I really liked Zero Dawn, but man the beginning was boring and it took me a while to get into. So when Forbidden West here had a super slow start, I figured it was just a matter of time before it gets good. And then it never did.

It's a shame because there is quality stuff here, it's just buried underneath so much monotony. Every now and then there's a really cool story point or fun boss fight, but it's just not worth the hours of abysmal platforming, soulless looting, and boring one-dimensional characters that you can't escape from. Big disappointment.

I have put maybe an hour or two into Silent Hill 2, and I know it's a game that I need to finish at some point. I know the great twist, I've had that spoiled for me god knows how many times. I honestly put it into the same camp that I have movies like Alien in: even if there's something in there that surprises me, having the big moments ripped off like a band-aid purely through pop culture osmosis dampers my curiosity somewhat. All of this is to say, while you may not personally be excited for new Silent Hill games, I'm just curious to see something new. Since I was only really around for P.T. once that was spoiled for me, too, I'm not counting it—which leaves me with the newly released The Short Message.

I did not get the hate that this got over its leaks, and having finally played it, I still don't. Having seen those leaks, I actually have more of an appreciation for this; I know now that this was pretty cohesive in its themes and intention when it needed it to be and never deviated from that. I don't mind a lack of subtlety, as long as the bluntness of what you're working on is there for a good reason, and I found the reasoning for it here to be acceptable. It's laser-focused on what it wants and needs to say from beginning to end, and this focus is echoed throughout the spaces you explore. Although I can see someone being a little irritated that this is linear to the point where doors don't unlock unless you read certain notes, most of those notes serve the story and not the lore. There are notes that serve the lore, but they all feed you the right amount of information while giving you space to think. What impressed me on an immediate level were the cinematics. I genuinely can't tell if they were live-action or rendered, although I know that they were likely rendered. It's uncanny as hell, but it's equally impressive. What impressed me throughout, however, is how well this serves as a mood piece. Each and every location, whether it was important or minor, made me feel something. This is more of a vibes game than something substantive or scary, and while that might be disappointing if you're going in expecting serious scares, it kept me hooked. One concern I do have, if this is the playable teaser many are making it out to be, is that the only area where I noticed evident performance issues was when I was near fog. If the new Silent Hill games are all going to lack the fog or run like shit because of it, we might be in for a doozy. But regardless of that one scene, the rest of this was pretty solid! ...for the most part.

Yeah, those chase scenes, man. I'm a little biased because I already don't like chase scenes, but something about them here felt either like filler or downright infuriating to deal with. If it weren't for the last chase sequence, my rating for this would absolutely be three-and-a-half stars because the vibes were just that immaculate for me. But no, god, no. I don't know if I ever want to go through that again. Put it this way: the game doesn't make a big deal about which rooms you go into because of its linear trajectory until the final chase sequence, where it expects you to remember the layout of the map like the back of your hand while elements of it feel completely different. It expects you to find five photographs in this mess without giving you a map or checkpoints. At a certain point, the stress I was intended to feel gave way to frustration. The only reason I didn't stop playing there was because I wanted to see the ending. That was it. The ending was nice, and there was a cute little tune that played over the credits (way more people worked on this than any other free game I've ever played), but I don't think that forgives it. It was that bad. At least the creature design was cool, though—although I found it to be scarier in the leaked concept art than I did in the final product. Consequences of having that kind of stuff leak, I guess. Whoops! Feel bad for the developers on that front, because I'm probably not alone in that.

What I liked about this, I really liked. If a new Silent Hill game is made from this mold, I wouldn't mind, actually. The Silent Hill 2 remake being a horror game that needs to have a trailer dedicated to its combat should say something about how skeptical I am of that, but I might also check it out when it's on sale. If this and that trailer is Konami's way of getting people back on the Silent Hill hype train... I mean, I wouldn't call this embarrassing. This was cool. But, 7/10.

"As a French studio addressing a global audience, the game does not engage in any foreign policy and is not inspired by any real-life events."

Oh no.

What's the point, then? If you're going to be telling a story through the perspective of a bodycam, should the medium not be the message?

I'm willing to give these developers the benefit of the doubt, maybe there will be more to this than that. But as it stands, that kind of statement attached to a game with a premise like this is only slightly less on the nose than EA or Ubisoft making a game adaptation of Bumfights with hyper-realistic graphics where you play as both the cameraman and aggressor and then claiming that the only bit of reality mirrored in it is that the homeless exist.