It’s hard to start this article because I honestly don’t know where to start. Not because I lack ideas but because I’m lost in fog and despair. I feel like Harry Mason back in 1999 when he first set foot on the streets of Silent Hill but without a map. Not knowing where to go after getting out of his wrecked car and waking up from unconsciousness, the only thing left for him to do was to move forward. Into the unknown. Even when that unknown is actually known, yet not in a good way.
Silent Hill: Ascension was meant to be something different. Something revolutionary. Something we haven’t seen before in the world of Silent Hill games. And it is. But not in a good way. Are you ready for another entry into the foggy town after a long wait?
It All Started Back in 1999
If you want to design a very good product, you need a lot of effort and learning from the mistakes yourself and others, but if you want to produce or design a masterpiece, you also need a touch of genius. The same thing happened with the first Silent Hill back in 1999. I remember like it was yesterday when my friend asked me, “Do you want to play Silent Hill?” I had no idea what it was about. Until then, I was familiar with the survival-horror genre only with Resident Evil, a classic and the brainchild of Capcom.
Silent Hill showed me from the first second that it’s a different game compared to Resident Evil. From the first moment of entering the foggy town, it became clear that Team Silent, a team of programmers made up of developers who failed to fit into any other development team within Konami, had come up with a masterpiece. And that masterpiece that still lies in the memories of players, both old and new, is one of the best horror games ever created. The year 1999 became the year when the first installment of the franchise was created, which in the next few years will continue to impress, confuse (but in a positive way), and, of course, scare many fans of horror games, first on the first PlayStation, and later on the computer and PS2.
11 Years of Silence
The last time any of us had the chance to play Silent Hill was in 2012. It was the Silent Hill: Downpour game, which was designed by the company Vatra Games. The game, as such, wasn’t well received by the fans of the franchise, which led to the almost shutting down of the entire franchise. After 2014 and that P.T. attempt, Konami let us all know that Silent Hill is over and that we can forget about new Silent Hill games. That’s why we believed that one of the best horror franchises was over.
This is how it was until October of last year and the so-called “Silent Hill Transmission” virtual event, which was organized by Konami and where it presented its upcoming projects. One of those projects was Silent Hill: Ascension. However, fans were most hoping for the re-release of the second installment of the franchise, namely the Silent Hill 2 Remake game.
However, since the virtual event until today, we haven’t received any new news about that upcoming game. What we got instead was Silent Hill: Ascension. But we’d better not…
Instead of a Game, We Got an Interactive Series
Ascension is a type of “game” that, in many ways, resembles The Walking Dead game. You, as a player who plays the game through an Internet browser, make different decisions during the game. So, it’s not a classic game where the player would control the character with the help of a controller or mouse and keyboard. The game actually plays itself out in front of your eyes. You’re only expected to enter some input from time to time, i.e., select one of the offered choices. Disappointed? I know I was.
Maybe I belong to the old-fashioned kind of player, and maybe this is a new age in the world of gaming. If so, sorry for us, but games like this, in which the player doesn’t actually participate in the game but takes place by itself, while the player is expected to input occasionally, just aren’t for me. It was the same with The Walking Dead; it’s the same with Silent Hill Ascension. It’s just that Ascension is worse than The Walling Dead and many other “telltale” games on the market today. But more about that a little later.
What is it that Ascension has to offer that could possibly attract the average fan of the SH franchise, especially if it’s the first three installments (or four if you’re being generous)?
First, I think many fans will be turned off by the fact that Ascension is an interactive series, not a game. That’s how the series begins. You have at your disposal several characters that Genvid Studios tried to make as mysterious as possible that should intrigue the players or viewers, But as the game progresses, it’s increasingly clear that these characters are also unpolished and that the whole experience is somehow tasteless. There are several reasons and causes why this is so.
2 Families Tormented by a Common Mystery
I don’t want to spoil, at least, what has been revealed so far, which isn’t much, though. Suffice it to say that the initial premise of Silent Hill Ascension is based on events involving two families. Imbued with various mysteries and mysterious events, of which there are more and more as the game progresses, that is, as the episodes move forward, the members of those two families decide to do something to solve the ancient secrets in which certain members are involved, and before they manage to find their way, they find themselves in Silent Hill.
Some will think, well, everything is there: the monsters, the fog, the mysterious story, even the game is called Silent Hill. What does it matter if the game isn’t a game and is actually an interactive series available on web browsers and mobile platforms? It’s not enough to put monsters, fog, some kind of mysterious story, the title “Silent Hill” in the game and say, that’s it, here’s the new Silent Hill. That’s just not enough. That’s what Climax Studios and Vatra Games tried, so we got what we got with Homecoming and Downpour.
OK, some will say those games are good. But are they good Silent Hill games? If we look at the formula established by the first three games, we can easily conclude that they aren’t. It takes a lot more to make a game, Silent Hill. This is one of the reasons why I personally wouldn’t call Ascension a true Silent Hill game. It’s because that “something” is missing. For a real Silent Hill game, it’s necessary to achieve something that only the guys and girls from Team Silent have achieved so far. After that, we got all and anything. The same applies here. Regardless of the two families, their members, and the monsters, which I have to admit look OK because, let’s be real, every monster in the Silent Hill game looks at least decent; there just wasn’t much that would make me want to continue taking part in the new installments of this game. Even though each episode is only nine minutes long, yes, you read that right. Nine minutes every day, over the course of six months, according to Genvid.
A Free Game That It Isn’t That
Silent Hill: Ascension is advertised as a free-to-play game in which players will be able to participate in a very interactive way without having to spend a single euro or dollar. But is that really so?
Today, nothing is free, and if some developer team advertises a game to you as free, and if it’s a game published by a reputable and large company, you should immediately be suspicious, at least doubtful in the sense of something that has become very popular in the last 6-7 years, which is called: micro-transactions.
Ascension is a game in which you, as a player, participate by making various decisions, both in the game and after the game, that is, in the meantime, between the release of new sequels to the game series.
First, you’ll need to invest a minimum of $20 to purchase the basic package. Only after you’ve invested that sum will you be able to use all the features of the game. As far as features are concerned, there are various mini-games, so-called puzzles, and similar things. Solving this gives you so-called “Influence Points,” which you then spend on different choices between episodes. But even if that doesn’t work properly, that is, there are various errors that prevent the player from properly spending their IPs. To make matters worse, a large number of users have reported various problems that occurred when trying to purchase packages that unlock additional IP points.
All in all, Ascension is chaotic, not a genuine game. Well, it’s not so chaotic if you ask people responsible from Genvid who claim that the critics by many that Ascension is a bad game aren’t appropriate. That’s just aces, guys. Is this what we wanted from Konami after 11 years of waiting? Hardly.
Silent Hill: Ascension Is a Clear Indication of How Not to Make a Game
What do we have so far? We have a game that isn’t that. We have a game that asks the player to invest real money in Influence Points because, supposedly, the player’s decisions affect how the story will progress in the game, that is, which story scenario will be true. There’s a system of micro-transactions that are primarily oriented towards extracting as much money as possible from the user for seemingly insignificant things. What if you invested, for example, $50 in your choice, and someone comes along and invests $70 in their choice? Your choice will no longer be valid unless you invest more money, i.e., if your choice prevails due to the investment of Influence Points (which you get with real money) of other players.
Unfortunately, that system doesn’t really work. Many users reported cases when they would buy their IPs; that is, the game would take money from their accounts but wouldn’t count those points in-game. To make matters worse, many of the players who requested refunds still haven’t received their money. And with all that, you have a statement from the head of Genvid, who pretends that everything is fine and that everything is working as it should.
Silent Hill: Ascension is a clear indication of how not to make a game. Besides this not being a game, a lot of things that should work don’t work at all. This, of course, led to the anger of the players, who flooded Genvid’s user channel on X with various offensive messages. This is quite understandable because this isn’t a game. This is a disaster of a game.
Silent Hill: Ascension Is Something No One Needed or Wanted
Imagine the disappointment on the faces of fans of the Silent Hill franchise. You’ve been waiting years for a game, hoping that Konami could do a good job of selecting developer companies for their new games. You keep waiting. And then you get this. The game that wasn’t a game, the game that no one wanted.
In a year when we could enjoy, and still enjoy, great games like Resident Evil 4 Remake (an installment of the franchise that even aims to become an eSports shooter in the foreseeable future, which will certainly take away a portion of bettors who got accustomed to betting on already established eSports bookies, such as the best Team Fortress 2 betting sites from Bookmaker-Expert.com, and bring them to new bookies offering RE wagering), Dead Space 1 Remake and Alan Wake 2, Konami decided to release this. Instead of a gaming experience, we have a series in which we, as players, should “play” the game with simple clicks on the screens of our smartphones or mouse clicks on Internet browsers. Even when we want to, even when we say, “OK, fine, let’s go see what Ascension has to offer,” we can’t because the game is full of different types of errors. Of course, there’s also the inevitable element of buying Influence Points. Genvid expects players to buy these as long as this game series is released, that is, as long as episodes for it are released.
To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. I know many fans of the franchise share my opinion. How long the episodes of Silent Hill: Ascension will be shown depends on a lot of things. Honestly, I hope the series ends soon, and Konami learns some important lessons from all of this. And that we’ll all finally get some news about Silent Hill 2 Remake. Until then…
The only thing left is to enjoy the first four installments. And to hope that maybe one day you’ll actually enter that foggy town again…