The Silver Case

It's hard to say whether or not this game is good because it's a complicated mess that's interesting to experience but not very fun. The Silver Case excels at creating a deep and involved atmosphere, with a thought-out world and fascinating characters. But the problem is, there's a lot of dialogue and words to wade through in each scene. The game intentionally tries your patience and will reprimand you for not paying attention -- both in your actions as a detective and journalist -- meaning it's trying to challenge your abilities as a gamer and your patience as a person. As such, it's hard to say whether it's good or bad, but it's certainly unique. Large sections of the game pass with it fooling you into thinking you have agency and choice, but actually, you have no significance to the greater story. The story itself also doesn't feel like it needs to be governed by logic or continuity. It's alternately slick, funny, crude, and consistently confusing.

As this game is likely only appealing to die-hard fans of its director (Suda51 has been involved in many other truly bizarre games, and this is one of his earliest), this is exactly the sort of curveball most users will be expecting. But if you're a newcomer to these games, you'll likely be put off by the clunky exploration sequences with multiple overlapping control schemes. You'll also be annoyed by the way the game holds your hands for a lot of the time until it suddenly doesn't, dragging your feet until you eventually make progress. It's a remaster of an old game and one that's worth checking out mainly to see what this obscure classic was like. Most won't feel the reward-to-hassle ratio is correctly balanced, but those who stick it out will definitely have experienced something unusual and fascinating in every sense of the word.