Silent Hill: The Short Message is the first Silent Hill game I've ever played. I know a decent amount about the original four and PT, but I have never had the opportunity to actually play through them.
With that being said, the beginning 20 minutes of the game almost lost me. I felt like the game was trying to spoon feed the message of the overall experience so quickly and without any ounce of subtlety, which, is a big part of what I know the original four games are pretty good with.
Though as I kept playing, the interactions between the characters, the music, and some of the environmental design, were actually doing a decently well job of getting me invested. There was a specific section towards the end of the game that I won't spoil that genuinely had me like "Damn, that's pretty fucked up"
The gameplay had me pretty uninterested though, as it's a lot of "Click on the interactable, read it, then move on." There's also exactly one puzzle in the entire game, and I solved it by guessing. It felt like this game needed at least a couple more, to break up the loop of walking from note to note, then the occasional chase sequence.
Overall, the message of the game is nothing you haven't already seen before, and has been done a lot better. But what's here actually felt like they were genuinely taking it seriously. Like testing the waters for a brand new game in the future. I do feel they did get the feeling of Silent Hill down.
And as long as they figure out what works and what doesn't, I think there's a good possibility for the next Silent Hill game to be really solid.
With that being said, the beginning 20 minutes of the game almost lost me. I felt like the game was trying to spoon feed the message of the overall experience so quickly and without any ounce of subtlety, which, is a big part of what I know the original four games are pretty good with.
Though as I kept playing, the interactions between the characters, the music, and some of the environmental design, were actually doing a decently well job of getting me invested. There was a specific section towards the end of the game that I won't spoil that genuinely had me like "Damn, that's pretty fucked up"
The gameplay had me pretty uninterested though, as it's a lot of "Click on the interactable, read it, then move on." There's also exactly one puzzle in the entire game, and I solved it by guessing. It felt like this game needed at least a couple more, to break up the loop of walking from note to note, then the occasional chase sequence.
Overall, the message of the game is nothing you haven't already seen before, and has been done a lot better. But what's here actually felt like they were genuinely taking it seriously. Like testing the waters for a brand new game in the future. I do feel they did get the feeling of Silent Hill down.
And as long as they figure out what works and what doesn't, I think there's a good possibility for the next Silent Hill game to be really solid.