HEAR YE, HEAR YE, MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! You must think of me as some kind of masochist at this point. I have a long and weathered history of standing atop this soapbox and ranting about the most lackluster horror game to have graced my presence. From AAA behemoths like Callisto Protocol to small obscure indies, such as Martha is Dead, I seem trapped in my own metaphorical morgue as I cut into the corpse of these games looking for the root of the infection. Messy gameplay, nonsensical plot, and clones of better games; I have seen it all. I know I can walk away, but I can’t compel myself to stop. To me, horror is such a creative genre that can say so much with its gruesome imagery. There is often a deeper meaning lurking below the surface that I am drawn to like a moth to the flames. Plus, I find it exhilarating to be scared. So when a movie, game, or other media, completely fumbles the ball, I can’t help but ready my scalpel and get to the cause of the problem. So gather my loyal subjects, and lend thy ears as we dive deep into a tale void of subtlety: Silent Hill: The Short Message.
Our story begins with our depressed heroine, Antia, waking in an abandoned villa commonly used by the local teens to practice graffiti art. Antia’s friend Maya, who would frequently paint in the villa, had texted Antia to meet her there. She starts wandering the dark desolate hallways until she gets a call from Amelia, another close friend, who reminds her Maya had jumped off the roof of the villa resulting in her death. Confused as to why she was still getting texts from Maya, Antia goes to the roof of the building and jumps off. Rather than embrace the sweet relief of death, Antia awakes inside the building in the exact spot that she started in. Thus beginning a loop not so dissimilar to PT: another Silent Hill demo that we will certainly draw comparisons to when all is said and done. The creativity thus indeed flows from Silent Hill: The Short Message like an oozing sludge.
So what riveting gameplay will you encounter in Silent Hill: The Short Message? You will experience two distinct gameplay styles sitting on opposite sides of the fence; glancing but never interacting with each other. Our first type of gameplay style is your cookie-cutter walking simulator. Wandering around and interacting with any and all objects littered about the environment. When you interact with an object, Antia will frequently comment something obvious as the writers feared subtly more than I fear the giant rats that chew on the cardboard box I sleep in. For example, interacting with a no-exit sign will get Antia to comment that she always feels trapped just in case you missed the giant neon sign saying gloomy teen with no ambition stuck in a small town. These sections are used to slowly piece together the story, but Antia’s constant prattling does nothing but suffocate the mystery of the story. AS SUBTLE AS A SLEDGEHAMMER, I CLAIM THIS STORY TO BE!!!
On the physical and metaphorical side of the fence, we have gameplay involving classic played-out chase scenes. Fearful of the walking-simulator label, Silent Hill: The Short Message will occasionally take a break from story time for you to be chased by a giant concrete monster. I must confess, I do like the concrete monster’s design as it appears like Maya and a traditional Silent Hill monster were thrown in a blender. This creature sports Maya’s fluffy white sweater with cherry blossoms, which were commonly found in her art, covering her face and extremities with a rusted-on razor wire, a Silent Hill staple, holding the monster together. The maze-like environment also has that twisted Silent Hill feel. From hallways littered with pictures of laughing mouths to rusty industrial grates above what appear to be industrial vats of molten metal, these maze sections thoroughly felt like the otherworld Silent Hill is known for. My hopes were raised; could Konami be piecing together something worthy of the name Silent Hill?
I initially didn’t mind these sections as they felt more stimulating than simply finding the next object to interact with. Yes, these mazes are airing on the simpler side, as the solution more often than not was just push-forward. If the monster somehow ended up in front of you, bait it to chase you down one of the conveniently placed roundabouts. Dark Souls, this is not, but on the other hand, this is meant to be a small taste of what Konami had in mind for the franchise moving forward. So I stood at ease, eager to see if Konami could piece it all together.
Alas, Silent Hill: The Short Message makes the grave mistake of having the last maze be a headache to complete. The exit to the maze is locked and can only be opened by finding five pictures scattered throughout the maze. An utter chore of a task, as the Silent Hill aesthetics I praised earlier completely sabotage your effort to get any sense of direction. So often I take a turn only to end up at the beginning of the maze. In this state of constant sprinting through the gritty halls, the monster would catch me having only found a few pages, and forcing me to restart the whole maze. I soon began to see through this maze’s clever ruse. Its only goal is to stretch this game’s length a few more hours. A WICKED TRICK, THAT WILL YIELD NO SYMPATHY FROM ME.
This brings us to the metaphorical elephant in the room: Silent Hill: The Short Message is just not scary. Some of you might hurl around the accusation that Silent Hill was never as terrifying as titles like Resident Evil, but I argue these are two different tones of horror. Resident Evil and Dead Space are all about monsters jumping out and chasing you, while Silent Hill has always wallowed in that eerie uncomfortable feeling of being somewhere you shouldn’t be. An atmosphere perfectly captured by Silent Hill 2 as James wanders the empty town looking for his wife.
Silent Hill: The Short Message starts with that familiar feeling as you venture into the abandoned building, but the atmosphere deflates like a leaky balloon as the dual gameplay undermines the tension. You can immediately know what type of gameplay you’re dealing with based on your walking speed. You crawl at a snail’s pace when poking and prodding at objects, but run like Usain Bolt when the concrete monster comes out to play. This trope in horror games needs to be smothered in its crib as it gives away when danger is present. With the threat of an enemy in only the carefully designated areas, the tension and atmosphere evaporate. I know the monster can only come after me when the music kicks up and Antia puts on her running shoes, so why should I be scared of the dark corners of this abandoned villa? This game desperately needs to take some cues from Lethal Company, a game where entering a similar abandoned building sets my heart racing. TOOTHLESS IS THE ONLY WORD I CAN CAST ONTO THEE.
To further break down my grievances with this title, I need to delve into spoiler territory for both Silent Hill: The Short Message, the infamous P.T. demo, and Silent Hill 2. If you were hoping to experience these stories on your own accord, whether it be playing The Short Message on your own or watching a playthrough of P.T., I will offer you this opportunity to duck out now. From here on out, CRIES OF SPOILERS WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
As you experience more of Silent Hill: The Short Message, you learn Antia was directly responsible for Maya’s suicide. Maya was bullied in school, she wrote a letter to Amelia asking for help and Antia stole it back out of fear of the pair growing closer and abandoning her. You later learn Maya’s fear of abandonment stems from her abusive mother who would lock her and her younger brother in a closet to the point where Maya’s brother died from starvation. Thus Antia must learn to forgive herself and move on to break the cycle of jumping off the villa and awakening inside moments later. ART THOU TRULY A SHAKESPEAREAN PLAY.
With Silent Hill: The Short Message being a bite-size game about a protagonist who has done some naughty things stuck in an endless loop, naturally, my mind couldn’t help but compare this demo to the 2016 P.T. For those unfamiliar with P.T., it was a demo where the player was stuck in a looping hallway slowly piecing together that you were a father who came home one day to shoot your pregnant wife and two children just before hanging himself. However, the difference between the stories of P.T. and The Short Message boils down to a word that the recent crop of horror games and movies are forgetting: subtlety.
Subtlety is a foreign concept to Silent Hill: The Short Message. So often Antia will cry about how nobody wants her around and how she will never escape this town. Antia’s mother even has a partially infamous monologue where she yells “She Inflicted that curse on my womb and I gave it life.” The story leaves no room for the player’s interpretation or digestion of the story. Whereas I can look at the story of P.T. and take away several factors that drew the father to kill his family: the loneliness and isolation men experience, the misplaced anger from losing his job and no longer being the breadwinner, or the maddening realization that the child his wife was pregnant with was not his own. All themes I have pondered over as the story of P.T. plays through my mind. So often I find these stories that allow me to draw deeper meaning to be the stories that stick with me, and a story like The Short Message will be disposed of from my mind the second I step off this soapbox. I SAY UNTO THEE, THOU ARE SO SELF-CONSCIOUS YE NEED TO SPELL EVERYTHING OUT IN FEAR OF LEAVING THOSE WHO WOULD NOT UNDERSTAND BEHIND.
This is also a textbook case of telling not showing. Rather than show us Antia has no plans for the future through college rejection letters or failing SAT scores, Silent Hill: The Short Message just has Antia drivel on about how useless she feels and how she’s stuck in this town. Not to compare to another Silent Hill game, but this would be like if James Sunderland in Silent Hill 2 constantly cried about his guilt and sexual frustration. Instead, the game shows all of this through its monster design. From hyper-sexualized enemy nurses to the more masculine Pyramid-head, the town of Silent Hill is simply holding a mirror up to James. It is showing us and not having James turn to the camera and wonder aloud if this is all metaphorical guilt stemming from him killing his sick wife. THOU SHOULD TAKE SOME NOTES, THE SHORT MESSAGE.
Some of you might think I am too harsh on this free two-hour-long demo, but I truly believe this is not a good sign for Silent Hill. Take heed, my loyal followers, I do think some creative minds are working on Silent Hill properties. There’s a story to tell about teenagers, the constant hook of social media, and suicide in a Silent Hill world. However, the story and gameplay reek of a project that was not given the time or resources it needed. The story needed more time to flesh out the characters and themes. It needed more time to find a gameplay loop that allowed for a deeper story and tense gameplay. Silent Hill: The Short Message is the metaphorical free sample the drug dealer hands out to get us hooked. Both The Short Message and the laughable mobile game Silent Hill Ascension show that Konami does not know how to handle the Silent Hill property. Alas, my followers, do not fret. Silent Hill will live on through other projects by developers who want to craft psychological horror with tact and grace. Lone Survivor is a perfect example of Silent Hill living on through other games. Look to the indie space and not to Silent Hill 2 Remake for that psychological dread the series was once known for. All this truly leads me to believe that the end is nigh for not just Silent Hill but for Konami as well.
