Video Game Review: Silent Hill: The Short Message (PS5)

***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 *****

Video Game Review: Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)

Watch the review (with spoilerish content) on YouTube

Returning to its 2D platforming roots, the Super Mario series is reinvigorated by “Super Mario Bros. Wonder,” which feels the ultimate version of a lineage of games that started with the original “Super Mario Bros.” and ended with “Super Mario World.”

While that have been many 2D Mario games since Mario World, none have felt like they broke new ground like Mario Wonder. The level designs are creative, not only moving horizontally and vertically through levels, but occasional moving into the background or foreground. Everything looks fantastic, with detailed animations of Mario and his friends and enemies that often make you feel like you’re playing a cartoon. The new power-ups are fun. While the game includes classics like Fire Flowers and Super Mushroom, new additions like the Elephant, Bubble, and Drill abilities all add different ways of progressing through levels. The game also adds Badges that can either give Mario useful abilities like higher jumps or saving himself from falling to his death. You can only use one badge at a time, and some also can actually make levels harder. (Like a badge that allows Mario to run super-fast and jump after walking on air but forces him to keep running non-stop.) The biggest selling point to the game is the Wonder Flowers. Grabbing one will really throw you for a loop because you don’t know what’s going to happen the first time you grab that level’s flower. You could turn into a Goomba and be forced to waddle along past enemies, find yourself floating weightlessly through space or even be surrounded by singing and dancing Piranha Plants.

The plot is irrelevant, just the standard “Mario must save the Kingdom from Bowser” story. This time the action takes place in the Flower Kingdom, which isn’t really different than any other place we’ve been in these games. The leader is a pretty forgettable caterpillar, while the inhabitants are just total rip-offs of the Toads, but flower people instead of mushroom people. (However, the talking flowers you come across are surprisingly charming and breathe life into your adventure.) You can choose from a wide array of playable characters, but it gets pretty redundant once you get to four or five different color Yoshis. Thankfully, the enemies are more varied and have a nice mix of classics and brand-new foes.

The gameplay is varied, with the worlds getting progressively harder as you get closer to the end. And there are plenty of hidden exits that will take you to levels that will put all your skills to the test and then some. While beating every level, finding the big purple coins, and touching the top of the flagpoles will get you to nearly being 100% complete in a fairly organic way, having to buy all the standees by collecting enough normal purple coins turns the game into a grind. (Since you can’t hold more than 999 at a time, and you’ll probably spend them all on extra lives for the super hard levels, you probably won’t get enough coins with by just playing and completing the rest of the game.)

“Super Mario Bros. Wonder” improves on the 2D Mario lineage and still keeps the spirit of those early NES and SNES games. Well-designed levels, detailed character animations, and the wonderful chaos caused by the Wonder Flowers make for a fun, and occasionally challenging adventure.

****1/2 out of *****