Silent Hill: The Short Message presents a captivating revival for the series, showcasing its potential to captivate a contemporary audience. With a compelling atmosphere and promising elements, it sets a positive tone for upcoming instalments.
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00:00Silent Hill The Short Message. It's not perfect, but it makes me think there might
00:05be a future to Silent Hill. There's a lot to like about the first actual new Silent
00:17Hill game since 2014's PT.
00:20Despite some clumsy laboured writing, Silent Hill The Short Message has a similar vibe
00:24to Resident Evil's excellent number 7 reimagining, taking familiar touchpoints and reworking
00:29them into a fresh, more up-to-date wrapper. It looks like a completely new take on the
00:32series, with new first-person view, but under an all-fresh trappings and modern style. The
00:38bones of what our old games do poke through though, comfortingly to remind you what you're
00:42playing.
00:43The crackly old radio that used to warn you of monsters is now a mobile phone that buzzes
00:47and flickers whenever danger is near, while the rusty, chain-linked, rusted hell of the
00:52other world is, actually pretty much as you remember it, a threatening tetanus-infused
00:56mess of oxidised metal corridors and mystery liquids oozing across the floor.
01:01Silent Hill The Short Message follows a young girl exploring a derelict old apartment building
01:05for reasons I won't spoil here, but the overall thrust of the narrative is pleasingly
01:09Silent Hill, and matches the hell-of-your-own-making theme the series has used so well in the past.
01:15The monster, the post-it notes that cover the other world like peeling skin, and all
01:19the trappings of school, teen life and more littering the place like detritus all have
01:24meaning to the protagonist and call back to some part of what happened in her past.
01:29As an eater you wake up in a crumbling maze of halls, exploring various rooms while trying
01:33to piece together your memories of how you got there and why. Silent Hill The Short Message
01:38sees you navigating rubbish-strewn corridors and overturned messy rooms, picking up notes
01:43and clues while getting texts from two of your friends. It's atmospheric, and at least
01:47initially intriguing, as you try to second-guess what led you where you are now.
01:51Interspersed with these more exploratory beats are frantic dips into the other world
01:56where you're chased through a maze like warren of chain-link fences and barricades.
02:00I won't spoil what's following you here, but trust me when I say that it's a confusingly
02:04weird and unsettling creation from Silent Hill's long-standing monster designer, Mashiro Ito.
02:09These maze sections are nearly always a panicky, wall-hugging run as you try to avoid being
02:14caught. Sometimes it can be a bit hit and miss if you get lost or run into a dead end,
02:19but when these spaces hit the spot, the tension and fear is good. The original Silent Hill
02:23composer is on hand here as well for music and sound design, and at least one spot it's
02:28just as good as the old days and generally hits the mark overall.
02:31What lets Silent Hill The Short Message down, however, is a clumsy, almost brute-force approach
02:36to the writing. It's all about the trials and difficulties of being a teenage girl in
02:40an online world, but there's an outsider feel to the bluntness with which it articulates
02:45everything. In the case of two of the main characters, it sort of boils their teenage
02:48life down to being sad and romanticising suicide. There are support screens about how
02:53to get help that flash up after all three chapters, to give you some idea of how hard
02:57it leans into the self-harm and suicidal ideation. To some extent, these only go to highlight
03:02how crassly the game treats the topics it touches on.
03:05It's not that the concepts themselves are bad, Silent Hill has always been about people
03:10paying for their sins in a cell they built along the way. The minefield of young adulthood
03:14and what happens here is absolutely perfect for a Silent Hill style purgatory. It's
03:19just the writing seems almost afraid you'll miss things unless it's really, really clear.
03:24Teenagers get sad, have body issues and school children can say really mean things. The potential
03:29subtlety and nuance of what it's like to be young and unsure are somewhat lost when
03:33the only way Silent Hill The Short Message seems to be able to articulate it is by throwing
03:38ham-fisted messages repeatedly in your face, often in phrasings that feel more functional
03:43than entirely natural. Whether these issues stem from the game's short length leading
03:47to a desire to exaggerate for clarity or translation issues isn't clear, but it's the weakest
03:52element. Silent Hill thrives on ambiguity, with people still picking apart meanings and
03:57interpretations of games that are 20 years old. Silent Hill The Short Message on the
04:01other hand is explicit to the point of feeling like it's written in all caps with a 60 font.
04:08So Silent Hill The Short Message is not PT levels of wow, but then that was always
04:13going to be exceptionally difficult to achieve. But The Short Message is a decent statement
04:17of intent at the very least. There are a couple of good scares, some nicely tense moments
04:22and an atmosphere that manages to touch the past glories of the series. Most importantly,
04:27it feels like a Silent Hill game, even with the new ideas and flaws, because it doesn't
04:32seem to be teasing anything or linking to any future project. It mostly seems to be
04:36Konami proving that they can bring the series back. And while it's not perfect, it does
04:41make me think that there might be a future for Silent Hill after all. We give it 3 stars
04:46out of 5.