The Silver Case Reviews
All in all, The Silver Case is a long, enjoyable visual novel that is feeling the aches of time – The controls haven’t aged well, nor has some of the dialogue…But if you can fight through it, and battle against the urge to fall asleep during some of the lesser parts of the game and understand what the bloody hell is happening, you’ll possibly find yourself with a new gem courtesy of Suda51…
If you will enjoy The Silver Case is a very subjective question. If you love Suda51 and Visual Novels, like me, I´m sure you will enjoy it in some way or another, it still has a very Suda51-ish vibe in certain story moments and offers really interesting insights in his early steps, just don´t expect something like Killer7. However, its certainly not for everyone and defintely not a very good game nowadays, there are just too many flaws, too many uninspired characters and too many ideas squished into one little game.
Although with all of this being said, if you are looking for an adventure/point-and-click style detective game, this is definitely one to take into consideration. The main issue I have with The Silver Case is that it shows its age all too well. You can easily tell by looking at and playing the game that it was originally released over 17 years ago. No amount of remastering is going to make this any better, unless the entire game was to be remade from the ground up, which just isn’t feasible at the moment. However, fans of Suda51 should absolutely pick this up and digest it at some point, as it is extremely fun to go back and see where his career with Grasshopper Manufacture all began. Everyone else should probably think hard before jumping in.
The Suda-sensory Mother Lode The Silver Case, more than any virtual art piece I’ve experienced this year, is a product of its time. It is a reflection and speculation on the technological potential and cultural paranoia that partially defines the digital revolution and, more specifically, global internet culture from the late 90’s to the present day.