Introduction

Let's Play Silhouette Mirage
Spanning a twisted universe where all of humanity has mutated into manifestations of two attributes, Silhouette Mirage is a virtual surrealistic wonderland, and played a great role in shaping my taste in bizarre fictional media.

Developed by Treasure, the game forged a new path through its genre with polarizing gameplay. Long before Ikaruga or Outlands, you find yourself with the equally awe-inspiring and underwhelming ability to negate enemy attacks with a literal turn of your cheek. While simply red and blue shots in practice, the attributes you toy with allow for some thoroughly creative enemy encounters, though nothing quite as hectic as what you may be thinking. The game relies heavily on its characters as a vehicle for design, and they're all strange in their own way, which leaves little room for “standard” levels or excessively difficult combat situations. Indeed, boasting 20+ boss battles in just under 3 hours, it places variety and personality before all else.

However, idiosyncrasy can be a blessing and curse. The game can often become too absorbed in its personality to provide challenge, which ensues that when a genuine threat does appear, it's an awkward whiplash. This is made twice as apparent by the sub-par localization efforts of Working Designs. Not only does the American release feature new exclusive, broken game mechanics, it also proudly sports a sub-par translation rife with awkward self-parody and confused dialogue. Make no mistake, this release is a derivative, thoroughly fucked up re-imagining of the original design. Then again, the English voice acting is fantastic, so there's that.

Silhouette Mirage is certainly unique, and it deserves its time to shine. This version may be a little more “unique” than the others in a few questionable ways, but nothing is perfect. Let's get this started. And please, no spoilers.