Silent Hill: The Short Message (2024)
Genres:Adventure
Themes:Action, Horror
Game modes:Single player
Story:Silent Hill: The Short Message is a free-to-play Silent Hill spin-off set in modern-day Germany. Players explore a location known as The Villa from a first-person perspective.
Vote to bring this game to GOG and help preserve it.1 870
20 years after the last Eastern developed Silent Hill title in 2004 and ten after the release of P.T., several of Team Silent's alumni -- including Masahiro Ito, Akira Yamaoka, Atsushi Tsujimoto, Kurita Yukito, Eiichi Ito, Norio Takemoto, and Chieko Ogura, as well as a handful of P.T. staff -- came back. Working with a concept by producer Motoi Okamoto, writer Kiichi Kanoh of the When They Cry series, and a talented team at HexaDrive, they have created an unflinching story about self-loathing/self-harm, cultural displacement, xenophobia, sociological taboo, and psychological struggle in the digital age. The Short Message also reframes key elements from the previous games for a younger generation unfamiliar with Silent Hill, distilling the familiar cyclical motifs of previous titles into a condensed two to three-hour experience.
Its exclusivity on PlayStation 5 limits the game in several ways, chiefly performance. Stunning environmental detail and mind-bending set pieces are often hampered by frame rate issues not uncommon to Unreal Engine 5 titles, especially during encounters with the game's beautifully imposing Cherry Blossom (I don't accept "Sakura Head", sorry). Additionally, the game is currently only available with an English voice track, which does a disservice to the game's most harrowing moments, despite the involvement of Jeremy Blaustein and some prominent Western voice actors.
I believe a PC port would do wonders to correct many of the obstacles that this game encountered, both with the audience and its overall presentation. It remains the only reason I have a PS5, honestly, and I would pay full price for what was originally a free title if it meant experiencing The Short Message in its original language with improved graphics performance. This game deserves its flowers, pun intended, for what is functionally a reunited Team Silent's first Silent Hill in two decades.
P.T. emulation aside, this was my first Silent Hill game. I'll never forget how it felt to truly play a Silent Hill game for the first time. While this game certainly isn't perfect, I'd say that it gets far more hate than it deserves. The art-direction is fantastic, the story is really good and has a fantastic message for the younger audience now getting into the series (awful dialogue aside), and overall I quite liked it. It'd be great for other people to be able to experience it too.
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