b e a r d @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

what did he mean by this?

Okay, last post about Silent Hill: The Short Message. Just a summary.

The best way to explain this is like when you were a kid and you put all your favorite snacks into a bowl and then into the microwave for 30 minutes. No one else, just me? Okay you get what I'm trying to say though. It comes out smelling and tasting like shit and if you didn't have a nose it would have burned your entire house down.

The developers took everything they liked from every horror game ever and tried to squish it into here, except they did everything worse. About the only thing I can praise here are the environmental graphics, because it does look very good.

There is nothing subtle about the writing of this game which betrays what makes Silent Hill so good to begin with. It has extreme "how do you do, fellow kids?" vibes. They try to be contemporary but don't know what contemporary actually is. I can't say this game would be contemporary for any time period because it is a mix of a bunch of different time periods that don't make sense all existing at once.

It's bad. The two things we now have seen from the so-called "Silent Hill Revival" are awful. This definitely isn't as bad as Ascension, but it's nowhere near as good as any other Silent Hill game, and if it weren't for how good the graphics are (other than the player model), I'd think it was some trash indie fangame that misses the point entirely and is too far up its own ass to realize that.

Correction, it takes place over the course of a few years, 2020 and COVID stuff included in that.

Anyway, we're doing this now?? This trope of "character walks in a straight line and sees memorable things from their life and talks about them without letting the player just simmer on it?" Niiiice. Again... every single horror game trope is here and they are all done worse than the games they are lifted from.

nnnooOOOOOO

no FUCKIN way did they put a sh4 reference in here randomly

Ah, nice. The only puzzle in the game so far is one of these pieces of shits. Literally look at the number around the room and plug them in, using the color of the word LIAR on a desk to tell you what position the numbers are in. First grade shit.

Okay so here's a decent look at the monster. The design is pretty cool, it's got flowers all over it. However, I can't take it seriously at all.
1) Flowers aren't really that scary. Sorry, they're just not. I like the design, but it's not scary. It's just cool looking.
2) There are no other enemies in the game (so far) and this thing pops up and chases you in scripted sequences, Outlast style. There is nothing less scary than at Outlast chase to me these days man, it got done to death even in its own series. Playing the game on Insane difficulty made me completely numb to this kind of shit.
3) They made the awful choice to make it render at 20 FPS for scary factor or something like that, with that stupid jittery effect. That has also been done sooooo much in horror that I can't take it seriously anymore. I fuckin' laugh when I see something spazzing out like that.

This is baby's first horror game.

Get real. "Freak! No wonder nobody likes you at school!"

This sounds like something you'd get from an AI if you asked it to come up with things bullies might say. In this scene too, ghosts of high school bullies past are throwing shoes and other objects at you saying stupid shit like "dumb!" Nobody who made this game was ever actually bullied IRL, they watched some teen dramas from the 80s and thought that's how it still works today.

What bullying really looks like today, when not violent, is usually in the form of extreme social pressure. It's more of excluding others and tattling on authority. Then there's the other kind which is the big black chick Laronda squeezing the freshman's throat because he's white or some shit.

Seriously, this is fantasy shit that makes everything this game is trying to shoot for seem like a complete mockery.

Why the fuck is there like some Jeff the Killer knock off in here lol xD

Man, I really can't wait until I can make another game that actually has greenery in it xD making a game that takes place during a plague where all the plants are dead/dying made mapping pretty damn hard. Well, hard to make it look pretty. That's why I liked making the snowy maps so much... they still have evergreens.

Waaahhhh I don't have enough social media followers, and the ones I do have keep asking me to post sexy pics! WTF am I supposed to do?? Jump off this fucking building? My friend did it and she's got tons of followers now!

How to build an unlikable protagonist 101. James, despite killing his wife, is still way more likable than this cringelord.

There is actually a correct way to do this, but this is not it bro. This is soooo not it.

There are these automated text message scenes that happen randomly in the middle of gameplay too. They said they wanted to be contemporary or some shit and that's why they're doing it. Did it ever strike anyone that what's contemporary is fuckin' lame? Stopping everything you're doing for a JPEG of a phone to come up with a pre-baked text message scene is so much worse than even having a character call you... at least you can still walk around in that case. Shattered Memories even did that astonishingly well since it used the Wiimote's speaker. This is just boring as hell and the rate of the texts coming and going is also super unrealistic lol.

I just found out that these are on the official Silent Hill store. WTF is going on man.

Hmmmmmm.... subtle. Angela in SH2 carries that knife around with her and it is clear that she probably harms herself, but it is never explicitly mentioned like this and her scars are never shown because she wears a long sleeve shirt.

There are live action cutscenes. What's the deal with these things?? I hate them every time I see them. Takes me out of the experience immediately. I can understand going for it if the idea is to be a little corny, like in the original Resident Evil, but when games are trying to use it for a serious effect it just doesn't do anything for me man. Feels way too detached from the rest of the game.

holy hot fucking diggity damn they brought the sauce with this one

art: kornart/55level/hotpppink/moshimoshibe

#tekken #reina

It's also worth mentioning that it's not like suicide wasn't a problem back when SH2 came out, either. Especially in Japan. This kind of shit is 100% because companies are worried that Twitter users who don't even play the game are going to get their panties in a bunch and they can't have "journalists" talking shit on their game because that is going to affect their bottom line or something.

Here's another thought... Silent Hill 2 did thing really tactfully. A lot of people find that even though the game has some really fucked up stuff in it, they felt sort of comforted while playing it despite suffering from a lot of these same traumas. It's not too dissimilar from how child abuse victims may consume or draw stuff like lolicon. I'd wager to say that the people who created Silent Hill 2 all suffered from things like depression and sexual trauma as well, and they used the game as a creative outlet for that. I would not be surprised in the SLIGHTEST.

This piece of shit is probably going to be way too blatant about bullying and suicide and all that garbage and not have any sort of tact whatsoever. I hope I'm proven wrong but I already know I'm right because the damn art on the home screen already shows off everything you need to know about how well this game actually treats the issue.

Take this and juxtapose it to Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3's warnings. They are content warnings of course, but it doesn't sound like they're trying to coddle the player or take some social stance. The warning screens from those games even add a little bit of extra spice... you know you're in for a ride and it's time to prepare yourself before you dive in. Shattered Memories has an ever creepier one because of its unique gameplay mechanics. Even fucking Doki Doki Literature Club doesn't have to be all "suicide is bad, guys, we don't condone it." It just says you might have a bad time if you suffer from certain mental illnesses.

Silent Hill 2 doesn't have a warning screen PERIOD and it's got suicides, calls to suicide, PTSD, sexual abuse, and murderers. What the fuck is going on with the world? Is the Silent Hill 2 remake going to have a content warning that's the length of a damn EULA you have to scroll through slowly before you can play?

Man you know it's great when the game hasn't even started yet and I'm already malding xD

Going to watch someone else's playthrough of Silent Hill: A Short Message. Since, you know, I don't have a PS5 and probably never will unless I find one on the side of the road.

This is gon' be good.... and by good I mean probably trash. Those leaks we saw a little while ago for a new Silent Hill game coming soon with the girl that had the post-it notes with "homo" written on them or whatever? Yeah, 100% real.