Silent Hill: The Brief Message is the primary product in 12 years to launch with the Silent Hill identify on it, and selecting up the place the Silent Hill HD Assortment and PS Vita title Guide of Reminiscences left off, it does not precisely put the collection’ greatest foot ahead. As a substitute of a horror expertise full of ingenious puzzles and constantly scary sequences, Konami — alongside developer HexaDrive — has put collectively a strolling simulator that harkens again to when the style was really nearly placing one foot in entrance of the opposite. It is free and roughly 90 minutes lengthy, so the one factor The Brief Message asks of you is your free time. The problem is you would simply spend it taking part in a considerably higher recreation.
Unrelated to previous entries within the collection, a brand new protagonist Anita and her solid of teenage pals cope with just a few very heavy themes: suicide, abuse, melancholy, and bullying. It is discomforting sufficient that Konami felt the necessity to show a splash display on the finish of every chapter providing steering and hyperlinks to suicide hotlines in actual life, so it is not a story to be taken in any respect flippantly. The plot sees Anita battle her demons in an deserted residence constructing with a popularity for suicides; a tragic destiny that has befallen her good friend Maya.
Sadly, there’s little in the best way of correct gameplay to help it. Your solely interactions are strolling (and in some instances working) and interacting with notes and books to learn them. The sport ushers you down linear hallways throughout the dilapidated constructing, revealing plot factors by way of work, graffiti, and full-motion video. You then attain some extent the place it loops and also you’re again initially, compelled to discover those self same rooms over once more, besides with new interactive components and extra paths to open up. You are by no means doing something greater than pushing on the left thumbstick and urgent X to have a learn or contact of one thing; it is a strolling simulator from earlier than the style developed into one thing extra.
The complete-motion video does a minimum of arrange some extra attention-grabbing scenes — significantly after about an hour of gameplay. They don’t seem to be definitely worth the time you may want to take a position to truly attain them, however getting into blind, we discovered ourselves considerably intrigued by them greater than anything. They break up the minimal gameplay properly and arrange some story explanations.
The one different gameplay prompts to talk of are answering textual content messages (simply urgent the X button to ship pre-written replies) and chase sequences, which turn into more and more irritating the extra you progress. Throughout sure sections — and solely in these areas — a monster will begin looking you down and you will want to flee its clutches. That is fairly simple the primary two instances, however the third and last encounter must be a lesson in how not to do chase sequences for different builders.
You are tasked with discovering a number of footage inside a maze so as to take away padlocks off a door blocking your progress, all of the whereas the monster chases you. The setting is so non-descript and tough to navigate that you find yourself working round like a headless rooster blindly trying to find these photos. You possibly can by no means actually get your bearings, and the door it’s essential to unlock is at a useless finish, so if you happen to mess up, you’ve got principally killed your self. One of the best half is if you happen to do fail, you must restart the whole course of yet again. It is terrible.
You can say the identical of the sport’s body price, which makes an attempt a clean 30 frames-per-second however by no means achieves it. Common gameplay constantly hitches whilst you’re exploring the residence constructing, after which takes a nosedive in the course of the aforementioned chase sequences. It struggles to maintain up with the velocity of our dash, resulting in slight enter lag and missed alternatives to flee the monster.
All of it makes for an expertise that simply is not superb, however when The Brief Message is simply asking for 90 minutes of your time, it is a tad tougher to actually slate it. We would not advocate setting apart the time wanted to see the sport by way of to its conclusion — what it has to supply merely is not value it. Nonetheless, it is free, so the barrier to entry is just a little bit of your free time. Perhaps you may discover one thing to like.
Conclusion
Extremely bland gameplay and a few overly irritating chase sequences make Silent Hill: The Brief Message a chore to play a lot of the time. Whereas there are some intriguing full-motion cutscenes and heavy story particulars, they don’t seem to be value pushing by way of the uninteresting sequences in between to expertise them. Silent Hill: The Brief Message is totally free, although, so all it is asking for is 90 minutes of your time to see if you happen to get pleasure from it greater than us.
