silent hill: the short message (thoughts and feelings on it!)

its not often that i predict a game's big twist the moment i watch the trailer. it's a little disappointing that i did just that with the short message given its supposed to be the start of the revival of silent hill as a franchise outside of pachinko machines. i'll give it the fact that i didn't see the secondary twist about amelie at all, that was pretty good. while i enjoyed the game, it doesn't give me big hopes for the upcoming releases, which really hurts to say since silent hill F looks very interesting and the silent hill 2 remake is something that was only previously dreamed of!

i think my main problem with it aside from the predictability was that goddamn immersion break inserted in thirds of the game. its a good thing having the suicide hotline listed and urging people who need help to seek it when your game tackles heavy topics like that, but putting a big block of text right after every instance of suicide? its immersion breaking. its a big slap in the face that hey, youre playing a game right now!! dont forget you can just Not play a game to take care of yourself! can you fucking imagine if the original silent hill 2 did that. it wouldnt be one of the best horror games then, not by a long shot. itd probably become a meme. it was so hard to stay paying attention and invested when the game is constantly throwing everything to the side to remind me the suicide hotline exists.

on the brighter side of things, the environments were gorgeous and haunting. derelict and grimy and eerie, i loved every bit of it. the sound design was nice, but im no expert in that. and masahiro ito's monster design work shines through as always with sakura head. i really liked how it had comparably lower framerate so its stilted movement was even more stiff and inhuman and wrong. by design alone, it didnt scare me, but seeing it in motion was distressing in such a good way.

i dont know if i have anything else to say given it was so short? honestly, with the quality of the experience, im surprised its free. but it doesnt read like a silent hill game. it seems more like a standalone indie horror game, especially with those walls of text popping up. its like the developer thought people would think theyre condoning suicide if they didnt include those, which tanks the whole thing for me. while content warnings are something i believe are necessary, i think a quick word before/after the game would be more than enough rather than interrupting the game each time something happened, in a horror game no less. i was only paying half attention by the end of it cause it personally fucked me off so bad. i understand now why i dont see people raving about this game.

heres to hoping the upcoming games arent going to be just like this!