Silent Hill: The Short Message | Review

Platform: Playstation 5 | PC
Release: 1/31/2024
Publisher: Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.
Genre: Horror | Walking Sim

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT!!

Introduction

My history with Konami’s Silent Hill franchise dates back to the Playstation 1. I was a big fan for it’s horror themed mind bending gameplay that Silent Hill pumped out over a string of years on various systems. Silent Hill: The Short Message Gameplay Playlist

However, over the last decade or so I have a hard time recognizing Konami as a video game developer/publisher. Things done changed drastically which brings me to this uninspired, yet FREE to own digital video game titled Silent Hill: The Short Message. Keep reading to find out why I don’t like this video game.

Presentation

Silent Hill: The Short Message is a Playstation State of Play stealth drop. I had zero information of this game’s development until January 31/2024. With that said, I downloaded it, beat it till credits rolled. To make a long story story short I didn’t like Silent Hill: The Short Message.

Due to the game being first person I thought it might end up being somewhat like P.T. Not the case. Silent Hill: The Short Message is a walking sim with limited interactivity, only one puzzle and filled with terrible paper monster chase sequences.

I played this on my Playstation 5 yet experienced stuttering in it’s frame rate. This is a FPS walking sim dawg come on! The latter shouldn’t be a thing in a static walking sim that looks average for the Playstation 5. As for bugs and glitches their were none that I could remember.

Story

The premise, or idea of Silent Hill: The Short Message is actually positive and an important one. This game targets mental health in young women dealing with social media and the likes. There were plentiful real suicide hot-lines in between loading screens to call for people who are currently in a dark place in their personal lives.

What isn’t so good however was this game’s story and characters. You play as Anita a teenage woman in search for her friend Maya. The setting takes place in a abandoned villa located in Kettenstadt, Germany. The crux of the story here revolves around three teenage girls Anita, Maya and Amelie.

Anita is searching for Maya who committed suicide yet Anita didn’t accept it and went looking for her in the villa. Amelie is the girl Anita wanted attention from yet felt Maya took this from her which in turn made her dispised Maya.

Maya was popular on social media for her graffiti art unlike Anita which weighed heavily on Anita’s mental health. After taking two leaps of faith off a building. While texting with Amelie, Anita ends up coming to the realization that Maya did indeed kill herself.

Along the story Anita learns about her mean mother as well herself. Like I said, good idea/premise. But bad delivery. The writing was blocky and junky. Characters were terrible in my opinion. It broke the story.

Gameplay

Silent Hill: The Short Message is a walking sim. Anita checks her phone for texts on occasion. She speaks some mindless horridly written banter on occasion. There was one puzzle involving opening a locker via code during my two hours with this game.

There are four terrible escape the paper monster gameplay sequence. There are three chapters overall and the last chapter had me finding five photos to open a door while alluding the paper monster. That latter was terrible.

Gameplay was forgettable along with the dialogue. It just wasn’t fun or scary to play Silent Hill: The Short Message. If you were thinking this game was anything like the P.T. Interactive Demo yo ass is dead wrong on that assumption. Silent Hill: The Short Message is more like The Suicide of Rachel Foster or Dear Ether.

Graphics | Visuals

Very static with a stuttering framerate. the Library and High School looked okay. Graphically not much impressed with this walking simulator. There wasn’t any real interactivity to boot. Some cutscenes were FMV.

These days devs can make a walking sim look realistic that’s playable. I wasn’t impressed with the visuals or art style in Silent Hill: The Short Message. Considering half of this game is about graffiti art doesn’t bode well.

Sound | Music

Music did have that Italian guitar-thingy music all Silent Hill games had. Voice acting, writing and lip synching were terrible. I was like “what in the nine hells is this?” when listening to Maya and Anita talk. Not good.

Final Thoughts | Score

I mostly trashed this game and for good reason. With my final thoughts I do want to write about the positives before I go. One positive is that it’s completely free to own this on PSN.

Knowing Konami you might want to download this onto a external HD like I did for P.T. years ago. Game length was very short clocking in at about 2 hours to complete everything. You can collect notes and documents for reading.

This game is what it is. It’s a super short walking sim with bad writing, collectible notes and shitty monster sequences. Silent Hill: The Short Message needed more puzzles, better writing, a stable frame rate just to start. Oh Silent Hill what has happened to you? Anyways, hope you enjoyed this review – Later

6/10