Your intrepid heroes test The Silver Case on three Linux powered boxes of business. Did it pass? Come find out.
Game: The Silver Case
Webzone: The_Silver_Case
Devel: GRASSHOPPER MANUFACTURE INC.
Engine: Unity
Price: £14.99 / US$ 19.99 / CA$ 21.99
Wazzat: The Silver Case – the debut title from world-renowned developer SUDA51 has been fully remastered and localized to English for the first time ever!
Mandatory Disclosure: The Devs sent keys.
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Makes with the working
V-
- The remaster was developed using the Unity 5 game engine
- The main problem with the port was that the original source code had been lost, so the audio data needed to be extracted from the PlayStation disc version.
J-
- SWEET MOTHER OF LOUD
P-
- The game is downright unplayable in non-english locales
- If you don’t add LC_ALL=C %command% to the advanced launch options the graphics are pitch black, you can’t load a game and you can’t progress at all.
- This is <current year argument>
- This kind of shit was bad enough when it first happened when Unity games started coming out, it’s even worse now.
Total-
Shiny / Sounds
V-
- Remaster?
- I went back and watched some PS1 gameplay and I think a better definition would be “mildly enhanced”
- That said, I like the background music.
J-
- I mean, “HD” remaster in this case just means that all the art assets are HD, which means fewer pixels
- Otherwise, it kind of reminds me of some Strider-esque neue wave cinema
- Which, you know, could work for the genre of the game, but the dialogue is super bad
- Protip: Alternating mental cast members Bill Cosby, Snaggletooth and Frank’n’Furter make this a much more entertaining read
P-
- I almost wish the locale bug made it so I couldn’t hear the sound effects because goddamn, that typing noise is so annoying and loud.
- Graphics look like something out of the PS1 era.
- And seeing as this came out in 1999, it probably was.
- And even then, on the i5 6200U laptop it runs at 10FerPS
- So it’s horribly unoptimized, on top of just looking like shit.
Total-
Control
V-
- Oh sweet mother of flaming nope.
- You get a bonus soda for attempting a point-and-click in the PS1 era.
- You also get smashed in the face-organ with a Chair for keeping that bullsh*t in place.
- You knew the control scheme was nightmare-fuel back in 1999.
- Yes, you added a WASD option but getting to it is the problem.
- Hell, I’ve counted three references to how the controls “might seem confusing” in the game proper.
- Keyboard is somehow worse.
J-
- Very much an early 3d console point and click game ported to PC
- And yeah, the control scheme is a wee fucked up
- You do get used to it though. The trick is to just not use a mouse when playing the point and click sections
P-
- The controls work.
- This seems to be the sole thing which did before forcing all locales to C, system-wide.
- They’re still bad, though.
- It does the Myst thing of letting you spin in place and move to another square on the map.
- Not impressed.
Total-
FUN
V-
- This is about as much of a “game” as Gone Home: You’re Drunk.
- It’s a visual novel / walking simulator mixed with the occasional puzzle.
- The criminal thing is the hot mess of what they claim to be a game interface.
- I lasted a little over an hour before giving up.
J-
- #bigdickchinchilla
- This was always supposed to be an experimental game
- When you have time, resource and budget constraints, sometimes the answer to your problems is to go way the hell out there
- I never really played any of SUDA51’s other games, so I don’t really have a sense of what makes his sauce super special
- It does some visually interesting things, which again ties back to the limitations, but it doesn’t really make up for the main deficiency
- Since this is a text game though, the experience is defined by the text of the game. And hoo boy
- I get the sense that the dialogue is supposed to be people talking normally, but hot damn. There are some points when people start repeating shit that I thought the game was glitching out
- I also still have no idea who any of these people talking are
P-
- I think I found my most hated game of 2017.
- I thought nothing could top spaceBOUND in the “making me violently ill with anger” category, this year.
- I was wrong.
- This is the kind of game I hate the most.
- The mechanics are there solely to make you work for SUDA51’s masturbatory stiffy over his storytelling.
- The graphics barely even register, since all of the important bits are just glorified JPEGs which get smeared on screen to indicate something is happening.
- There’s so much text on screen at any point I felt like I’d be better off with audiobook version of this game.
- If you want to experience this game like I did, the best way would be to watch a let’s play of the original Myst on youtube (without fullscreening) which was recorded in 240×160, mute the audio, have someone tap along on an old digital typewriter right next to your ears and focus on the text below the video.
- Are you bored yet?
Total-
Final –
