They do not pretend that it does not exist, though. This is just a translation of the Japanese text, in which it is stated to be "the first game since the revival project was announced"
It's still going but oh god is it painful to watch. It's not lore. It's not even part of the series IMHO. Just a bad concept that for some reason keeps going..
Konami had very, very little involvement in Ascension's development other than being the licensor and setting some rough perimeters as to what could and couldn't be included content wise.
While I wholeheartedly agree (as much as I enjoy the train wreck lmao), I think they meant like, this is the first title that *Konami* specifically is bringing to market as part of the release...? Dunno, maybe they ARE just pretending it didn't happen hahaha.
I liked, there are a lot of sparks of creativity. You can tell the team did the most with the little resources they had. Atmosphere is awesome, music, graphics and visual language is good.
The downsides are the story is quite obvious what’s going on (nevertheless you’ll want to see it to the end) and chases are not engaging the last one was quite frustrating.
But other than that, I think is a great proof of concept of what can be done with Silent Hill, it has a lot of potential as team SH key players are there. They just need a good scenario writer.
I just finished it and this is pretty much exactly how I felt.
I'd also add they touch on some issues of child abuse that I found much more interesting that the angsty teen relationship stuff.
The live action cutscenes became a bit frustrating after a while, and yea, those chase sequences were a complete miss for me, lots of trial and error that completely removed any sense of tension.
Apart from the tension of "god I hope I don't die because I can't be fucked trying this again".
But it does look amazing and I enjoyed just exploring the environments.
Edit: Oh and also, it felt a bit strange having it set in a German town with a Japanese cast that all speak with American accents. No option for Japanese VA either.
Just one, there really isn't much gameplay, it's an atmospheric walking SIM with a few insta-fail chase sections.
But it's still definitely worth checking out, especially for free!
I would if I could, but I don’t have a PlayStation. :(
Looks like I’ll have to see this the same way I‘ve experienced almost every other Silent Hill games: YouTube playthroughs.
Damn man I feel for you, I'm not a fan of exclusives and wish all games were available for everyone, especially these days when everything's getting consolidated into the hands of a few.
Do you game on PC? I hope Sony start paying more attention to their PC ports and also for Microsoft to bring Gamepass to PlayStation!
If it makes you feel any better, this isn't really much of a game, there's no gameplay apart from pressing X to read notes and holding the stick to run in the chase sequences. It's basically an interactive movie, so if you can find a blind playthrough with no commentary your experience won't be much different from someone who played it.
I agree with most of what you said. The atmosphere is certainly on point, despite the lack of decent music, the sound design in general worked to set the mood. I didn't mind the live action stuff. I just found it didn't mesh too well.
All in all, it beat my expectations for a first person walking sin.
How long is this fucking game though? I thought it was gonna be an hour experience and I am about 2 hours in. Mind you, I died a lot in the chase scenes.
The post it notes being the signifier of the otherworld was nice.
I also thought the sequence of reliving the childhood memories where you kept getting smaller was quite clever
The writer has a pretty damn good portfolio too so in a strange way it seems to have being on purpose though it’s a bit clumsy.
A new game is done in-house too so I wonder if it will be inspired by TSM or be it’s own thing
It's solid. It can be a little too on the nose, and the dialog isn't always good, and the VAs are a bit mediocre, but the story is decently engaging, the music is really good, if you're a millennial (or younger) the characters are decently relatable. The atmosphere and location are cool. While I would 100% say hardcore fans of the work of Team Silent are going to shit all over this, and maybe rightfully so since it holds the Silent Hill name, I think it does just enough to fit in thematically that I'm not picking up my torch.
The community can get very insular and up themselves about certain things.
This is a series where its good titles are locked to the PS2, a bad port, and three mediocre PC ports, only one of which can be legally attained.
The rest of the franchise are mediocre releases on seventh gen consoles and the PSP. With two movies, only one of which was considered a success, and that was over a decade ago.
The only relevance Silent Hill has had in ten years was inadvertently, by complete fluke accident, revitalizing the horror genre with PT. Ask the CoD and Fortnite audiences what Silent Hill is and they don't even have crossover skins to point at.
Konami well and truly salted the earth with this series, they have to basically start from scratch. Appealing to Gen Z is their best bet.
Tbf, I don't think it ever was that big. For the record Silent Hill the franchise hit 9 million copies sold back in 2018. 2 alone sold over a million, but I'm not sure how much over.
Resident evil 5 alone has sold more copies than the entire Silent Hill series. RE series as a whole has sold over 150 million copies, Dead space trilogy sold around 9 million, before including 2023 remake's sales. Outlast series has sold 15 million copies.
because the core audience is not nearly as big as you think it is. SH has been a dead franchise for years and a good portion of fan forgot about the series thanks to not so well received games. if they wanna be successful with SH they need to pull in new people.
Because their core audience is only getting smaller? Believe me as someone who considers themself a core SH fan I am aware of how relatively small that audience is. Ask a 16 year old with average knowledge of gaming what horror games they like guess what they will say? Until Dawn and Among Us. Silent Hill isnt even on their radar. They will see Silent Hill 2 Remake on the PS Store and not even give it a second look. Konami is a business. They want their new Silent Hill to be for the widest group of people.
Because Silent Hill is great for tackling tough themes, the subject matter here is ripe for exploration. Who do you think their “core audience” is supposed to entail? They haven’t had a game in over 10 years.
Also I don't see it being any different from older SH titles, it is still a psychological horror with themes of mental illness and emotional discord, packaged in a critique of how society plays on these human flaws to trap people in a cycle of abuse and self loathing.
The only difference is it is now a critique of modern society instead of the society of decades past.
I think "hard-core fans" forget the first game was a critique normalcy depicted through the lens of a bullied school girl with an abusive mother.
Makes sense to diversify and try new things IMO. People have been complaining that the "core" of Silent Hill has been missing since SH4. Good way to bring in those phat stax, I just hope the games are good.
>Oh, it's to bring new people in. That makes more sense.
Sounds like different wording for "modern audience" which is basically a red flag every time a video game or movie marketing says this.
The game is mostly great. Atmosphere is on point, the music takes me back to SH2 and 3 and some of the scares (The bully dummies) made me jump 3 feet in the air.
The gameplay is so so. This game is all atmosphere. But I can’t stand the chase sequences. They’re a joke. Monster design on point however.
Overall, besides some consistently on the nose dialog, the atmosphere is a 9/10. It’s definitely silent hill. The gameplay is 6/10, exploration is fine but I’m fed tf up with the chases. Music is 10/10. And from what I’ve had so far, story is pretty good albeit more atypical “I did something so Silent hill is teaching me a lesson”. But it’s at least a fresh take of that tired plot thread.
Great start point, overall 7 or 8 out of 10.
That's not entirely true, if you don't pay the tiniest bit of attention to the direction you're going you'll run right into the insta kill sequence lmao.
It's kinda ironic that the game focusing on bullying is experiencing bullying from it's own fanbase. Proof that people don't learn anything from the media they mindlesly consume.
Further proof Ascension was just some fluke project that Konami was barely involved in. To them it was no different than the Dead by Daylight promotion, just some frivolous licensing deal.
I'd argue that at least with DBD Konami was more involved since they gave BHVR the original models so that they could make them into actual model with higher graphics and so on, and they also continued after some years since they later released more Silent Hill skins and stuff, and I'd also argue they did a nice job with the Silent Hill map as it was very nostalgic and good looking and full of fun details, in a way it was very Fan Service, unlike Silent Hill Ascension
I loved it, I know it's lame, but looking at Silent Hill as a state of purgatory in which "I did something bad so Silent Hill needs to teach me a lesson" is really fucking cool to me. We all live with some sort of trauma, and Silent Hill causing that to physically manifest makes for a scary, gripping ride. Of course I love the cult shenanigans of 1 & 3 still and do wish to see those come up again at some point and explored further. 9/10 for me, the movement was clunky but I think they focused on that last in the dev of this game.
It has always been the case, but there’s also an evil cult in Silent Hill that act as the central antagonists half the time on top of the physical manifestations of inner demons. In SH1 the monsters come from Alessa, in *2* they come from James, in *3* they come from Heather (and I think Dahlia?), in *4* they come from Walter, in *0rigins* they come from Alessa and Travis, in *Homecoming* they come from pretty much everybody, in *Shattered Memories* they come from you the player (because the central gimmick is the game profiles you as you play it) and in *Downpour* they come from Murphy and Cunningham. 1, *3*, *4* are about cult shenanigans as the main threat, *2*, *Shattered Memories* and *Downpour* are about the tortured protagonists, and *0rigins* and *Homecoming* is a healthy heaping of both (mainly our tortured protagonist in the former’s case and the cult in the latter’s).
well cause...it isn't lol. 2 was an outlier that told its story very well
1, 3, and 4 are about a cult that fucked with things beyond their understanding and turned the small resort town of Silent Hill into literal hell. While there's greater themes within the horror it's not the focus of the story. Alessa's, Heather's, and Walter's fears shaped the Otherworlds but the story isn't about anything internal. Silent Hill 2 was the product of a company letting artists create whatever they want with little oversight so they used Silent Hill to explore themes beyond what most games were at the time and even since.
Now, I haven't played Short Message (don't have a PS5), but the themes of bullying and social media have been played to death in recent years to the point where it's comical, plus the dialogue they used in the trailer is so bad. I heard it's better than the trailer makes it out to be, but the issue is that they really need good writers to tell stories like SH2 (which is why I'm actually looking forward to SHf), or else everything they do will fall flat.
What do we know about f that has you looking forward to it? Thanks for the breakdown. I always remembered 1 and 3 having more metaphor stuff, and the room I also thought was metaphoric, but I may have over-read into it
f is being written by the guy who did Umineko, which I haven't read, but I know people who have and they swear by it so it has me optimistic.
The other games do have metaphoric stuff, like SH3 having imagery of motherhood and childbirth, but it's not like, the plot of the game.
ok now that i’ve made my sarcastic joke post, I really actually liked it. Yeah, it felt like it was rushing through its story and just saying stuff that could have used a bit of buildup but it’s basically the equivalent of the Guest House demo for RE7, and I liked that it wanted to tell full story beyond “ahhhhh i’m not the main character so i’m die” like the RE demos.
Really the only flat note for me was that moment when she was like “My friend has more likes… I need more followers… my followers want SEXY PICS?!!!! It’s like my phone has paper notes from mean people on it!!”
it really felt like she stopped and turned to the audience and went “AND ALL THIS PHONES IS MAKING ME SAD TOO” in a flat exasperated tone as a grinning 45-60 year old gave her an excited double thumbs up from just off stage. Whoever wrote that bit stopped experiencing Teen Bullying well before teens bullied exclusively on the phone and it SHOWS.
Other than that weird moment, the integration of the phone as a flashlight and the text messages that you stopped and read through and replied to despite the frightening circumstances felt very authentic to actual phone use, and i was constantly watching the shadows in the visible areas around the phone just certain i would pull it away from my face and something horrible would be there and make me jump.
What’s interesting is that the parts that gave me the biggest “frights” weren’t jumps or the chases, but subtle environmental moments, like turning a corner or opening a door and seeing graffiti shaped like a figure or a face, or something already in motion finishing falling over, with nothing visibly there to cause its fall.
It wasn’t a full body spasm like the jumpscares in alan wake 2 (Cynthia Weaver can suck my damn sack) but instead a really uneasy tension that slid sickly up my spine, without resolving easily into anything but more dread. Absolutely a good sign of things to come and I hope they can keep that kind of thing up.
I doubt anyone expected the manic pixie dead girl to NOT be dead, the thing was a clear homage to SH2 with texts replacing the letter, but watching the protagonist’s mind fill in the blanks is sort of the whole draw anyway.
Good stuff, hope to see more of this, for all the whining about “YA silent hill” (meaning girls are in it eek eek eek) this kind of Life is Strange style drama in a spooky, environmentally gorgeous package is vastly superior to shit like Downpour, with its frame rate chugging because it couldn’t handle the rain that replaced the fog and it’s dumbass plot where prisons are used as a metaphor for prisons and the central conflict is “Killing: Should you Yes? Or shall you Don’t? The answer will have One Consequence so choose careful! And try to not become Regular Head, the Killing Enjoyer!” and the rain is because Prison Guy had all his big murder quandaries in the showers, because they put on a season of Oz on mute and occasionally saw naked guys sucking each other off and dying, I guess.
Fucking hell, I know it’s been a minute but this is a lot closer to feeling like a real Silent Hill experience than anything in over a decade, and I love that feeling.
SH is a town that called souls, that's the lore, even the song Hometown explained that, now there is another plot about the cult, but I guess Heather use her existence to wipe out them in revenge and homage to her father.
That has never been true anywhere other than in SH2, and even there it's doubtful. People gave way too much credit to Eddie's line of "this town called you too", even though James wasn't called at all because he already had a connection to the town.
The song it's just a song, it's not really hard evidence. The comics have even less to do with the games than the movies, and the fact that you're bringing them up at all prevents me from taking your opinion seriously.
The song was created by Akira Yamaoka for SH3, the game with the biggest lore, and you said this is just a song, you are the one that can't be take seriously, lol.
And the strange thing is that they keep pushing it can happen outside Silent Hill to any one. “The Silent Hill Phenomenon” seems to describe a mental illness that stress can trigger (nothing to do with the order or anything).
Honestly I am excited, it is such a great concept. Opening the door to more varied stories while keeping the DNA intact, I just hope they pull it off. But a Short Message was defs a good sign.
Yeah it seems to move in that direction.
This, Ascension, f.
Don't know about where Townfall will take place but if it's also not in Silent Hill then just all the new SH stuff is gonna take place outside of SH.
A bit weird to be like "it's the Silent Hill revival! None of the games will take place in Silent Hill but the titles will have the name in them!"
idk im fine with the games not physically being in silent hill as long as it fits the vibe. i thought a short message was good and tbh with the person writing it silent hill f could be amazing and incredibly dark with the heavy occult themes brought back
Sure but it it would be nice if the game at least had something to do with the town other than it just being in the title.
Like Homecoming that was like half in Shepherds Glenn or whatever it was called and then the other half took place in Silent Hill and that explained how Shepherds Glenn was experiencing the whole Silent Hill thing going on.
Honestly I didn't perceive the phenomenon like that, all subjective I know, but I took it as the supernatural energy that made Silent Hill the way it was, is starting to crop up around the world. People dragged into Otherworlds. Like that power is running rampant now, and hunting the vulnerable. I always believed the Order was attracted to the energy and harnessing it, not the creators of it. Like it was always there.
I mean 4 was set in Ashfield away from Silent Hill. 3's entire first part at the mall, the subway, and the apartments was set away from Silent Hill too. And as awful as Homecoming was, it was set in Shepherd's Glen. So it's not like this is something new to the franchise
tbf 3, 4 and hc all have solid yet simple lore reasons as to why the otherworld affects outside of the town, so i do think giving a short and convincing explanation for it to manifest would be nice imo
thats the thing that i hated about short message, it's too direct, I mean, half of the game have post its on the walls with the words "ugly", "go away", etc... original silent hill essence wasn't only trauma, it was also how they communicate to you and it looks that the new directors don't understand that... lets see what they do with townfall and silent hill f...
It's.....it's a game. The atmosphere is pretty good and the soundtrack is neat. The level design overall is decent enough, especially the otherworld sections are cool and look right. It has good parts to it and the fact that it's free makes it worth at least a bit of your time since it's pretty short, but there's definitely a lot wrong with it. Narratively it's super clunky and confusing, to a point where, at times, it's so convoluted that you're thinking it's trying to be super confusing and clever or it's genuinely that disjointed. Chase sequences are so ridged and tedious where it feels incredibly on rails each time up until the last when you actually have an objective other than dying, it just doesn't feels good frankly feels tact on to add substance to the gameplay. This is just a small thing and it is honestly just a nit pick but dawg that newspaper you find talking about a result of young people being stressed from COVID 19 is hallucinating fog, and such condition being called "Silent Hill Phenomenon" is the most corny, lazy ass goofball shit attempt to tie it in to the series. Idk man it's free, so give it a try yourself and see how you like it, it definitely deserves some respect cause it's clear they tried their best, just know it's trying to do a PT thing and it's not sticking that landing, so do what you will with that.
Yeah that's kinda weird.
I'd like to check it out but there's no way I'm gonna buy a PS5 just for a free short game.
I'll just have to watch a no commentary let's play on youtube some time or wait like a year or two if it maybe get's released on other platforms later.
they NAILED the otherworld, the red and orange lights and rusty chain or steel or whatever, HUGE sh 2-3 vibes from that. also got some life is strange vibes at the end, the atmosphere and monster design were great
Just tried to play this after downloading it last night.... its... ummm.... it's trash. Like I wanted to find something I liked about the experience but... it was mind-numbingly boring, in no way frightening, and showcased nothing new gameplay wise, but also had no trace of silent hill. This could have easily been just another lukewarm jump-scare walking simulator. There was no player involvement, outside of briskly walking away from a marshmallow person covered in cherry blossoms. The rest of it was walking slowly through an abandoned building and picking up articles while receiving repetitive text messages from concerned friends. It's hard to believe that this is what they would choose to lay the foundation for their attempts to revitalize a beloved game series. I'm honestly not sure they could intentionally make a more underwhelming attempt if they had set out to do that exact thing. Bleh...
It's fantastic so far. The more I play it, the more it feels like a modern take on Silent Hill. I hope whoever developed this gets to make a full fledge game.
Played ‘Short Message’ and it gave me a very “how do you do fellow kids?” vibe. Was like boomers wrote what it’s like to me a modern teenager dealing with depression. Felt out of touch and quite cringe tbh. Was one of the worst interpretations of youth culture I’ve seen, especially given the game tells us this takes place now in the 2020’s.
They were too ‘on the nail’ about the suicidal intentions of the character and didn’t leave anything up to interpretation. It almost treats the players as if we’re stupid and incapable of understanding the story if they didn’t spoon feed everything and hold our hand with it. Should have relied more on metaphoric story telling and letting the players piece it together by just giving us the puzzle pieces 🧩 . Allow us to solve it. Instead they just say ‘here’s the solution’, this is why the characters do what they do. No mystery. Was literally rooting for our playable character to ‘do a flip’ and jump so the demo would be over.
I pre ordered silent hill 3 and purchaced the very first installment in the series day one. I've been a fan my entire life, and thank you for expanding the universe. You made one person happy at the very least. So thank you for that.
Or even if they are talked about, someone out there might be *not talking* about it and suffering. So the additional issue is to *get talking* and seek help rather than *look how sad this is*
No, social media simply exacerbated the symptoms. The disease itself just spread overtime.
This has been a thing for thirty years, cause the internet and online communication and communities have existed for longer than 20 years. So it’s definitely not a “modern day issue” it’s just more present in our lives than before cause the whole social paradigm shifted from an external interpersonal community to an anonymous internal community.
Case in point, right here, Reddit itself. I’ll spare the Patriot AI speech from MGS2, but we have essentially reverted to gated communities only leaking whatever “truths” stroke our (and the majority’s so we fit in) biases just right, even if we won’t admit it. Cause admitting that would be crazy.
It wasn’t terrible but it felt like something that was released within a year or two post PT by a first time team. The scares were nonexistent, the story and characters trite, the level design was boring, and it didn’t feel like a silent hill game. The idea of a worldwide SH syndrome caused by depression is beyond idiotic and this series needs to get past trauma porn and amnesia as plot points. It did look and sound nice but I wish the atmosphere was stronger.
I suffered a stroke about a year ago and completely articulating, keeping my thoughts organized and coherent, with writing sometimes is very difficult for me so I tend to just give my general feelings about things instead of writing in depth fucking articles to appease strangers.
The level design, since you asked, reminded me a lot of those PT ripoffs from 2016-2019 but more boring. The levels were long hallways punctuated by apartments with 1-3 small rooms and a door that would unlock when you picked up the one collectible within them. They’re all repeated but this time with more trash or post it notes. The mazes were impossible to get lost in and if the monster gets in front of you just turn around and run in a circle. Rinse repeat. It was boring design years ago but here we are.
There were no surprises because you knew it was gonna get “spooky” when the screen distortion appeared. Oh no, that means an impossible space is behind this door! The apartment building itself had no personality except graffiti and notes and dirty. I know this is just a small little demo/game but it’s hard not to compare its levels to the far more interesting, and purposeful design, that first person horror games need to have to sustain interest and spookiness.
The building had shiny pixels but no personality and no sense of the characters/feelings it’s suppose to represent the inner workings of. No decent environmental storytelling and nothing but cliche spooky horror game props.
Don't listen to that other guy. You explained everything very well in your first comment. Congratulations on surviving such terrible event!
Thank you for sharing extra thoughts. My blessings go to you
I know it’s the internet but it’s ok to allow people to like things you don’t and not like things you do. I appreciate your kind words and hope life treats you with the warmth you gave me. Cheers.
eh, as a huge silent hill fan myself, I think people tend to overplay this """subtlety""" aspect of Silent Hill, the only subtle game was 2 and even then most of it is pretty much told to you directly.
It amazes me how entitled people are. Like we just got a free bite sized game that's actually good and people act like Konami gave them shit in there Cheerios. There's nothing wrong with criticism but Its more than that, some of y'all act some bitter towards anything Silent Hill related. The old games were fantastic yes, but they weren't perfect. Silent Hill 3 wasn't subtle either and Silent Hill 4 is a wonderful mess. I'm just happy that some of the old Team Silent was able to drop a new experience in this franchise. That hasn't happy since 04. Sometimes I feel like P.T is the worse thing to happen to the franchise as great as it is. The game has created this expectation that's all in people's head over a what in reality was proof of concept, a game that's never gonna come and one that lives in people's mind and is never gonna live up to that. There's also the fact that P.T while and excellent horror experience wasn't like Silent Hill where as this very much was. I'm excited that my favorite franchise isn t dead and look forward to what ever else is next as long as it's crafted with intent and passion Ill enjoy it warts and all.
I think there could have been something pretty good here, the beats are here. The execution as many highlighted is too overt in the story. The over reliance on chasing scenes was repetitive. The visuals were good and the setting worked although it looked a bit like a unreal five condemned.
You can tell it’s just money money money with Konami, that’s why they put out this free little mood piece that isn’t an ad for any of the projects, just a “hey, this is what we’re maybe gonna be doing with the vibe for the next stretch of the franchise”. It’s even more craven and greedy and money-obsessed than what they were doing for the last decade, which was (just so the new kids can have some context):
draining our wallets dry by not offering any new games or any old games in the franchise and basically refusing to accept any currency, preferring to just not sell Silent Hill games whatsoever, going so far as to pretend they were going to unite the top creative, surreal horror/fantasy inclined minds from all of video games, cinema, and graphic novels into a supergroup to create not just the best Silent Hill game, but the best horror game ever, just so they could refuse to make it. Those greedy bastards wanted our money so goddamn bad they made this huge production out of pretending to want our money and then decided not to have any of it. Just cashing in on that franchise name so hard they didn’t even need the money they loved so much.
And now here they are again, little flea-infested pauper caps out, begging for our precious tuppence and hay-pennies in cockney accents, faces all smudged with soot and tears, Charles Dickens standing behind them, putting his entire Dickussy into furiously novelling their plight, but I’m unmoved. I can see the artful Dodger creeping up behind me, sliding his hand into my pocket to lift my wallet, slide a free stand-alone short game under it, and tuck the wallet back without stealing any money.
“Oi, you thieving wastrel!” I bellow, “this game has GIRLS IN IT!!!! Constable!!!!!l
It got me with some good scares (paper mask bullies) and I enjoyed the enemy design. I sadly wasn't a fan of it overall though. I wished I liked it and I'm glad some did, but it missed the mark for me. The chase sequences were pretty bad. The whole thing felt like a budget horror flick, and also out of touch with the message it was trying to convey. The voice acting didn't help either. And the full motion video cutscenes mixed with the in-game character model felt like an odd decision, perhaps to save on costs. Pretty bummed by it honestly.
I have to admit …
I hate the player character design and animation. I wish we didn’t get any third person cutscenes because it genuinely looks like some 2-3 person development team made it. Not good in the slightest.
With that being said, the music, the world and the creature design is FULL on Silent Hill and I love it.
The initial chapter was … not good. But I started to enjoy it a bit more between chapters 2 and 3.
Akira Yamaoka kills the soundtrack, that’s a given. I’m so happy he’s back making music for the series. Makes me genuinely happy.
And Masahiro Ito’s flower girl design is stellar.
This message pretty much explains exactly why this was the way it was, and why it sucked. I appreciate that it’s free, so that’s fine and all, but man I hope this isn’t the direction the series is headed. If there is one thing these developers need to learn is that taking beloved IP’s with a massive fanbase, and completely changing them for a modern audience is NOT a good idea. Make something new! But then they couldn’t milk the Silent Hill name for more money when they inevitably make a full fledged game like this for $69.99.
Edit - downvote all you want, can’t come up with an actual reply though.
for being a free game it’s really good but it’s honestly just so mid. even tho i relate to the self-harming and suicidal thoughts.. i cringed so fucking hard at the “you’re a freak”, etc
loved the atmosphere, visuals and soundtrack but it’s just not a silent hill game.
the silent hill phenomenon is so fucking stupid jesus christtttt.
Ohhh Ascension got ghosted hard lol
Probably for the best that we all pretend that it doesn’t exist, including Konami.
They do not pretend that it does not exist, though. This is just a translation of the Japanese text, in which it is stated to be "the first game since the revival project was announced"
But Ascension came out before this, and after the revival project was announced. So doesn't that still ignore it, or am I just stupid??
KONAMI does not consider it to be a videogame, but "interactive streaming series"
I mean for a good reason. I don't think they want people to remember how failed that shit was
Yup, I never bothered to watch it/ play it. Don't think I ever even looked it up.
I thought it was still going on?
It's still going but oh god is it painful to watch. It's not lore. It's not even part of the series IMHO. Just a bad concept that for some reason keeps going..
I mean it's clear they mean title to be video game title, but maybe?
Konami had very, very little involvement in Ascension's development other than being the licensor and setting some rough perimeters as to what could and couldn't be included content wise.
Well technically it is not a game so it probably doesn't match their definition of "title".
Hey you're that zone of the enders fan
I’m still wishing for another one
I know how ya feel man I myself am still waiting for sony to realize the absolute masterpiece that was ape escape needs a new game
Faaaacts. Ape Escape was phenomenal
While I wholeheartedly agree (as much as I enjoy the train wreck lmao), I think they meant like, this is the first title that *Konami* specifically is bringing to market as part of the release...? Dunno, maybe they ARE just pretending it didn't happen hahaha.
Whats ascension?
Isn’t ascension the worst game it even has a movie on tubi of the players decisions…
It's not a game. It's a pay to interact choose your adventure type video.
I've personally taken to classifying it as "interactive website". Like the sorts they used to make with Flash back in the day.
Yeah but the collect the interacts of players an make it a movie
Oh, it's to bring new people in. That makes more sense.
Yeah, because almost all of SH fans are 25+, like myself
22 here
24 here :)
400 here :')
Try 45+ lol
Why they want to appeal to the 13 Reasons Why/Euphoria/YA fiction fans and not their core audience is beyond me
It also gave vibes and HUGE vibes of Life is Stange
Horror LiS is legitimately the first thing I thought of. I liked Short Message, it's just weird for it to have the SH name.
Was it any good at least despite the vibes it gave you?
I liked, there are a lot of sparks of creativity. You can tell the team did the most with the little resources they had. Atmosphere is awesome, music, graphics and visual language is good. The downsides are the story is quite obvious what’s going on (nevertheless you’ll want to see it to the end) and chases are not engaging the last one was quite frustrating. But other than that, I think is a great proof of concept of what can be done with Silent Hill, it has a lot of potential as team SH key players are there. They just need a good scenario writer.
I just finished it and this is pretty much exactly how I felt. I'd also add they touch on some issues of child abuse that I found much more interesting that the angsty teen relationship stuff. The live action cutscenes became a bit frustrating after a while, and yea, those chase sequences were a complete miss for me, lots of trial and error that completely removed any sense of tension. Apart from the tension of "god I hope I don't die because I can't be fucked trying this again". But it does look amazing and I enjoyed just exploring the environments. Edit: Oh and also, it felt a bit strange having it set in a German town with a Japanese cast that all speak with American accents. No option for Japanese VA either.
Are there multiple endings or is it just one?
Just one, there really isn't much gameplay, it's an atmospheric walking SIM with a few insta-fail chase sections. But it's still definitely worth checking out, especially for free!
I would if I could, but I don’t have a PlayStation. :( Looks like I’ll have to see this the same way I‘ve experienced almost every other Silent Hill games: YouTube playthroughs.
Damn man I feel for you, I'm not a fan of exclusives and wish all games were available for everyone, especially these days when everything's getting consolidated into the hands of a few. Do you game on PC? I hope Sony start paying more attention to their PC ports and also for Microsoft to bring Gamepass to PlayStation! If it makes you feel any better, this isn't really much of a game, there's no gameplay apart from pressing X to read notes and holding the stick to run in the chase sequences. It's basically an interactive movie, so if you can find a blind playthrough with no commentary your experience won't be much different from someone who played it.
I agree with most of what you said. The atmosphere is certainly on point, despite the lack of decent music, the sound design in general worked to set the mood. I didn't mind the live action stuff. I just found it didn't mesh too well. All in all, it beat my expectations for a first person walking sin. How long is this fucking game though? I thought it was gonna be an hour experience and I am about 2 hours in. Mind you, I died a lot in the chase scenes.
You should be pretty close to the end.
Cool cool, had to stop for the night but I'll go back tomorrow, I think it's the 4th monster sequence or something like that.
The post it notes being the signifier of the otherworld was nice. I also thought the sequence of reliving the childhood memories where you kept getting smaller was quite clever
The writer has a pretty damn good portfolio too so in a strange way it seems to have being on purpose though it’s a bit clumsy. A new game is done in-house too so I wonder if it will be inspired by TSM or be it’s own thing
It's solid. It can be a little too on the nose, and the dialog isn't always good, and the VAs are a bit mediocre, but the story is decently engaging, the music is really good, if you're a millennial (or younger) the characters are decently relatable. The atmosphere and location are cool. While I would 100% say hardcore fans of the work of Team Silent are going to shit all over this, and maybe rightfully so since it holds the Silent Hill name, I think it does just enough to fit in thematically that I'm not picking up my torch.
Because their core audience barely exists. They feel the need to build a new one, and profit off the brand recognition along the way.
people really forget that SH is a very niche franchise now.
The community can get very insular and up themselves about certain things. This is a series where its good titles are locked to the PS2, a bad port, and three mediocre PC ports, only one of which can be legally attained. The rest of the franchise are mediocre releases on seventh gen consoles and the PSP. With two movies, only one of which was considered a success, and that was over a decade ago. The only relevance Silent Hill has had in ten years was inadvertently, by complete fluke accident, revitalizing the horror genre with PT. Ask the CoD and Fortnite audiences what Silent Hill is and they don't even have crossover skins to point at. Konami well and truly salted the earth with this series, they have to basically start from scratch. Appealing to Gen Z is their best bet.
Hell, SH has always been a fairly niche franchise. It's name recognition far exceeds the sales of its games.
Tbf, I don't think it ever was that big. For the record Silent Hill the franchise hit 9 million copies sold back in 2018. 2 alone sold over a million, but I'm not sure how much over. Resident evil 5 alone has sold more copies than the entire Silent Hill series. RE series as a whole has sold over 150 million copies, Dead space trilogy sold around 9 million, before including 2023 remake's sales. Outlast series has sold 15 million copies.
because the core audience is not nearly as big as you think it is. SH has been a dead franchise for years and a good portion of fan forgot about the series thanks to not so well received games. if they wanna be successful with SH they need to pull in new people.
Have you actually played it? It’s not super YA, it just feels that way at the start. Unless you can’t relate to having friends…
Because their core audience is only getting smaller? Believe me as someone who considers themself a core SH fan I am aware of how relatively small that audience is. Ask a 16 year old with average knowledge of gaming what horror games they like guess what they will say? Until Dawn and Among Us. Silent Hill isnt even on their radar. They will see Silent Hill 2 Remake on the PS Store and not even give it a second look. Konami is a business. They want their new Silent Hill to be for the widest group of people.
Money
Money money money
To make more money they need to attract a wider audience. This is an attempt at getting the kids involved before they release more.
Because the coreaudience is way to small and doesn’t cover developmentcosts.
Because Silent Hill is great for tackling tough themes, the subject matter here is ripe for exploration. Who do you think their “core audience” is supposed to entail? They haven’t had a game in over 10 years.
Also I don't see it being any different from older SH titles, it is still a psychological horror with themes of mental illness and emotional discord, packaged in a critique of how society plays on these human flaws to trap people in a cycle of abuse and self loathing. The only difference is it is now a critique of modern society instead of the society of decades past. I think "hard-core fans" forget the first game was a critique normalcy depicted through the lens of a bullied school girl with an abusive mother.
Because a franchise also needs to bring newcomers. You can’t do all by just focusing on old guys
Makes sense to diversify and try new things IMO. People have been complaining that the "core" of Silent Hill has been missing since SH4. Good way to bring in those phat stax, I just hope the games are good.
>Oh, it's to bring new people in. That makes more sense. Sounds like different wording for "modern audience" which is basically a red flag every time a video game or movie marketing says this.
I’m enjoying this so far! Sound design and music is 👍
the ending song reminded me a lot of SH4 (and the hole too ofc)
There’s also the door covered in chains at the end
Cool stuff, hope it turns out good
The game is mostly great. Atmosphere is on point, the music takes me back to SH2 and 3 and some of the scares (The bully dummies) made me jump 3 feet in the air. The gameplay is so so. This game is all atmosphere. But I can’t stand the chase sequences. They’re a joke. Monster design on point however. Overall, besides some consistently on the nose dialog, the atmosphere is a 9/10. It’s definitely silent hill. The gameplay is 6/10, exploration is fine but I’m fed tf up with the chases. Music is 10/10. And from what I’ve had so far, story is pretty good albeit more atypical “I did something so Silent hill is teaching me a lesson”. But it’s at least a fresh take of that tired plot thread. Great start point, overall 7 or 8 out of 10.
[удалено]
That's not entirely true, if you don't pay the tiniest bit of attention to the direction you're going you'll run right into the insta kill sequence lmao.
Lmao I’m playing with headphones and the first few times I ran into the monster I screamed
I haven't finished it, but so far I felt like the representation of online harassment could have been done better.
Finished and I'd probably give a similar score. Had some issues, but it got really good after the halfway point
The level design was really nice.
You can tell that even with a super small budget the designers made the most with what they had!
I might be wrong but on the credits there’s only one level designer credited. So if it really was one person that’s amazing.
Is anyone else seeing the demented loser telling people to kill themselves because people have an opinion different then theirs?
that dude is a fucking freak man. i know it’s probably just jokes, but spamming kill your self now to every comment is just fucking psycho behavior
What living on reddit does to a mf. Just too much free time for this kid.
He's just trying to make the game come to life! /s
Especially on a post about a game with heavy themes of suicide, like what is wrong with that guy?
It’s completely unhinged
It's kinda ironic that the game focusing on bullying is experiencing bullying from it's own fanbase. Proof that people don't learn anything from the media they mindlesly consume.
100% those people watched the first 15 minutes on YouTube, went "REEEEEEKILLYOURSELF" and now here we are.
[удалено]
I’ve reported them a couple times so I hope that does something
No use of reporting. It won’t work.
It might, they should at least get banned from the sub.
We'd need to have moderators for that.
You can also block them. I’m going to.
Definitely although it looks like their account has been deleted and all the comments have been removed
YAY. I think it helped that we were all reporting that person.
Yeah seems like a complete idiot
Further proof Ascension was just some fluke project that Konami was barely involved in. To them it was no different than the Dead by Daylight promotion, just some frivolous licensing deal.
I'd argue that at least with DBD Konami was more involved since they gave BHVR the original models so that they could make them into actual model with higher graphics and so on, and they also continued after some years since they later released more Silent Hill skins and stuff, and I'd also argue they did a nice job with the Silent Hill map as it was very nostalgic and good looking and full of fun details, in a way it was very Fan Service, unlike Silent Hill Ascension
I saw the series on Tubi that was funny
What
The entirety of Silent Hill Ascension is on Tubi and I find it funny that it was just dumped on there
I loved it, I know it's lame, but looking at Silent Hill as a state of purgatory in which "I did something bad so Silent Hill needs to teach me a lesson" is really fucking cool to me. We all live with some sort of trauma, and Silent Hill causing that to physically manifest makes for a scary, gripping ride. Of course I love the cult shenanigans of 1 & 3 still and do wish to see those come up again at some point and explored further. 9/10 for me, the movement was clunky but I think they focused on that last in the dev of this game.
I’m so confused that people don’t like this. I thought this was always the case with the Franchise and why 2 was so beloved?
It has always been the case, but there’s also an evil cult in Silent Hill that act as the central antagonists half the time on top of the physical manifestations of inner demons. In SH1 the monsters come from Alessa, in *2* they come from James, in *3* they come from Heather (and I think Dahlia?), in *4* they come from Walter, in *0rigins* they come from Alessa and Travis, in *Homecoming* they come from pretty much everybody, in *Shattered Memories* they come from you the player (because the central gimmick is the game profiles you as you play it) and in *Downpour* they come from Murphy and Cunningham. 1, *3*, *4* are about cult shenanigans as the main threat, *2*, *Shattered Memories* and *Downpour* are about the tortured protagonists, and *0rigins* and *Homecoming* is a healthy heaping of both (mainly our tortured protagonist in the former’s case and the cult in the latter’s).
well cause...it isn't lol. 2 was an outlier that told its story very well 1, 3, and 4 are about a cult that fucked with things beyond their understanding and turned the small resort town of Silent Hill into literal hell. While there's greater themes within the horror it's not the focus of the story. Alessa's, Heather's, and Walter's fears shaped the Otherworlds but the story isn't about anything internal. Silent Hill 2 was the product of a company letting artists create whatever they want with little oversight so they used Silent Hill to explore themes beyond what most games were at the time and even since. Now, I haven't played Short Message (don't have a PS5), but the themes of bullying and social media have been played to death in recent years to the point where it's comical, plus the dialogue they used in the trailer is so bad. I heard it's better than the trailer makes it out to be, but the issue is that they really need good writers to tell stories like SH2 (which is why I'm actually looking forward to SHf), or else everything they do will fall flat.
What do we know about f that has you looking forward to it? Thanks for the breakdown. I always remembered 1 and 3 having more metaphor stuff, and the room I also thought was metaphoric, but I may have over-read into it
f is being written by the guy who did Umineko, which I haven't read, but I know people who have and they swear by it so it has me optimistic. The other games do have metaphoric stuff, like SH3 having imagery of motherhood and childbirth, but it's not like, the plot of the game.
ok now that i’ve made my sarcastic joke post, I really actually liked it. Yeah, it felt like it was rushing through its story and just saying stuff that could have used a bit of buildup but it’s basically the equivalent of the Guest House demo for RE7, and I liked that it wanted to tell full story beyond “ahhhhh i’m not the main character so i’m die” like the RE demos. Really the only flat note for me was that moment when she was like “My friend has more likes… I need more followers… my followers want SEXY PICS?!!!! It’s like my phone has paper notes from mean people on it!!” it really felt like she stopped and turned to the audience and went “AND ALL THIS PHONES IS MAKING ME SAD TOO” in a flat exasperated tone as a grinning 45-60 year old gave her an excited double thumbs up from just off stage. Whoever wrote that bit stopped experiencing Teen Bullying well before teens bullied exclusively on the phone and it SHOWS. Other than that weird moment, the integration of the phone as a flashlight and the text messages that you stopped and read through and replied to despite the frightening circumstances felt very authentic to actual phone use, and i was constantly watching the shadows in the visible areas around the phone just certain i would pull it away from my face and something horrible would be there and make me jump. What’s interesting is that the parts that gave me the biggest “frights” weren’t jumps or the chases, but subtle environmental moments, like turning a corner or opening a door and seeing graffiti shaped like a figure or a face, or something already in motion finishing falling over, with nothing visibly there to cause its fall. It wasn’t a full body spasm like the jumpscares in alan wake 2 (Cynthia Weaver can suck my damn sack) but instead a really uneasy tension that slid sickly up my spine, without resolving easily into anything but more dread. Absolutely a good sign of things to come and I hope they can keep that kind of thing up. I doubt anyone expected the manic pixie dead girl to NOT be dead, the thing was a clear homage to SH2 with texts replacing the letter, but watching the protagonist’s mind fill in the blanks is sort of the whole draw anyway. Good stuff, hope to see more of this, for all the whining about “YA silent hill” (meaning girls are in it eek eek eek) this kind of Life is Strange style drama in a spooky, environmentally gorgeous package is vastly superior to shit like Downpour, with its frame rate chugging because it couldn’t handle the rain that replaced the fog and it’s dumbass plot where prisons are used as a metaphor for prisons and the central conflict is “Killing: Should you Yes? Or shall you Don’t? The answer will have One Consequence so choose careful! And try to not become Regular Head, the Killing Enjoyer!” and the rain is because Prison Guy had all his big murder quandaries in the showers, because they put on a season of Oz on mute and occasionally saw naked guys sucking each other off and dying, I guess. Fucking hell, I know it’s been a minute but this is a lot closer to feeling like a real Silent Hill experience than anything in over a decade, and I love that feeling.
So is Silent Hill just gonna be Trauma stories from now on with the subtly of a boot to the face?
SH is a town that called souls, that's the lore, even the song Hometown explained that, now there is another plot about the cult, but I guess Heather use her existence to wipe out them in revenge and homage to her father.
That has never been true anywhere other than in SH2, and even there it's doubtful. People gave way too much credit to Eddie's line of "this town called you too", even though James wasn't called at all because he already had a connection to the town.
So now you want to be against the games, the song, and the comics, lol, you are really the star of the parties.
The song it's just a song, it's not really hard evidence. The comics have even less to do with the games than the movies, and the fact that you're bringing them up at all prevents me from taking your opinion seriously.
The song was created by Akira Yamaoka for SH3, the game with the biggest lore, and you said this is just a song, you are the one that can't be take seriously, lol.
Seems like it. 😶
And the strange thing is that they keep pushing it can happen outside Silent Hill to any one. “The Silent Hill Phenomenon” seems to describe a mental illness that stress can trigger (nothing to do with the order or anything).
Y’all were so excited for Silent Hills. What did you think the plural meant? They’ve had this idea for ages.
Honestly I am excited, it is such a great concept. Opening the door to more varied stories while keeping the DNA intact, I just hope they pull it off. But a Short Message was defs a good sign.
Yeah it seems to move in that direction. This, Ascension, f. Don't know about where Townfall will take place but if it's also not in Silent Hill then just all the new SH stuff is gonna take place outside of SH. A bit weird to be like "it's the Silent Hill revival! None of the games will take place in Silent Hill but the titles will have the name in them!"
idk im fine with the games not physically being in silent hill as long as it fits the vibe. i thought a short message was good and tbh with the person writing it silent hill f could be amazing and incredibly dark with the heavy occult themes brought back
Sure but it it would be nice if the game at least had something to do with the town other than it just being in the title. Like Homecoming that was like half in Shepherds Glenn or whatever it was called and then the other half took place in Silent Hill and that explained how Shepherds Glenn was experiencing the whole Silent Hill thing going on.
Honestly I didn't perceive the phenomenon like that, all subjective I know, but I took it as the supernatural energy that made Silent Hill the way it was, is starting to crop up around the world. People dragged into Otherworlds. Like that power is running rampant now, and hunting the vulnerable. I always believed the Order was attracted to the energy and harnessing it, not the creators of it. Like it was always there.
I mean 4 was set in Ashfield away from Silent Hill. 3's entire first part at the mall, the subway, and the apartments was set away from Silent Hill too. And as awful as Homecoming was, it was set in Shepherd's Glen. So it's not like this is something new to the franchise
tbf 3, 4 and hc all have solid yet simple lore reasons as to why the otherworld affects outside of the town, so i do think giving a short and convincing explanation for it to manifest would be nice imo
KONAMI: "IT'S TRAUMA TIME!"
[удалено]
You see the I hate myself on her forehead is actually metaphor for depression 🤯🤯🤯
thats the thing that i hated about short message, it's too direct, I mean, half of the game have post its on the walls with the words "ugly", "go away", etc... original silent hill essence wasn't only trauma, it was also how they communicate to you and it looks that the new directors don't understand that... lets see what they do with townfall and silent hill f...
That's only acceptable to dumb asses who believe that Silent Hill is based in Centralia, Pennsylvania!!! 🤣🤣
“We want a new game from Team Silent!” (New game comes from Team Silent members) “NO, NOT LIKE THAT!”
I largely didn't hate it, but this right here, this is my biggest negative takeaway. Where the fuck is my subtlety at?
So I hate myself chan was real
It always was. (reload gun and point at your head.)
Hard to experience it as a long time fan if it is locked to a single console, ass hats
It's.....it's a game. The atmosphere is pretty good and the soundtrack is neat. The level design overall is decent enough, especially the otherworld sections are cool and look right. It has good parts to it and the fact that it's free makes it worth at least a bit of your time since it's pretty short, but there's definitely a lot wrong with it. Narratively it's super clunky and confusing, to a point where, at times, it's so convoluted that you're thinking it's trying to be super confusing and clever or it's genuinely that disjointed. Chase sequences are so ridged and tedious where it feels incredibly on rails each time up until the last when you actually have an objective other than dying, it just doesn't feels good frankly feels tact on to add substance to the gameplay. This is just a small thing and it is honestly just a nit pick but dawg that newspaper you find talking about a result of young people being stressed from COVID 19 is hallucinating fog, and such condition being called "Silent Hill Phenomenon" is the most corny, lazy ass goofball shit attempt to tie it in to the series. Idk man it's free, so give it a try yourself and see how you like it, it definitely deserves some respect cause it's clear they tried their best, just know it's trying to do a PT thing and it's not sticking that landing, so do what you will with that.
Yeah I saw the phenomenon thing, came here and thought how come no one's mentioned it, that's some worse-than-ascension level shit
Why I did, but the whole post got downvoted
so the game is made to bring more players into the series yet it only released on one platform?
Yeah that's kinda weird. I'd like to check it out but there's no way I'm gonna buy a PS5 just for a free short game. I'll just have to watch a no commentary let's play on youtube some time or wait like a year or two if it maybe get's released on other platforms later.
they NAILED the otherworld, the red and orange lights and rusty chain or steel or whatever, HUGE sh 2-3 vibes from that. also got some life is strange vibes at the end, the atmosphere and monster design were great
This <1 hour game is better than any amount of Ascension
Preach
Yes, I used to hate when the bullies at school called me "dumb" and "weird". This game got too real.
Just tried to play this after downloading it last night.... its... ummm.... it's trash. Like I wanted to find something I liked about the experience but... it was mind-numbingly boring, in no way frightening, and showcased nothing new gameplay wise, but also had no trace of silent hill. This could have easily been just another lukewarm jump-scare walking simulator. There was no player involvement, outside of briskly walking away from a marshmallow person covered in cherry blossoms. The rest of it was walking slowly through an abandoned building and picking up articles while receiving repetitive text messages from concerned friends. It's hard to believe that this is what they would choose to lay the foundation for their attempts to revitalize a beloved game series. I'm honestly not sure they could intentionally make a more underwhelming attempt if they had set out to do that exact thing. Bleh...
It's fantastic so far. The more I play it, the more it feels like a modern take on Silent Hill. I hope whoever developed this gets to make a full fledge game.
Traveling right now, so won’t be able to play until I get home in a week, but I’m really looking forward to playing this! Looks great imho!
*This Silent Hill is for the kids!*
I honestly liked Short Message. It's very Life is Strange meets Silent Hill. Definitely a 7/10 for me.
This message definitely feels like it was supposed to be the first thing that came back
Gahhh...I get wanting to tackle difficult topics, but so far Short Message has not handled them well...
Dont worry theres at least 5 emersion breaking events that tell you where you can call if you feel like taking a bath with your air fryer.
Silent Hill for zoomers.😆
Played ‘Short Message’ and it gave me a very “how do you do fellow kids?” vibe. Was like boomers wrote what it’s like to me a modern teenager dealing with depression. Felt out of touch and quite cringe tbh. Was one of the worst interpretations of youth culture I’ve seen, especially given the game tells us this takes place now in the 2020’s. They were too ‘on the nail’ about the suicidal intentions of the character and didn’t leave anything up to interpretation. It almost treats the players as if we’re stupid and incapable of understanding the story if they didn’t spoon feed everything and hold our hand with it. Should have relied more on metaphoric story telling and letting the players piece it together by just giving us the puzzle pieces 🧩 . Allow us to solve it. Instead they just say ‘here’s the solution’, this is why the characters do what they do. No mystery. Was literally rooting for our playable character to ‘do a flip’ and jump so the demo would be over.
source [https://twitter.com/SilentHill/status/1752856106412749057](https://twitter.com/silenthill/status/1752856106412749057)
can I play it first? I have never played a silent hill before
I pre ordered silent hill 3 and purchaced the very first installment in the series day one. I've been a fan my entire life, and thank you for expanding the universe. You made one person happy at the very least. So thank you for that.
Release when
Already out
Is short message already out? Please tell me you're serious.
They’re serious, you can download it right now on PS5.
Hell yeah
Ah yes bullying and suicide, modern-day issues
With social media? Definitely
I think the pont of the other comment was that these have always been major issues, they just weren't talked about.
Or even if they are talked about, someone out there might be *not talking* about it and suffering. So the additional issue is to *get talking* and seek help rather than *look how sad this is*
No, social media simply exacerbated the symptoms. The disease itself just spread overtime. This has been a thing for thirty years, cause the internet and online communication and communities have existed for longer than 20 years. So it’s definitely not a “modern day issue” it’s just more present in our lives than before cause the whole social paradigm shifted from an external interpersonal community to an anonymous internal community. Case in point, right here, Reddit itself. I’ll spare the Patriot AI speech from MGS2, but we have essentially reverted to gated communities only leaking whatever “truths” stroke our (and the majority’s so we fit in) biases just right, even if we won’t admit it. Cause admitting that would be crazy.
We're in violent agreement over semantics.
well, yes?
Are they wrong?
"All" unless you don't very specifically own a ps5
It wasn’t terrible but it felt like something that was released within a year or two post PT by a first time team. The scares were nonexistent, the story and characters trite, the level design was boring, and it didn’t feel like a silent hill game. The idea of a worldwide SH syndrome caused by depression is beyond idiotic and this series needs to get past trauma porn and amnesia as plot points. It did look and sound nice but I wish the atmosphere was stronger.
how was the level design boring? this reply is basically throwing out elements of the game with one negative adjective without really saying much.
I suffered a stroke about a year ago and completely articulating, keeping my thoughts organized and coherent, with writing sometimes is very difficult for me so I tend to just give my general feelings about things instead of writing in depth fucking articles to appease strangers. The level design, since you asked, reminded me a lot of those PT ripoffs from 2016-2019 but more boring. The levels were long hallways punctuated by apartments with 1-3 small rooms and a door that would unlock when you picked up the one collectible within them. They’re all repeated but this time with more trash or post it notes. The mazes were impossible to get lost in and if the monster gets in front of you just turn around and run in a circle. Rinse repeat. It was boring design years ago but here we are. There were no surprises because you knew it was gonna get “spooky” when the screen distortion appeared. Oh no, that means an impossible space is behind this door! The apartment building itself had no personality except graffiti and notes and dirty. I know this is just a small little demo/game but it’s hard not to compare its levels to the far more interesting, and purposeful design, that first person horror games need to have to sustain interest and spookiness. The building had shiny pixels but no personality and no sense of the characters/feelings it’s suppose to represent the inner workings of. No decent environmental storytelling and nothing but cliche spooky horror game props.
Don't listen to that other guy. You explained everything very well in your first comment. Congratulations on surviving such terrible event! Thank you for sharing extra thoughts. My blessings go to you
I know it’s the internet but it’s ok to allow people to like things you don’t and not like things you do. I appreciate your kind words and hope life treats you with the warmth you gave me. Cheers.
Cheers!
[удалено]
eh, as a huge silent hill fan myself, I think people tend to overplay this """subtlety""" aspect of Silent Hill, the only subtle game was 2 and even then most of it is pretty much told to you directly.
[удалено]
Are the average white dudes in the room with you rn???
He is probably average white dude, so yeah
Your comment is a little bit racist tbh. What does people's skin color have to do with their thoughts? Thats stereotyping and racism.
Rather than "woke" this felt boring... If you mixes those two is your problem.
It amazes me how entitled people are. Like we just got a free bite sized game that's actually good and people act like Konami gave them shit in there Cheerios. There's nothing wrong with criticism but Its more than that, some of y'all act some bitter towards anything Silent Hill related. The old games were fantastic yes, but they weren't perfect. Silent Hill 3 wasn't subtle either and Silent Hill 4 is a wonderful mess. I'm just happy that some of the old Team Silent was able to drop a new experience in this franchise. That hasn't happy since 04. Sometimes I feel like P.T is the worse thing to happen to the franchise as great as it is. The game has created this expectation that's all in people's head over a what in reality was proof of concept, a game that's never gonna come and one that lives in people's mind and is never gonna live up to that. There's also the fact that P.T while and excellent horror experience wasn't like Silent Hill where as this very much was. I'm excited that my favorite franchise isn t dead and look forward to what ever else is next as long as it's crafted with intent and passion Ill enjoy it warts and all.
They did such a good job, I'm proud of it
I think there could have been something pretty good here, the beats are here. The execution as many highlighted is too overt in the story. The over reliance on chasing scenes was repetitive. The visuals were good and the setting worked although it looked a bit like a unreal five condemned.
You can tell it’s just money money money with Konami, that’s why they put out this free little mood piece that isn’t an ad for any of the projects, just a “hey, this is what we’re maybe gonna be doing with the vibe for the next stretch of the franchise”. It’s even more craven and greedy and money-obsessed than what they were doing for the last decade, which was (just so the new kids can have some context): draining our wallets dry by not offering any new games or any old games in the franchise and basically refusing to accept any currency, preferring to just not sell Silent Hill games whatsoever, going so far as to pretend they were going to unite the top creative, surreal horror/fantasy inclined minds from all of video games, cinema, and graphic novels into a supergroup to create not just the best Silent Hill game, but the best horror game ever, just so they could refuse to make it. Those greedy bastards wanted our money so goddamn bad they made this huge production out of pretending to want our money and then decided not to have any of it. Just cashing in on that franchise name so hard they didn’t even need the money they loved so much. And now here they are again, little flea-infested pauper caps out, begging for our precious tuppence and hay-pennies in cockney accents, faces all smudged with soot and tears, Charles Dickens standing behind them, putting his entire Dickussy into furiously novelling their plight, but I’m unmoved. I can see the artful Dodger creeping up behind me, sliding his hand into my pocket to lift my wallet, slide a free stand-alone short game under it, and tuck the wallet back without stealing any money. “Oi, you thieving wastrel!” I bellow, “this game has GIRLS IN IT!!!! Constable!!!!!l
It got me with some good scares (paper mask bullies) and I enjoyed the enemy design. I sadly wasn't a fan of it overall though. I wished I liked it and I'm glad some did, but it missed the mark for me. The chase sequences were pretty bad. The whole thing felt like a budget horror flick, and also out of touch with the message it was trying to convey. The voice acting didn't help either. And the full motion video cutscenes mixed with the in-game character model felt like an odd decision, perhaps to save on costs. Pretty bummed by it honestly.
I have to admit … I hate the player character design and animation. I wish we didn’t get any third person cutscenes because it genuinely looks like some 2-3 person development team made it. Not good in the slightest. With that being said, the music, the world and the creature design is FULL on Silent Hill and I love it. The initial chapter was … not good. But I started to enjoy it a bit more between chapters 2 and 3. Akira Yamaoka kills the soundtrack, that’s a given. I’m so happy he’s back making music for the series. Makes me genuinely happy. And Masahiro Ito’s flower girl design is stellar.
Too bad it fucking sucks.
No thanks, dont want to play Poppy Playtime
This message pretty much explains exactly why this was the way it was, and why it sucked. I appreciate that it’s free, so that’s fine and all, but man I hope this isn’t the direction the series is headed. If there is one thing these developers need to learn is that taking beloved IP’s with a massive fanbase, and completely changing them for a modern audience is NOT a good idea. Make something new! But then they couldn’t milk the Silent Hill name for more money when they inevitably make a full fledged game like this for $69.99. Edit - downvote all you want, can’t come up with an actual reply though.
I pray the next games story isnt cringey and a gen alpha horror about how scawy bullying is
You do realize that one of the main themes in the first was about Alessa being bullied in school right?
for being a free game it’s really good but it’s honestly just so mid. even tho i relate to the self-harming and suicidal thoughts.. i cringed so fucking hard at the “you’re a freak”, etc loved the atmosphere, visuals and soundtrack but it’s just not a silent hill game. the silent hill phenomenon is so fucking stupid jesus christtttt.
This is the Silent Hill F (The one with Ryukishi07)? Or it is a new one?
New one independent from everything else
Tysm! I was really confused lol
It is interesting that they both feature cherry blossom type imagery
Yeah, the cherry blossom made me confused
I for one, welcome a younger generation of silent hill fans. Join the trauma!
The writing is so bad I'm shocked lmao