***This review contains some spoilers***
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
Dropping without much warning, the Silent Hill franchise returns with a free-to-play short addition to the series. Unfortunately, while the game isn’t a waste of money, it is kind of a waste of time.
The first three Silent Hill games were an excellent addition to the survivor horror genre. Focusing on physcological terror over combat, the series stood out from some of the other zombie-themed games at the time. However, the franchise began to lose its way and didn’t seem to know how to move forward. After a long hiatus, (and a canceled game that had fans excited,) Konami released The Short Message as a free download. The game is pretty short, with three chapters estimated to take players about two hours to complete. The story itself had potential to be a full-length game, but the gameplay is so streamlined and repetitive it feels like you’re just playing the story highlights and skipping the rest of the game. It becomes apparent pretty quickly that it’s all about exploring a handful of floors of The Villa, and despite a few creepy moments and a jump scare or two, you can take your time and look around in complete safety. But outside of a handful of notes, books and journals, there’s not much to see. Most doors are shut, and you really can’t go the wrong way. There are a couple puzzles, but they’re simplistic by Silent Hill standards. Eventually, the screen will start getting distorted and you’ll find yourself on the run from the game’s lone monster. This mostly consists of you running around hallways trying not to get killed until you stumble on the exit. This pattern of exploring and running repeats of few times and only get more annoying as it’s confusing as to what you’re supposed to do.
If you’ve played any of the other games in the series, the plot doesn’t offer many surprises. There are some hints to some more interesting things at play, but those all end up as loose ends. The game’s lead character is kind of annoying. She’s basically a mopey teenager that usually seems oblivious to doors opening and closing on their own and baby doll heads popping off. It doesn’t help that the voice acting isn’t all that great, especially with some of the dialog by other characters.
The game looks alright graphically, but for some reason occasionally switches to live action footage, which makes the scenes where they show the main character in GC look kind of crappy. (Also, most of the game is in first person, so when they do switch to a third person view in the cutscenes, it kind of takes me out of it.) The addition of a cellphone to the game had promise to be a cool feature, but ultimately it doesn’t end up doing much more than act as a flashlight, advance some of the plot, and detect the monster.
Despite coming off a long hiatus, this free sample that may point to the future of the franchise is mostly a mediocre version of everything that made the series standout. Minimal exploration, easy puzzles, running in circles to avoid the monster, and then repeating the whole thing makes gameplay fall flat. Bad voice acting, a weird mix of live-action and game graphics give an uneven look. A while the plot hints at something deeper, the game wraps it all up pretty quickly and much more upbeat than what Silent Hill is known for.
*1/2 out of *****