So if you tuned into last week’s podcast, first of all thanks for doing that and second of all you probably heard me rant for awhile about how Silent Hill hasn’t been good in ages and Konami just needs to stop making them at this point because it’s clear they really have no idea how to go about doing it. Well this post is going to basically be more of that! Not only do I want to go a bit more in depth, especially when it comes to talking about the newest Silent Hill game The Short Message, but also so that people who don’t tune into the podcast can understand why I’m so upset about one of my favorite series continuing to exist. Also, I like to rant and vent and this is a great outlet for that… So here we go!

As I was just saying, Silent Hill is one of my favorite video game series, but I am constantly having to reconsider that statement. When I think about how many games in the entire Silent Hill series I actually like and enjoy, it comes to barely half of the series! The Silent Hill games I enjoy without a doubt are Silent Hill 1, 2, 3, and The Room along with Shattered Memories which is a Silent Hill game but a very, very different take on one. Silent Hill Origins is fine at the very least but I can’t say it’s on even the same level as Shattered Memories. Now, that might not sound so bad at first, but that’s before you hear about all the games I left out of that list which include Silent Hill Homecoming, Downpour, Book of Memories, the HD Collection, and now The Short Message with the Silent Hill 2 Remake almost guaranteed to join that list when it releases this year. I also didn’t include Silent Hill Ascension, the pseudo TV show/Choose your own adventure style game(?), because I’m not sure if it even counts. So! Out of 11 total games I like 5 of them, tolerate 1, and really do not like the other 5. And with that in mind, it should be pretty clear why I’m not sure if I’m technically a Silent Hill fan when I consider most of the series to be bad and most likely only going to get worse if it continues… It should be noted as well that the games I do enjoy, not including Shattered Memories, were made by Team Silent, the team of developers in Konami that came together to make the original Silent Hill and only grew from there with each sequel until Konami disbanded them after the lukewarm reception of Silent Hill 4: The Room. A choice by Konami that basically killed the franchise. A choice I think we can all see was a terrible move! And one you’d think Konami would learn from and never make again… Right?

NOPE! Because as we now know, Konami is a terrible company and threw away the biggest chance they got to make Silent Hill amazing again when they decided to allow the creative master mind Hideo Kojima to try his hand at the series and then cancelled the game and fired him!

I am of course talking about the infamous cancellation of Silent Hills, Kojima’s very own Silent Hill game that everyone, not just Silent Hill fans, were looking forward to after he rocked the world with P.T. As a big fan of Kojima and his work, I was over the moon that he was going to be making the next game in one of my favorite series! But after the messy cancellation, I was left hoping that the series would just remain dead. It had already been through so much and it was clear that Konami had no clue how to capture what made the series so amazing to begin with. And for awhile, that was it. Silent Hill remained dead. Konami focused on other things besides video games and people just moved on, looking for a new horror series to take Silent Hill‘s place. That is until 2022 when all my fears came true and Konami announced a remake of Silent Hill 2 was coming and being developed by Bloober Team, a developer that does not understand horror and certainly does not understand Silent Hill but that’s another can of worms for a different post.

Now this wasn’t entirely out of the blue, there had been plenty of rumors and leaks about this remake and Konami’s sudden interest in bringing back the series as a whole, I had just been hoping that the rumors were just going to stay rumors. Along with the announcement of the remake, Konami announced a few more Silent Hill games coming as well. This is where we first learned about Silent Hill Ascension, the weird TV show thing that everyone thought was a bad idea and now that it has come out we know it was a bad idea. But we also got to hear about two more games, Silent Hill Townfall, an interactive movie style game by developer No Code who I had not heard of before this but seem to have some experience in this style of game, and Silent Hill f, a radically new game in the series that will take place in 1960s Japan but still be connected to Silent Hill in some way. Now while I have been ragging on every new Silent Hill game, I have to admit that Silent Hill f does actually look interesting to me and I am very eager to see more about it! We barely got a teaser trailer for it, but we were shown what at least one monster looked like in the game and it’s design was fascinating!

^{It’s both beautiful and haunting! How could someone not be interested in a game featuring this?}

That being said, I still can’t bring myself to have high hopes for the game even if I think it has the best chance to be a good Silent Hill game this series has seen in a long while, especially since it seems to be a departure from other previous games. You see, one of the main reasons why I feel more recent Silent Hill games, specifically games like Homecoming and Downpour, have been so bad is that they are trying to be too much like Silent Hill 2.

Without a doubt, Silent Hill 2 is the most influential and well known game in the series. While fans can argue for days about whether or not it is truly the best game in the series, I don’t think anyone can deny it’s impact overall. So many games, not just future Silent Hill games, have taken inspiration from Silent Hill 2. It is the gold standard. It is THE psychological horror game! And that’s a shame because just about no one seems to truly understand why. Especially not future Silent Hill developers!

Silent Hill 2‘s story that tackled real issues and was packed full of twists and subtly would seemingly be the inspiration for future games in the series. And honestly, I can’t really blame the developers of those games for going in that direction. The problem is though, they should have realized that they weren’t capable of making something even remotely close to Silent Hill 2! So in the end, we are left with just bad Silent Hill games that failed to capture, or even understand, what made Silent Hill 2 so great. Now even if they didn’t try and do what Silent Hill 2 did, I don’t think Homecoming or Downpour or any other future game would come close to the original games, but at the very least we could have a situation like Silent Hill Origins, a game that does not reach the highest heights of the series but isn’t an awful game either. And you know what? Maybe these next few Silent Hill games will try to be their own thing! Maybe they won’t try and fail to be Silent Hill 2 again! But you already know that if I thought that I wouldn’t be writing this post.

The Short Message is the latest attempt, and failure, to make a compelling Silent Hill game that could capture what made Silent Hill 2 so good. I’m sorry that I must be sounding like a broken record at this point, but just imagine how I feel having to play all these broken records Konami keeps making!

The Short Message seems to be an attempt by Konami to try and do another P.T as the game is entirely free to play and, as the name suggests, is a short experience as well. It took me a little under two hours to finish the whole thing. And while I say that this is Konami trying to do a P.T, I only really say that because this is a free game and clearly meant to be a demo. Or so I thought, until I finished the game and realized that, yeah, I just finished the game! P.T‘s short length and free status made sense given that it was literally a Playable Teaser. Its sole purpose was to get people hyped for Silent Hills! And it did an amazing job at that. When it comes to The Short Message, I literally have no idea why this was made as it’s too short to be anything worth while, it’s story has an end with not much to go on for a sequel, and it doesn’t even seem to play like any Silent Hill game currently in development! But I’m getting ahead of myself, lets back it up a little so I can really go into what makes The Short Message so bad and why it dug the future of Silent Hill and even deeper grave.

The Short Message is all about a teenage girl named Anita as she wakes up in a run down apartment complex that she is sadly familiar with. The apartment complex in question, which is called the “Villa”, is an infamous suicide location and Anita’s close friend, Maya, recently took her own life there. This is revealed a little ways into the game as at first it appears that Anita is there to meet Maya after she texts her asking her to do just that. The Short Message is very quick to introduce it’s heavy themes to the player, the game actually starts with a content warning and even provides details on help lines to contact if any one playing the game is experiencing anything close to what Anita is, which is nice! Sadly, in my opinion, the game does not handle these themes super well, especially when compared to something like Silent Hill 2 and how it handled it’s themes.

That being said, I am going to actually follow The Short Message‘s lead here and offer a content warning of my own. While discussing this game and how it handles its themes I will, of course, be bringing said themes up. These themes include suicide, self harm, bullying, verbal abuse, and child abuse. If you would like to avoid content covering this subject I’d recommend stopping here as well as not checking out The Short Message for yourself, but I would be saying that regardless of if you wanted to avoid this kind of content or not.

As I was saying before, The Short Message wastes very little time getting into it’s very real and heavy themes. It’s quickly revealed that Anita is suffering from depression, is a victim of bullying and abuse at home, and harms herself. And while the game doesn’t throw all of this at you in the first five minutes, it’s not very far off from that. What’s first revealed after finding some of Maya’s graffiti art is that Anita is very much jealous of her friend as they are both artists but Maya seems to get far more recognition online while Anita barely gets any and more often than not gets bullied over her art instead. This is another issue the game brings up which is how harmful social media can be for someone’s self esteem but especially for teenagers. The amount of recognition Maya was getting online causes Anita to wish she was just like her, wanting Maya’s looks and talent. All of this makes it far more shocking when it’s revealed that Maya recently killed herself at the Villa. This information coming from Maya and Anita’s friend Amelie when she calls to talk to Anita to check up on her. As I was saying before, Anita originally came to the Villa after getting some texts from Maya asking her to do just that so this twist comes as a bit of shock unless you were paying attention to the very clear context clues. With this information, and the jealousy of Maya still getting more followers and praise even after her death, Anita decides to follow in her foot steps and jump off the roof just like Maya. This, of course, doesn’t result in Anita dying but rather puts her right back at the start of the game.

From here the game goes in kind of a loop. Anita travels through the apartment complex two more times finding out new information each and every time. She not only is reminded of things she forgot but is also shown some of Maya’s struggles. It appears she also suffered from bullying at school. Something I probably should have mentioned before is that this game takes place in a struggling town in Germany named Kettenstadt. It seems to be a rather terrible place to live with every one that grows up there hoping to leave at some point. Many, many years ago though, the town did show promise! Back in the day, the town was apparently rather booming, helped in part by a supposed witch from Japan who could predict the future. However, apparently the local government wasn’t too happy about her gaining so much power and decided to kill her. Before her death, she apparently put a curse on the town which is why many believe it continues to suffer hardship after hardship. This is seemingly why Maya is bullied. Maya is Asian and was often called a witch at school. Not only that, it is revealed that Maya lost someone very close to her, someone that she relied on heavily. After which she began to see a beauty in death, especially from the teen girls that committed suicide at the Villa. Because of this, she would always include cherry blossoms in her art for their fleeting beauty. Cherry blossoms famous go from full bloom to wilting within a week for those unaware. Maya’s artist handle even became C.B. because of this. However, when things were are there worst, Maya wrote a letter as a cry for help to Amelie, a letter that Anita found and hid from Amelie, worried that Maya was trying to steal away her “one true friend”. During all of this, it’s revealed that Anita felt she was never really seen by Maya and was ignored so that she could spend more time with Amelie. Which is why Anita hid the letter and now blames herself for Maya committing suicide. All of this is shown to us after the apartment complex turns in the high school the girls went to. This is arguably the best part of the game as well as it includes some very light puzzle solving. Which is oddly the only time the game has you solving puzzles despite the fact that Silent Hill very well known for it’s puzzles…

Something else Silent Hill is known for is freaky well designed monsters! And The Short Message has one.

Along with walking around finding out more about Anita and Maya, and some very light puzzle solving, the game has a few chase sequences where Anita will have to run from and avoid this cherry blossom monster. And while these sections are nice for changing things up, they are sadly not fun to play…

The point of these sections, beyond having an excuse to show off a cool monster design, are all about Anita running from one point to the other basically having to navigate a maze in the process. These sections are sadly very trial and error focused though with the monster chasing you suddenly appearing in your path at certain times giving you barely a second to react unless you know it’s coming. The worst of these though is the final chase section where you have to collect multiple memories to unlock the final door. You get to this section after finding out even more depressing things about Anita’s life. This time about her home life.

It is revealed that Anita’s mother abused her and her brother horribly, to the point that she unintentionally killed Anita’s brother after locking the two in the closet. She attempted to hide the body only for Anita to escape and report everything to the police. It seems like Anita was then taken from her mother and perhaps adopted by another family? The game weirdly doesn’t seem to mention what Anita’s current living situation is after this, which is odd given that you do find a notice that Child Protective services were coming to take Anita away. And you’d think that Anita’s current living situation might affect her life in some way. Regardless, after this is when you have that final chase sequence which takes you around collecting memories. Theses memories unlock the final door that leads her back to the roof, almost like she is meant to learn something from them. On the roof for the third time now, Anita calls Amelie, apologizing for hiding the letter and not realizing sooner that Maya did in fact notice her as she was going to depict Anita in one of her art pieces. Hanging up the phone, Anita goes to jump again only to get a text from Amelie. Seeing how much Amelie really cares about her and her well bring, a gust of wind pushes Anita away from the edge showing that a small act of kindness can be enough to save a life.

Now that is an amazing message! And one people should take to heart. If you see someone struggling, reach out and make sure they are okay, just listen to them. It can mean a lot.

…Sadly this is a really anticlimactic way to end a game.

I don’t mean to be an asshole by criticizing an ending with a beautiful message, but I can’t deny that it really doesn’t work on a story and game play level. All throughout the game, it seemed like Anita was being shown all these things so that she could understand and confront all the terrible and traumatic things that were happening to her, Maya, and Amelie.

Oh yeah, uh, Amelie also has a terrible home life, with a brother that seems to be sexually molesting her, and the game implies that she was, or still is, planning to kill herself. It’s a point that is brought up in one section but doesn’t play into anything after that point. Anita doesn’t even really bring it up to her…

Anyways! Anita seems to be shown all this stuff so that she can learn from it all and move past it on her own only for Amelie to be the one to save her in the end. Again, that’s great, but as a player it makes me feel like Anita, and by proxy myself, didn’t learn anything from her journey so I can’t say it’s a good ending even if I feel people should look positively on it’s message. If this was something Anita couldn’t do on her own, the game should have had the player try and fail in someway. You could say the past times that Anita jumped off the roof was the player failing, but they didn’t have all the information like they do when Anita reaches the roof for the third time. What I’m saying is that the game play needed to reflect this hopelessness if the developers wanted this ending to feel justified.

All of this is not helped by the fact that I can’t say I ever got particularly invested in Anita. While I obviously felt bad for her and hoped that she would be in a better place by the end of the game, I can’t say I really cared much for her as a character because all I know about her are her struggles. You are never given a chance to really know Anita beyond the trauma she is dealing with because it’s thrust upon you right from the very start. This is not how you get someone to care about a character. For a better example of this, you just need to look back at Silent Hill 2.

Each of the characters in Silent Hill 2, beyond Laura the literal child, are dealing with some heavy and real things and I was able to care about them because each and every one of them was presented to me before any of that was revealed. That way when the hardships they are struggling with are revealed, I actually cared because they weren’t just their hardships to me! I had something else to latch on to for their characters.

To make this all worse, because The Short Message reveals these real hardships and traumas first before anything super natural was, it almost feels like they were tacked on and are being somewhat exploited for the real life horrors they present instead of the game commenting on them in a serious way. Now I know that’s not the case given how much the developers do clearly care about these issues, but I can’t deny that it does come off that way to me regardless! If the developers really wanted to go in depth and really say something about these issues, they shouldn’t have made a game that wasn’t just two hours long. That is not enough time for a game to cover these issues without them feeling somewhat forced and in your face.

While The Short Message does a much better job than other Silent Hill games at capture that feeling of Silent Hill 2 with how that game covered it’s heavy themes, they should have realized that they did not have enough time to do all that with this game. And that’s another big issue! It feels like because Silent Hill 2 covered heavy real life problems, people feel that Silent Hill needs to do that? Which is doesn’t. It’s neat when it does, but it doesn’t. This is just another reason why people need to stop looking to Silent Hill 2 for inspiration all the time.

And speaking of Silent Hill, that actually brings me to my next point…

THIS GAME HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SILENT HILL!

This game could seriously be it’s own thing. Beyond a few overlapping themes, The Short Message has nothing to do with Silent Hill. That is besides one bizarre note…

This is literally the only mention of Silent Hill in this Silent Hill game. It talks about how pockets of fog have started appearing, seemingly randomly, all over the world and that people pass out when stepping into said fog. Because Silent Hill is foggy, people has started calling this the Silent Hill Phenomenon. And I’m guessing that’s what Anita is currently experiencing. She stepped into some fog, that is clearly not normal fog, and found herself in this hellish place. Maybe this is a set up for some future Silent Hill game that is set outside of the town but from what I can tell, none of the currently in development Silent Hill games go with this premise! Silent Hill f is obviously set in Japan as I mentioned before, but from my understanding the game will be more about what if Silent Hill was set in Japan rather than some random fog from the town leaking over to Japan. Because of this I’m tempted to say that The Short Message wasn’t originally suppose to be a Silent Hill game at all and Konami just slapped the name on it but honestly that would make even less sense! Without the Silent Hill name I don’t know what the purpose of The Short Message is. Hell, even with it I still don’t know what the purpose of it is!

The Short Message doesn’t work as a demo because it’s meant to be a full experience, there’s a start and end to it without much to go off of. It doesn’t work as a full experience since it’s way too short and shallow for that. And it doesn’t work as a way to drum up hype or excitement for future Silent Hill games because it has nothing to do with Silent Hill!

The Short Message feels like it has no purpose, something I feel bad about saying because there was at least some passion put into the project. Sadly, said passion almost feels wasted on this experience as it really doesn’t amount to much. I came in with very low expectations for this game and it very much met those expectations! The game isn’t the worst thing I’ve played but it is not something I’d ever recommend either. While it’s final message is sweet and important it also felt like it didn’t fit right with the rest of the game. So in the end it feels like The Short Message just doesn’t get anything particularly right. Worst of all though, it didn’t get me excited or hopeful for future Silent Hill games. If anything, I’m more worried about them! After all, if The Short Message is a sign of what Konami feels is good enough for Silent Hill, the one useful remaining IP they own, then things are not looking good for the series. Especially with how the Silent Hill 2 remake has been looking.

I adore the Silent Hill series, and that’s honestly why I think it should stop. It has been since Shattered Memories release in 2009 that we’ve seen anything remotely good from this series not counting P.T given that is a teaser for a cancelled project. It is so clear that Konami is incapable of understanding what made the series so great back in the day and that they are only going to drag this series through the mud that much more until the finally have to shut their doors for good. So let’s hope they realize that before I have to suffer reviewing too many more terrible Silent Hill games.

But those are just my thoughts, what are some of yours? Do you feel Silent Hill should stay dead? Are you planning on giving The Short Message a try despite my ranting? I’d love to hear your thoughts so don’t be shy!

And thank you for taking the time to read the post! If you enjoyed it feel free to leave a Like or share the blog with a friend. You can also follow the blog on WordPress or on Twitter if you want to stay up to date on new posts. Also if there’s a topic you’d like me to discuss sometime, go ahead and tell me in the comments! Any interaction is appreciated, even just viewing this post, so thanks again for stopping by.