Silent Hillfans - of which I’m included - have a reputation for being people who are never happy. And that’s saying something for a hobby in whichnobodyis ever happy. Outside ofLike A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, I feel like very few franchises this year will get headlines that can be best summarized as, “Everything’s all good here, how are you?”. But Silent Hill fans are especially prone to despair and sorrow, which is actually kind of fun considering the source material. We’ve been consistently disappointed for, what, 15 years? So keep that in mind when I say I’m trying very, very hard to likeSilent Hill: The Short Message.
Folks, the game is free. Not free withPlayStation Plus. Actually free. The game costs nothing. And while it’s clearly inspired by God’s only son,PT,Silent Hill: The Short Message is a complete, contained story. I’m not a video game reviewer; I don’t get games for free. So I feel a little more within my rights to be a jerk when I’ve paid full price for something. The Short Message, however, is completely free. It’s not broken. It boots just fine. It takes up two hours which, to be fair, is more time than some games I have spent money on. All this makes me hesitant to be critical.
True, Silent Hill: Ascension was also free in theory. But that was a free-to-play interactive movie that sold battle passes so your choices actually counted. And, for all its flaws, The Short Message at least feels like a game written by living human beings, not robots that dreamed of wearing flesh. Silent Hill: Ascension is a movie-game that’s been running since October and has about the narrative consistency of that AI Seinfeld show. A completely free game is different from a pay-to-win game.
At the same time, it is still not a verygoodgame. I’m a fan of horror games and walking simulators and even walking simulator horror games. And, for the most part, The Short Message does a good job of making you walk through a loop of rooms over and over. Compared to even older walking simulators, The Short Message doesn’t try that much. You walk into a room. The door locks. You click on a book or a photo or a painting. You get a snippet of the story. The door unlocks. You move on. It’salmostsatisfying. I’ve played it twice now just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. I wasn’t. There’s just not much there. But it’s free.
And, look, I do like a good video monster! And Silent Hill: The Short Message has that. It’s a weird flower-and-barbed-wire type deal that’s very creepy and well animated.Exccceeeeept, the only time you see this monster is when you’re both supposed to run away from itandfigure out the right path to go down the dark hallways so you can find an unmarked exit. What’s supposed to be the meaty ‘gameplay’ portion is essentially two people chasing each other around to Yakety Sax. It’s fully Scooby-Doo ridiculousness. And it’salmostfun! Almost.
Silent Hill: The Short Message is pretty divisive so far, with mixed reviews from critics and fans on Metacritic.
On the other hand, Silent Hill games are famous for their stories more than their gameplay. And if it’s an almost good game that’s almost exciting to play, maybe the story can put it over the top, right? Well, almost. You play a teenager looking for another teenager in an abandoned building in the German city of ‘Kettenstadt’, a name that if my college years aren’t failing me means ‘Chain City’. So, it may not be called Silent Hill, but at least it has a very on-the-nose German name. Anyway, as you search for your friend, you learn more and more about the main character’s past and sins and whatnot and so forth. Yadda, yadda, yadda, horror, horror, horror.
The plot of The Short Message is decent enough: you’re a teenager who’s dealing with the fraught world of being friends with other teenagers. And the broad beats of it make sense. It’s just… let me backup. I want to like it. And at times, it does work! The story is melodramatic, but so is almost every Silent Hill story. This game’s story is effective because it pulls on heartstrings. It just happens to do so while subtly shouting, “HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT ME! I’M PULLING HEARTSTRINGS OVER HERE!” The impact is a bit lightened. It’s not bad! It’s free! I feel guilty for saying anything!
It’s almost satisfying. I’ve played it twice now just to ensure I wasn’t missing anything. I wasn’t. There’s just not much there.
It’s just… do the characters have to betheseteenagers? How many video games are we going to get with the same exact characters who text each other with the same exact style and the same exact grammar? You could literally just capitalize the beginning of sentences foronecharacter’s texts and they’d read different. The only way this could be worse is if the developers forced the characters to use “rizz” in every sentence so they sounded young. “Maya? I’m sorry you died, no cap.”
And for the love of god, was there a study that found that 95 percent of teenagers are graffiti artists? Did this get passed around to game companies? I swear, this character trope was Gen X before it was Millennial before it was Gen Z, but it’s always “a sign of the times.” Home is too hard! School is too hard! Teens these days can only express throughWALL ART!These creative teens very rarely are musicians or writers or dancers, but boy do they love a good vertical layer of bricks! Are developers’ kids only going to private art schools where they spray paint murals? I’m not saying thatbeinga graffiti artist is bad. It’s just that a sad teen who does graffiti is the video game equivalent of a movie with a busy woman who works at a fashion magazine. Nothing wrong with it, but there are more things people can do! See: everyPersonagame.
The thing is, I can’t be mad at Silent Hill: The Short Message. And it feels like it’s unfair to criticize what’s essentially the equivalent of a free movie. The game isn’t trying to get me to pre-order something else. It’s not some annoying “beginning” of the story that I can only finish if I cough up for the rest. It’s a free, complete game that tells a free, complete story. I don’t want to dislike it, especially after Ascension and even more so because Silent Hill fans are famously never happy. It’s nice to be given something with the Silent Hill name on it, and we should appreciate that. ButKonamiis not making it easy.
