Silent Hill: The Short Message review – a depressing experience

Silent Hill is back, and this time for real. Even Konami itself apparently forgot about the negatively received interactive series Ascension, because The Short Message stands for for the first game of a new phase of the entire series, which has been on the ice for quite some time. There have been rumors about this game for a very long time, it even received a rating a long time ago, but over time it disappeared. And just when the title was slowly being thought to be canceled entirely, at the State of Play event we saw not only an announcement, but also a release, with the game also available for free. Purely theoretically, anyone who owns a PlayStation 5 console can try it out. But we should warn you in advance that this is not a game for everyone.

• Platform: PlayStation 5
• Publication date: 01/02/2024
• Developer: Konami, HexaDrive
• Publisher: Konami
• Genre: Psychological horror
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: No
• Download data: 12 GB
• Game time: 2 hours
• Price: Free (PlayStation Store)

(From) serious topics

In Silent Hill: The Short Message, you take on the role of teenager Anita, living in a fictional German town where life is not really fun, and both attempts to “revive” the dying Kettenstadt ended in failure. At the request of her friend Maya, Anita finds herself in an abandoned building, but something is clearly wrong there. And he can’t seem to get out until he finds “something.”

The developers have already stated in an article on the PlayStation blog that the game is trying to highlight the problems of modern youth and serious topics. But I really didn’t expect it to be so strong. If you’re going through a bad time in your life, you might want to save the game for another time because those two hours are full of depression and negative emotions or thoughts. However, this is by far the biggest advantage of the entire game.

It deals with topics such as suicide, bullying, child abuse or psychological issues, which are finally not as taboo as they have been lately, but still, there are not many games that dare to deal with similar topics. Topics. But above all, serious themes are handled sensitively and, together with a central and very strong storyline that offers more than one twist, create a cohesive experience.

This is facilitated by the excellent acting, especially of Anita, played by Fadile Waked. You quickly become familiar with the characters and perceive their suffering, which is depicted in a frighteningly realistic manner. Once you finish the game, you’ll definitely be glad that you don’t have to live in Kettenstadt, but at the same time, you won’t forget the experience.

Simple gameplay

There’s nothing new here in terms of gameplay. It’s essentially a classic Layers of Fear-style “walking simulator” where you walk around and interact with the environment without any puzzles (except one minor one). You read various newspaper articles and other documents, but also communicate via text messages. It is the mobile phone that Anita always carries with her and at the same time serves as the main source of light.

The overall impression was that the gameplay method seemed well chosen, so I was unpleasantly surprised that the authors somehow tried to force passages into the game, the fear of all games of this genre. Like the vast majority of them, they’re not scary, just frustrating. I don’t know when the developers will finally understand that they simply can’t do this. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded so much if it weren’t for the very last episode, which was just awfully designed, so I gave up and watched the ending of the game on YouTube, which I also recommend to all readers. This way, you will enjoy the game much more and save yourself from unnecessary frustration.

Rollercoaster of emotions and images

And I’ll focus on the second big problem – frame rate. The game does not offer display modes and automatically targets 60 frames per second. The problem is that almost from the first moments it clearly “doesn’t keep up” and the frame rate drops noticeably, which was confirmed by the subsequent test.

Although the title manages to maintain a stable 60 in some places, in the vast majority of cases the frame rate is like a roller coaster, which even VRR cannot save. There is a minimum cap of 48Hz on PS5, but framerates drop well below it (and also experience some stuttering during playthroughs). I don’t understand why the game doesn’t have an option to lock at 30 (or 40) frames per second, which would at least provide a consistent experience.

Beautiful audiovisual effect

It’s a shame, because from a graphical point of view the game looks very beautiful, be it the lighting, the details of the environment (which can be greatly transformed, as is usually the case in the series) or the character models. It’s interesting that it was created in Unreal Engin 5 because its look and UI style reminded me a lot of the new Resident Evils running on RE Engin in many ways.

Either way, the visuals are Short Message’s big strength, thanks to the gorgeous aesthetics, including a rather inventive monster designed by none other than Masahiro Ito, creator of the iconic Pyramid Head.

In addition, the game relies not only on in-game graphics and cutscenes (which sometimes switch to a third-person view), but also on animated films, which serve primarily as flashbacks and are a very nice addition.

The game is also great in terms of sound. It is the sounds that complete the overall, very disturbing atmosphere. So is the music, including the final song in the closing credits, written by another famous composer Akira Jamaoka.

Nice experiment

I would like to end this entire review on a positive note. Although the game has two rather serious shortcomings – unstable frame rate and racing playthroughs – otherwise I was very pleasantly surprised. The nice graphics are complemented by excellent sound and, above all, an emotional story filled with serious and bold themes for a video game.

This is a very successful pilot project that is definitely worth your two hours of time. To be honest, I can’t fully judge how the game will be received by ardent fans of the series, since this title is only distantly related to the general lore. But personally, I’m a fan of fresh ideas and I’m glad that we have such a game from Konami.