world experience allows for many of the individual NPCs to have unique dialogue, behavior, and even inventory when subdued. of these the most fascinating to me may have been a conversation with a chinese bartender in hong kong, who extolled the CCP's commitment to capitalist enterprise outside the purview of the new world order by emphasizing authoritarian nationalism against main character denton's idealized western democratic order. it's something you wouldn't see now in the xi jinping era and weirdly reflective of the game's almost non-ideological view of politics: people-facing organizations controlled by layers upon layers of shadowy organizations, each manipulating social behavior in a top-down way compared to the bottom-up class struggle and ideological superstructure of reality. not really a thought-provoking work unless you're particularly animated by vague gesturing towards "control" and "liberty," but at least you can tell the developers didn't take it too seriously either. there's roswell-style gray aliens running around for christ's sake.

It’s better than whatever Silent Hill: Ascension was at least (as low a bar as that could be), but still just… exists I guess. Another short “PT” style thing but focused on mental health and bullying through social media. It’s a genuine topic to explore for SH to its credit, but the execution is extremely heavy handed, and its poor dialogue and voice acting let it down further. From a gameplay standpoint the chase sequences were more annoying than anything also, especially the last one. While it’s free and takes just about 2 hours, I’d still hesitate to say it’s worth the time

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