I would class the survival horror video game series Silent Hill as one of my all time favourites, I would even go as far as to say I am a pretty hardcore fan of the games. Ever since owning a phone I have had artwork from Silent Hill 4: The Room as my background image, I was one of the few who thought Silent Hill: Downpour was a good entry in the series, I have most of the graphic novels, and I even managed to have a go on the hard to find Silent Hill arcade machine once. I was quite happy when earlier this year they announced a bunch of new titles, the first to appear since Downpour back in 2012. Among these was a remake the most beloved entry, Silent Hill 2 by the team behind the good looking but dull The Medium, a mysterious title called Silent Hill: Townfall, and Silent Hill f, which appears to be set in 1960's Japan. In addition, a new film was announced, Return to Silent Hill, and the weird Silent Hill: Ascension.
Silent Hill: Ascension is described as a 'digital interactive streaming series', and was (thankfully) the one I was least looking forward to. nearly two weeks ago it went live, with each day three short scenes playing out at the same time each day. Watching live, viewers are able to make key decisions that shape how the story proceeds. In the UK, that time is 02:00, so it is going to be a rare day when I am up and about then. There was actually one day when the stars aligned and I happened to be awake, however the app is so confusing to navigate that I couldn't actually work out how to join the live video and ended up missing out due to the narrow window with which you can apparently join. Thankfully, each day you can 'catch up', playing the latest three episodes. Due to this going on for around four months straight, I wasn't going to wait until then to write about it, though, as I intend to watch every episode, a review will pop up then. So, having watched a week and a half (at the time of typing), is it any good?
The short answer is 'no'. In fact, it is kind of awful, featuring bland lifeless characters, and a drawn out story that is light on entertainment. Even more damning is its reliance on microtransactions for those wishing to make a genuine contribution to altering the path of the story.
It starts off terribly, with a video that serves as an advert, trying to get people to buy the ridiculously expensive battle pass, that comes in at a cool £20. As it isn't a game, all this gets you is some stickers to put in the chat window, and a bunch of XP. On the subject of the chat window, this was meant to be a place fans could discuss the story, but soon predictably became a cesspit of dick jokes. Currently you are only able to use stickers in this chat window, and I assume that is how it will stay. On the plus side, Ascension is a free download, with myself watching it via a app on the Apple store on my phone. The U.I is bad, frequently the touch controls to navigate the app don't work on first try, and sometimes when you've levelled up enough to get a reward (typically a cosmetic for your avatar you can make), you click onto the reward screen and its showing blank. Talking of avatars, you can apparently buy tickets to get a chance to feature your avatar and name as a character in the show, something which is distracting as most people's names are goofy, so stick out when they show up in such a dark show (my username on there is of course RottingZombie).
The star of Ascension is the show itself, aside from the first night which had around a twenty five minute run time, each of the three scenes each night clocks in anywhere between one to four minutes, making it something easy to stay on top of each day. The story takes place in two different unrelated locations, both of which are having the hellscape of Silent Hill bleeding in to them.Somewhere in remote Finland (I believe), Karl becomes the main suspect when his miserable bedridden wife dies mysteriously, no one believing him with his wild tales of having seen a monstrous figure in the room with her before she passed. Karl has a troubled relationship with his daughter, Astrid, someone who soon too keeps finding herself pulled into a twisted version of reality, which in turn affects her own relationship with her young son, Orson.
Elsewhere, on the other side of the world, a member of a cult called 'The Foundation' begins to see monsters emerging into the world. While her cult worship these beings, it is alarming to them all that they are appearing in the real world. After her friend, a new initiate, is killed during a ritual, the initiate's brother becomes determined to find out the truth.
Due to the bitesize nature, I don't really mind what is going on too much. It is all computer generated, and mostly it is fine, if nothing exciting. Where it does shine is its monsters, these have yet to appear anything other than great looking. The voice acting and script is drab and dreary, I think it may even be A.I generated, certainly sounds that way. The story hasn't gripped me in the slightest, but I will stick around for it all. XP gained by watching episodes and playing dull minigames can be used to contribute towards decisions that will affect the path of the story, with the creators saying even them themselves don't know where things will go. Being a 'free' user, I could never use enough XP to influence things, but I still do that part just for something to do.
As it currently stands, Silent Hill: Ascension is not a great experience, personally, not having put any money into this (nor intending to), its fine, but alarm bells are ringing already at this early stage due to how lifeless it all feels. I will leave with the most popular meme from the app to sum up my thoughts on how this is at the moment..."It's Trauma!".
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