00:00Silent Hill The Short Message. It's not perfect, but it makes me think there might
00:05be a future to Silent Hill. There's a lot to like about the first actual
00:17new Silent Hill game since 2014's P.T. Despite some clumsy, laboured writing, Silent Hill
00:22The Short Message has a similar vibe to Resident Evil's excellent number 7 reimagining, taking
00:27familiar touchpoints and reworking them into a fresh, more up-to-date wrapper. It looks
00:31like a completely new take on the series, with new first-person view, but under an all-fresh
00:36trappings and modern style. The bones of what are old games do poke through, though, comfortingly
00:41to remind you what you're playing. The crackly old radio that used to warn you of monsters
00:45is now a mobile phone that buzzes and flickers whenever danger is near, while the rusty, chain-linked
00:51rusted hell of the other world is actually pretty much as you remember it. A threatening, tetanus-infused
00:56mess of oxidised metal corridors and mystery liquids oozing across the floor. Silent Hill
01:01The Short Message follows a young girl exploring a derelict old apartment building, for reasons
01:05I won't spoil here, but the overall thrust of the narrative is pleasingly Silent Hill,
01:10and matches the hell-of-your-own-making theme the series has used so well in the past. The
01:15monster, the post-it notes that cover the other world like peeling skin, and all the trappings
01:20of school, teen life, and more, littering the place like detritus, all have meaning to
01:24the protagonist and call back to some part of what happened in her past. As an eater,
01:29you wake up in a crumbling maze of halls, exploring various rooms while trying to piece together
01:33your memories of how you got there and why. Silent Hill The Short Message sees you navigating
01:39rubbish-strewn corridors and overturned messy rooms, picking up notes and clues while getting
01:44texts from two of your friends. It's atmospheric and, at least initially, intriguing, as you try to
01:49second guess what led you where you are now. Interspersed with these more exploratory beats
01:54are frantic dips into the other world where you're chased through a maze like Warren of
01:58Chainlink fences and barricades. I won't spoil what's following you here, but trust me when I
02:02say that it's a confusingly weird and unsettling creation from Silent Hill's long-standing monster
02:08designer, Mashiro Ito. These maze sections are nearly always a panicky, wall-hugging run as you
02:13try to avoid being caught. Sometimes it can be a bit hit and miss if you get lost or run into a dead end,
02:18but when these spaces hit the spot, the tension and the fear is good. The original Silent Hill
02:23composer is on hand here as well for music and sound design, and at least one spot it's just as good
02:28as the old days and generally hits the mark overall. What lets Silent Hill The Short Message down,
02:33however, is a clumsy, almost brute force approach to the writing. It's all about the trials and
02:38difficulties of being a teenage girl in an online world, but there's an outsider feel to the bluntness
02:44with which it articulates everything. In the case of two of the main characters, it sort of boils
02:48their teenage life down to being sad and romanticising suicide. There are support screens
02:52about how to get help that flash up after all three chapters, to give you some idea of how hard it
02:57leans into the self-harm and suicidal ideation. To some extent, these only go to highlight how crassly
03:03the game treats the topics it touches on. It's not that the concept themselves are bad. Silent Hill has
03:08always been about people paying for their sins in a cell they built along the way. The minefield of
03:13young adulthood and what happens here is absolutely perfect for our Silent Hill style purgatory. It's
03:19just the writing seems almost afraid you'll miss things unless it's really really clear. Teenagers
03:24get sad, have body issues and school children can say really mean things. The potential subtlety and
03:30nuance of what it's like to be young and unsure are somewhat lost when the only way Silent Hill The
03:35Short Message seems to be able to articulate it is by throwing ham-fisted messages repeatedly in
03:40your face, often in phrasings that feel more functional than entirely natural. Whether these
03:45issues stem from the game's short length, leading to a desire to exaggerate for clarity,
03:49or translation issues isn't clear, but it's the weakest element. Silent Hill thrives on ambiguity,
03:55with people still picking apart meanings and interpretations of games that are 20 years old.
04:00Silent Hill The Short Message, on the other hand, is explicit to the point of feeling like
04:04it's written in all caps with a 60 font. So Silent Hill The Short Message is not PT levels of wow,
04:12but then that was always going to be exceptionally difficult to achieve. But The Short Message is a
04:16decent statement of intent at the very least. There are a couple of good scares, some nicely tense
04:22moments and an atmosphere that manages to touch the past glories of the series. Most importantly,
04:27it feels like a Silent Hill game, even with the new ideas and flaws, because it doesn't seem to be
04:32teasing anything or linking to any future project. It mostly seems to be Konami proving that they can
04:37bring the series back, and while it's not perfect, it does make me think that there might be a future
04:42video for Silent Hill after all. We give it 3 stars out of 5.
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04:50Let's go here!
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04:56Let's go here!
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