For a publisher so eager to revitalise its long-dormant franchise, it’s impressive how Konami’s first shot winds up being a miserable own goal. Even with considering its rare positives, The Short Message’s blunt-force sermonising feels anathema to the series’ core identity. Combine this with game design vacillating between bland or annoying and all...
Silent Hill: The Short Message2024
Silent Hill: The Short Message
2024 Konami56Mediocre
Playtime
BriefTypically 2 hours
Playable on
Available on
- Free
Game modes
Details
Overview
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.
Screenshots
Reception
Press53
Mediocre- Metacritic52from 22 reviews
- OpenCritic55from 16 reviews
The Short Message is a casual horror experience with no ambitions to push the genre further like the previous games in the series. Having said that, it has its moments.
Silent Hill: The Short Message has interesting underpinnings – in particular the first-person influence of P.T. and contributions from Team Silent veterans Akira Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito – but anything of real promise tends to be undercut by lampshading its best ideas.
SILENT HILL: The Short Message speaks to the transcendental nature of P.T. for the survival horror genre as we know it today-a monument of great cultural importance within the industry, now lost thanks to Konami. Above all, it demonstrates the enormous magnitude of P.T. as a unique work, imitated a thousand times but never equaled. What we get in 2024...
Silent Hill: The Short Message shows glimmers of the classic horror series at its best - despite the very heavy-handed metaphor, a frustrating chase sequence, and the long shadow of P.T.