Silent Hill: The Short Message

Hopefully, we all agree that bullying is terrible, yet many of us have probably experienced it, in one form or another. Of course, this topic can be discussed at length, and this is precisely what Silent Hill: The Short Message revolves around.

The protagonist Anita wakes up in a mysterious place, with a message on her mobile phone from her friend Maya that they should meet up. Anita feels worthless, misunderstood and lonely and why things are the way they are is unravelled during the game, all while there is a lot going on in the poor girl's head. There is a lot to relate to and the game does not shy away from telling and showing this. Why she finds herself where she is we don't really know but we start exploring right as the first gameplay change for the series comes into effect, with this being the first person perspective, which is well utilised. The environments are incredibly detailed and technically beautiful and for the most part it's all about walking through them, like an extremely slow walking simulator with a slightly eerie atmosphere.

That eerie atmosphere is a bit of a disappointment when you realise that The Short Message isn't particularly scary. There's a good atmosphere here, but that's more because the environments are well designed than anything else. In addition, the game suffers from incredible pacing issues, which means that I am pulled out of the mood that is created from time to time, with the biggest offender here being the messages that Anita receives on her mobile phone, which also serves as a flashlight.

Every time the mobile phone rings, the game stops and the mobile phone covers the screen, and there is some texting back and forth. I would have preferred a solution where you could walk around with your mobile phone in front of you or that the interface simply appeared as text on the screen while you were playing. The idea of basically pausing the whole experience at lots of strange times doesn't work and detracts from the gameplay. Like Anita completely forgetting about the weirdness of the moment and then sending a message to her friend that she's had a decent sleep.

The game is also interrupted for a number of cutscenes with real actors. There's not much wrong with any of these but they also contribute to the game's pace suffering and to the ambiguity of the game's major theme. I could give it all credit for being a game that deals with bullying, feeling like a failure and even wanting to take your own life. It's important, brave and something that needs to be emphasised, however, the script pushes the player's buttons too many times and the mystery ultimately suffers tremendously.

I don't want to minimise any of the issues dealt with because I feel strongly about it all in many ways. But when Anita picks up her mobile phone and starts talking about how her friend has gained lots of new followers while she herself has lost several, it's one of the many times I feel it's a bit much. If you feel bad, there are many things that pile up on top of each other and feeling that you are not popular is one of the things that can affect a lot of folk. But even if I think that the subject is treated respectfully and that the heavy stuff is really allowed to take place, it is not sufficiently well-written as a whole and it becomes heavy for all the wrong reasons.

The story doesn't really work for me and despite its very short playing time of less than two hours, the game still feels slow and drawn out, which of course is a big failure. They try to break up the whole thing of going through environments while being chased by a monster a number of times. You also end up in a kind of maze where you have to find your way out with this monster at your heels. The sequences feel fine, but also not very scary thanks to a trial-and-error sequence where you have to start from the beginning if the monster catches you.

Along with the detailed and stylish graphics, there is also praise to be given to the game's sound design and music, which accompanies it well. If you have a huge fondness for wandering around in nice environments, the game can be worth playing just for this, and since they had the decency to release it for free, you have nothing to lose. However, I actually think it's a pretty boring adventure that fails at a lot of things and sure, maybe you should just be happy that you get a free graphically beautiful adventure but the criticism should of course be made anyway.

As a final criticism, I don't think the game feels like it belongs in the Silent Hill series. Some aesthetics, atmosphere and the contrast between reality and nightmares are here, absolutely, but there's far too much missing and for me it's not enough that there are some bizarre surroundings and an eerie ambience. It needs more.

Silent Hill: The Short Message falls flat in so many areas. It's not the least bit creepy, it tells its story and treats the subject in an ambiguous way, it doesn't really feel like a game in the series and then there's that damn mobile phone that presents more problems than solutions. I'm just hoping that the Silent Hill 2 remake will be just as good the original and not to the same quality as this.