beard ひげ @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

I used to want old games and old movies I really enjoyed that hadn't had the proper love they deserved to come back, but now seeing how bad they are when they finally do come back I'd rather just have all of my favorite franchises wither away so I don't have to go through the pain of them getting shot in the head.

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.

Holy SHIT the end credits song is HORRENDOUS. I know that some of the lyrics in the vocal songs are not the greatest, maybe a little cheesy at times, but this is a whole new level. No Mary Elizabeth McGlynn vocals either!

Vocals start 50 seconds in. Cringe shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKTS0pYTS3o

Oh, and at the end of the credits there is one final suicide warning lmao. Five. Five times. It's a total joke.

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.

Oh, I don't know how I missed this, but the game takes place in 2020 during COVID lockdowns and shit. I kind of see what they were going for because that was a scummy time in general... but with just how ridiculous it actually was, it cheapens everything else. Especially because it was so recent. I think it's something people want to actually forget about and having it brought up in a horror game isn't scary or traumatizing or anything, it's just kind of lame and feels overplayed.

Well, the streamer I was watching didn't finish it. He got stuck on a part where you have to find pages with the monster thing chasing after you in a dark maze like it's Slender or some shit.

nnnooOOOOOO

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

Okay the story took a completely massive turn now out of nowhere. It's no longer about the bullied girl's suicide, it's about MC's mother being abusive and killing her brother or something. Not really sure how this plays into everything? I guess it could go along with MC's feeling of abandonment or insecurity. It's a story that is being told in completely seperate chunks though, which makes it harder to see it as something that is intertwined.

I don't know man, there are way too many things going on at once for a demo that's only like 3 hours, and it's all so in-your-face that I cannot take it seriously.

I think some of the ideas are sort of good but the developers have NO idea how to actually execute on them. That is the difference between Team Silent and pretty much every other horror game studio out there. Bright side of all of this is that it does give me a bit more perspective for my own horror game. I can't remember the exact story beats I have laid out there but when I start to work on it again I am definitely going to be doing some refining so I don't risk things being this horrifically bad.

I know for a fact I've got a boss encounter written that shows a news document of a murder right after that pertains to the boss. I should try and find a way to illustrate that through symbolism more. I'm sure there are other things like that I wrote too. Keep in mind this was actually like 5 years ago and before I played any Silent Hill games except for Shattered Memories lol. It makes me wonder how much of the dev team for this game has actually played the classic Silent Hills, and if they have, then how much do they really understand them?

Fourth suicide warning, ah-ah-ah!

OHHHH PLOT TWIST! The main character is ACTUALLY THE BULLY! The girl who killed herself "stole" MC's best friend because she's probably more interesting or something, and so MC bullied her into killing herself. Now that's her trauma.

Interesting idea, but the execution is, as someone in the chat put it, "as subtle as a rocket launcher."

If you want something much more poetic as an example to turn to, "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam is really good. Eddie Vedder even writes about how he picked on a kid when he was in school, just like the MC here.

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.

Oh no, they took the worst part about Silent Hill Shattered Memories, the chase sequences, and said "hey that's a good idea, let's do that in our game!" You run from this flower thing in a bit of a similar-looking maze without any weapons to fight back with. It's worse than Shattered Memories or even Outlast in some regards though because it's just instant death.

At least the revive animation is pretty cool, you like reverse in time to your last checkpoint. Can't really show that with an image but it is pretty cool. Shows that the main character can't actually die here, she can just suffer the pain over and over again until she figures out what she needs to figure out.

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.

LMAO NO WAY AFTER SHE JUMPED OFF IT GAVE THE SUICIDE WARNING AGAIN!!! THIRD TIME!!

Also, the game is soft-looping now. Very PT-esque. Modern day Silent Hill really is just a comical caricature of everything that recent horror game phenomena did right, huh?

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.