Silent Hill: The Short Message

This may not suffer the indignity of being delisted, but it's highly unlikely anyone will remember it in a decade's time. [Issue#395, p.122]

SILENT HILL: The Short Message speaks to the transcendental nature of P.T. for the survival horror genre as we know it today—a monument of great cultural importance within the industry, now lost thanks to Konami. Above all, it demonstrates the enormous magnitude of P.T. as a unique work, imitated a thousand times but never equaled. What we get in 2024 is a tasteless simulation, lacking any genuine, reflective, or penetrating qualities.

Silent Hill: The Short Message falls flat in so many areas. It's not the least bit creepy, it tells its story and treats the subject in an ambiguous way, it doesn't really feel like a game in the series and then there's that damn mobile phone that presents more problems than solutions.

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.

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.

For a publisher so eager to revitalise its long-dormant franchise, it’s impressive how Konami’s first shot winds up being a miserable own goal. Even with considering its rare positives, The Short Message’s blunt-force sermonising feels anathema to the series’ core identity. Combine this with game design vacillating between bland or annoying and all that’s left is dingy world design. As a free title, it shares an interesting heritage with P.T.; unlike its precursor’s legacy, it's destined to be forgotten once credits roll.