Silent Hill: The Short Message
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Silent Hill: The Short Message Media
Critic Reviews for Silent Hill: The Short Message
Silent Hill: The Short Message shows glimmers of the classic horror series at its best - despite the very heavy-handed metaphor, a frustrating chase sequence, and the long shadow of P.T.
Silent Hill: The Short Message is an interesting, if not amazing rebirth for the series that proves it can be reanimated for a modern audience. Atmospheric and full of potential it bodes well for future instalments.
Silent Hill's return to consoles after 12 years away falls flat thanks to a script lacking even an ounce of subtlety.
The sad thing is that Silent Hill: The Short Message has a lot of good story ideas, characters and world-building, but then proceeds to waste them on completely unoriginal, shallow gameplay. It paradoxically wanted to move ahead and tackle more mature themes and stories, yet has gameplay that feels blatantly regressive, settling for the most generic aspects of modern horror games. If this is the direction that the franchise wants to take, then it's headed straight for a cliff. Hopefully the likes of No Code will be able to salvage things with their side games later, but for now, you can easily skip over The Short Message.
Another disappointing Silent Hill revival, that gets some of the visuals and tone right but is let down by a hackneyed script and frustrating chase sequences.
For a free game that shows the first glimpse of what Konami is truly going to do with the franchise, Silent Hill: The Short Message is absolutely worth experiencing. That's not to say it's perfect. The "walk around and find the only interactable object in the room" gameplay brings nothing new to the table, and after being caught by the monster two or three times the escape room segments become far more tedious than they do scary (especially the final one). The dialog is a bit too on-the-nose, and all the social media references that seemed pretty important in the beginning are quietly shoved to the side once the real story reveals itself. That all being said, it's a far better start than it could have been, and it is undeniably the best new Silent Hill media since 2014.
Incredibly bland gameplay and some overly frustrating chase sequences make Silent Hill: The Short Message a chore to play much of the time. While there are some intriguing full-motion cutscenes and heavy story details, they're not worth pushing through the dull sequences in between to experience them. Silent Hill: The Short Message is completely free, though, so all it's asking for is 90 minutes of your time to see if you enjoy it more than us.
Silent Hill The Short Message is a product that misses the mark and fails to deal with extremely serious and delicate issues in the best possible way.
Review in Italian | Read full review
