Silent Hill: The Brief Message is the primary product in 12 years to launch with the Silent Hill title on it, and choosing up the place the Silent Hill HD Assortment and PS Vita title E book of Reminiscences left off, it would not precisely put the collection’ greatest foot ahead. As an alternative of a horror expertise stuffed with creative puzzles and constantly scary sequences, Konami — alongside developer HexaDrive — has put collectively a strolling simulator that harkens again to when the style was truly 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 difficulty is you would simply spend it enjoying a considerably higher sport.
Unrelated to previous entries within the collection, a brand new protagonist Anita and her solid of teenage pals cope with a number of very heavy themes: suicide, abuse, melancholy, and bullying. It is discomforting sufficient that Konami felt the necessity to show a splash display screen 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 calmly. The plot sees Anita battle her demons in an deserted house constructing with a fame for suicides; a tragic destiny that has befallen her pal Maya.
Sadly, there’s little in the way in which of correct gameplay to assist it. Your solely interactions are strolling (and in some instances operating) and interacting with notes and books to learn them. The sport ushers you down linear hallways throughout the dilapidated constructing, revealing plot factors by work, graffiti, and full-motion video. You then attain some extent the place it loops and also you’re again at the beginning, pressured to discover those self same rooms over once more, besides with new interactive parts 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 not less than arrange some extra fascinating scenes — significantly after about an hour of gameplay. They don’t seem to be definitely worth the time you will want to take a position to truly attain them, however moving into blind, we discovered ourselves considerably intrigued by them greater than the rest. 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 develop 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 ought to 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 to be able 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 operating round like a headless rooster blindly trying to find these photographs. You may by no means actually get your bearings, and the door it’s worthwhile to unlock is at a useless finish, so when you mess up, you’ve got mainly killed your self. One of the best half is when you do fail, you must restart the whole course of once more. It is terrible.
You might 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. Basic gameplay constantly hitches whilst you’re exploring the house 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 excellent, 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 suggest setting apart the time wanted to see the sport by to its conclusion — what it has to supply merely is not price it. Nevertheless, it is free, so the barrier to entry is just a little bit of your free time. Possibly you will 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 price pushing by 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 when you take pleasure in it greater than us.
