| 3DNews |
Артем Терехов |
7 / 10 |
02-03-2024 |
An interesting modern take on Silent Hill, with a fascinating story and excellent location design. Apparently, Konami has really taken the series seriously — although fans will find something to complain about anyway, they want to see more psychological horrors like this. |
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| CGMagazine |
Jordan Biordi |
4.5 / 10 |
02-02-2024 |
Silent Hill: The Short Message is a boring, contrived, borderline offensive experience. |
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| GameSpew |
Richard Seagrave |
7 / 10 |
02-02-2024 |
While it can be a little ham-fisted with its messaging, Silent Hill: The Short Message is a suitably dark and disturbing experience that certainly captures the look and feel of Silent Hill. Those who dig into it will find that it offers an interesting take on how these stories can occur outside of the actual town of Silent Hill, too. In any case, for the price of free, it’s hard to complain about a short horror experience that is as good as (or better than) most of its ilk released at a cost. |
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| GameSpot |
Mark Delaney |
3 / 10 |
02-02-2024 |
Silent Hill’s return to consoles after 12 years away falls flat thanks to a script lacking even an ounce of subtlety. |
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| GamesRadar+ |
Leon Hurley |
3 / 5 stars |
02-01-2024 |
Silent Hill: The Short Message is an interesting, if not amazing rebirth for the series that proves it can be reanimated for a modern audience. Atmospheric and full of potential it bodes well for future instalments. |
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| GamingBolt |
Ravi Sinha |
7 / 10 |
02-04-2024 |
Silent Hill: The Short Message isn’t going to set the horror genre ablaze, but it doesn’t have to. As a free offering, it’s a solid showcase with a heavy atmosphere and heavier subjects, even if its narrative could have been more subtle. |
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| Hardcore Gamer |
Kyle LeClair |
2 / 5 stars |
02-02-2024 |
The sad thing is that Silent Hill: The Short Message has a lot of good story ideas, characters and world-building, but then proceeds to waste them on completely unoriginal, shallow gameplay. It paradoxically wanted to move ahead and tackle more mature themes and stories, yet has gameplay that feels blatantly regressive, settling for the most generic aspects of modern horror games. If this is the direction that the franchise wants to take, then it’s headed straight for a cliff. Hopefully the likes of No Code will be able to salvage things with their side games later, but for now, you can easily skip over The Short Message. |
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| Metro GameCentral |
David Jenkins |
4 / 10 |
02-02-2024 |
Another disappointing Silent Hill revival, that gets some of the visuals and tone right but is let down by a hackneyed script and frustrating chase sequences. |
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| Push Square |
Liam Croft |
4 / 10 |
02-01-2024 |
Incredibly bland gameplay and some overly frustrating chase sequences make Silent Hill: The Short Message a chore to play much of the time. While there are some intriguing full-motion cutscenes and heavy story details, they’re not worth pushing through the dull sequences in between to experience them. Silent Hill: The Short Message is completely free, though, so all it’s asking for is 90 minutes of your time to see if you enjoy it more than us. |
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| Rely On Horror |
Unknown |
8 / 10 |
02-04-2024 |
The Short Message is a short and satisfying modern take on the classic themes of Silent Hill, and overall feels quite solid, especially since it’s free. I’d definitely encourage any fans of the series with a PS5 to check it out. It may not necessarily blow you away or change your life, but it does manage to hold its own and signal a decent return to a series that hasn’t had a proper entry in twelve years. |
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| Screen Rant |
Christopher Teuton |
4 / 5 stars |
02-02-2024 |
For a free game that shows the first glimpse of what Konami is truly going to do with the franchise, Silent Hill: The Short Message is absolutely worth experiencing. That’s not to say it’s perfect. The “walk around and find the only interactable object in the room” gameplay brings nothing new to the table, and after being caught by the monster two or three times the escape room segments become far more tedious than they do scary (especially the final one). The dialog is a bit too on-the-nose, and all the social media references that seemed pretty important in the beginning are quietly shoved to the side once the real story reveals itself. That all being said, it’s a far better start than it could have been, and it is undeniably the best new Silent Hill media since 2014. |
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| WayTooManyGames |
Kyle Nicol |
6 / 10 |
02-05-2024 |
Let me clarify that, whilst Silent Hill: The Short Message wasn’t exactly the kind of game we were all waiting for, it’s not entirely that bad. It’s a mixed bag of a horror experience, with a story which tried to deal with some heavy personal themes (not exactly new ground for the series, mind you), only to fall short in its execution. Regardless, it’s still worth giving a shot. There is stuff to like in here, and let me reiterate the fact that it’s free, and brief. It’s not particularly a risky investment. |
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