2.5/5 ★ – vr_'s review of Silent Hill: The Short Message.

Hmmm, a unique Silent Hill experience for sure, even though it didn't really feel like one. It was alright, but not very good. It also got pretty tedious near the end. The game wasn't scary, but it was intersting enough to explore. I’m not really sure why Hexadrive decided to bring back one of the least enjoyed gameplay mechanics from Shattered memories and Downpour by having labyrinthian chase scenes, but they did, and it felt worse in this than any of the prior incarnations. A big reason for that is the limited first person POV, extremely dark locations and choppy framerate. While the FOV and darkness could very well have been on purpose, I was dying from being confused at what direction I was facing, which felt pretty annoying. It felt like exactly what I expected Bloober Team’s take on Silent Hill would be;. A good looking horror game lacking any subtly or nuance about mental health / trauma, set in Europe with surprisingly good environment and creature designs, yet janky animations, mid voice acting and a main character who constantly narrates. The worst part of the game was the shockingly poor performance. For being a PS5 exclusive, I really don’t think there's much of an excuse for this not running at 60 FPS, or at a locked 30 with better graphics. The game looks pretty decent, but not much better than a good looking PS4 game. There were moments in which it felt like the frame rate was dropping to the low 20s which to me seemed ridiculous. The main plot was nothing amazing, and I don’t think it handled the issues it was trying to handle very well. The dialogue was pretty cringey. In theory the texting would be cool but again the texting dialogue was pretty stupid, and the fact that the player just “Presses X” to respond, rather than actually picking a response felt like a waste of the mechanic. I’m not sure how I felt about the lore implications this game has, such asr the inclusion of COVI-19 into Silent Hill canon (lmfao) or the “Silent Hill Phenomenon,” however tithe later was at least something that had been pseudo explored back in Silent Hill 4. The most interesting parts of this game were the otherworld, allusions to SH4, and Ito’s creature design.