Well, guys, about 10 minutes ago, I finished watching/playing the first chapter of Silent Hill Ascension. But did I enjoyed it? Let's see...

Silent Hill Ascension is a interactive series for PC, PS4, PS5 and iOS. On PC it will have daily chapters, I'm not sure how it work on consoles. But anyway, the story goes as a ritual gone wrong caused the death of a young woman. Now, with multiple characters all around the world, each one with their own burdens, a new story about curses, damnations and death will begin.

So, this first chapter was about 30 minutes long, and from what I understood it was more of a way to introduce some characters. I found the scenes really short, but hopefuly this will be a long story.

It works like that: While you're watching the chapter (On PC, again, I'm not sure how it will work on Playstation), a pop-up will appear on screen asking you to vote for what you want the character to do. For example, on Chapter 1, the woman who was commanding the ritual was asked by the police about the death of that girl. You have 3 options to choose her answer, but since this is Live, everyone watching it can vote. But don't be on a rush, you have a time limit to choose, but you can even vote a day later, if the time limit allows it.

One thing I disliked about this game is that you actually can pay to have more points to vote, making the choice get a "Bonus". I got 2.000 points for joining in (You can sign up with Google, Facebook, etc) and each vote costed me 200 points. What the heck is so hard about making 1 people = 1 vote? It feels unfair, but... Yeah, that's how they'll get money from us, the poor gamers. Can't complain, as the story is free.

But that's not all: After the episode ending, we got a... Gameplay! Yeah, in the scene we have a character trying to escape the monsters from Silent Hill. As a QTE, you must complete the events by interacting with the screen. At the botton, you can see how many users completed the QTE and how many failed it. I got a lot of them right, but as the community, we failed it, so I don't know if there's a reward for it or something. It looks we didn't lose anything, at least.

At the menu, we can make some customizations for a character, there's a point and click game that feels like a Hidden Object Game where you can solve puzzles to earn rewards. It's cool, but maybe too simple.

So, did I enjoyed? The quick answer is yes, but it feels like Konami really, really wanted to make a lot of money with this game by giving "powers" for those who pay for it. I'm against that, and while I trully liked it, I hope they plan to release a "complete" edition offline, so we can actually play it like a Telltale game or something.

You can play it on your browser at ascension.com.

Reading opinions on this makes the game seem like utter trash.

Which is a shame, cause I can def see this experience being great if it all just worked properly.

Well, while a couple of things on the game are kind of "pay to win", I'm enjoying the story. The chapters are getting really short though, like 10 minutes or less per day.

Also, it looks like they removed the chat. You can't type messages anymore, just emotes and stickers. I think I can see why they did that...

Yeah... I tried to post a message at the chat, and...

I think the only reason they allowed stickers and emojis is because those things are reward for people who purchased stuff.

I think that's probably the worst thing about this all, there's so little discussion about the story (what's happening, theories, connections to other SH games).

But I really hope it improves asap. 

My problems with the game so far:

- You can purchase votes, I think this hurts the polls.

- QTEs at the end of the chapters are always the same animation, they just change the characters.

- QTEs are probably glitched. Sometimes the action commands appears and disappears out of nowhere, making me fail it, and the community status bar goes crazy or stop working. (Could be a problem with my connection, dunno).

- Chapters are way too short.

- The story is good, but the events are way too slow paced. 7 chapters spreading 21 scenes completed and not a lot of exciting moments.