Hey talk about the game, lol.

I still have to play it, but I'm with Silver Jiken right now.

Ryo Kazan - so that's the dipshit that gets shot repeatedly by Kusabi. I haven't really figured out yet what was he doing at the beginning of game... Ryo, I mean.

What's the purpose of all these "Sumio"? Touba, Kodai, Mondo?


Or Silver Case & FSR's popularity with Japanese adv gamers.

You want me to psychoanalyze that? Maybe a passive (Japan) vs active (West) kind of gaming audience. I already said what I thought of that in the NMH board. Of course I wasn't too serious about the stand girls theory. I really think that what's really going on is that simply, a lot of Japanese gamers really prefer to watch the game unfold before them with only the slightest impression of control, or interactivity.

So, in Japan, such games get a natural audience, while here it's a niche.
But of course, the sophistication found in Suda51's adventure games doesn't really need a niche to get appreciated, it's really common sense.

Unfortunately, without a consistent "cushion" (target audience) to accomodate such games, true gems like Suda's adventure games' series will have a rough time to break into the west, from a marketing mentality POV.
But hell, all of this I'm saying is redundancy.

NOW, having said that, kicking the preference thing out of the way, the rating makes sense to me. I'm also surprised with how Silver Case has been hanging on all these years. It must've really made quite an impression.
From what I've been playing so far, I can say it's awesome, and this from a purely atmosphere/setting point of view. It also reeks of sophistication and class, the kind that wasn't really present in neither Snatcher or Policenauts, two great games with similar mechanics.
SC also gets rid of all the ripoff that plagued both these games, and the result is, ironically, an atmosphere resembling Blade Runner much more than Snatcher, who practically ripped of every surface element from that movie.

SC also has a quasi nostalgic feel to me in particular, and here I can't really explain what it is exactly that makes me feel this way. Awesome setting, and downright scary moments at times.