Ok: The Silver Case.

released in 1999 and then re-mastered (remade?) in 2016. This is the first release from game studio Grasshopper Manufacture, a project directed and designed and co-written by notorious Hotline Miami fan, Suda51. For a long time I've been very curious about The Kill the Past series of games (The Silver Case being the first), but have never really taken the entire plunge and seen things through. I rented No More Heroes for the Nintendo Wii from a Blockbuster video store as a child and honestly was like scandalized, it was too much of a shock to my system to see Travis Touchdown jerking off and all that. I've also started and never fully completed Killer7 maybe 1000 times. Now I'm starting at the ground floor and maybe will just be going through the series potentially (I may sprinkle in some "break games").

I started playing this a little over a week ago? And I came to 2 realizations very quickly:

1.Video games can look good. Go ahead. Roll your eyes. I know, I'm sure you've seen 17 twitter posts and 3 youtube video essays and you've talked with your opinionated friends and each time this exact phrase was said maybe even multiple times per instance. But it's literally true. This game looks good. Not only that, what is communicated clearly to the player is the game's investment in looking good. There are elements of the visual design and gameplay that provide a bit of friction but its feels to me that these moments of friction are often in service to making the game look as cool as possible at all times.

I'll explain a bit of the conceit of the game before I get detailed: The Silver Case is a visual novel with adventure game elements, most of the time you are reading text but there are moments when you are traversing spaces and solving puzzles (why is there a solve the puzzle button in the rerelease? did people hate the puzzles that badly?). So the story is progressing pretty consistently but there are moments where you are given an opportunity to provide input. Hear me out but, a lot of these moments of gameplay are a little frictive, they kind of hamper the steady drip of narrative that you are receiving as a player. That isn't to say they are boring, or distracting, or pointless (evil word): these kinds of admittedly clunky feeling exploration/engagement breathe a lot of texture into the story you're experiencing. Being kind of confused as you stumble around an empty mall is scary; Doing nothing but check your email and talk to your turtle communicates more about Moroshima's character than the actual conversations he's having.

So when I'm saying that moving your character around in the silver case is kind of clunky or even a little tiring I can so clearly understand and appreciate that it's in service to providing a more compelling experience, and a visually pleasing one as well and it works.

2.The first two play sessions of this gave me vivid and disturbing nightmares.

If you weren't aware, I like gross stuff, I like intense stuff, I even have a taste for more kind of disturbing or exploitative or cruel subjects in art. But for some reason the kind of setting and prologue of The Silver Case really must have subconsciously tapped a nerve because after my first play session I had a dream about police officers planting hidden cameras at my place of work to track my behavior and use that to justify killing me. It was extremely vivid. The second nightmare was about me being stranded and handcuffed in a desert until a pack of wild dogs hunted me down and killed me. That one is a little more symbolic, but 2 nightmares in a row feels odd. I haven't had a nightmare since, but I am kind of shocked at the really gritty/exploitative tone to this game. It feels kind of silly not to expect it considering it's like a police procedural, but even Killer7 which is fairly complex and mature in subject matter didn't really set me up to anticipate this kind of specific brand of storytelling.

So far I'm enjoying it a lot, It's a mystery game so I can't say too much about the literal developments that are happening but I'm looking forward to playing more. okay bye.