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.
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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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