Silent Hill: The Quick Message Assessment (PS5)

Silent Hill: The Quick 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 Recollections left off, it would not precisely put the collection’ greatest foot ahead. As a substitute of a horror expertise full of creative puzzles and persistently 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 Quick Message asks of you is your free time. The problem is you possibly can simply spend it taking part in a considerably higher sport.

Unrelated to previous entries within the collection, a brand new protagonist Anita and her forged of teenage associates 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 on the finish of every chapter providing steering and hyperlinks to suicide hotlines in actual life, so it isn’t a story to be taken in any respect flippantly. The plot sees Anita battle her demons in an deserted condominium constructing with a fame for suicides; a tragic destiny that has befallen her buddy Maya.

Sadly, there’s little in the way in which of correct gameplay to help it. Your solely interactions are strolling (and in some circumstances operating) and interacting with notes and books to learn them. The sport ushers you down linear hallways throughout the dilapidated constructing, revealing plot factors via work, graffiti, and full-motion video. You then attain some extent the place it loops and also you’re again firstly, pressured 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 no less than arrange some extra fascinating scenes — notably after about an hour of gameplay. They are not well worth the time you will want to take a position to really attain them, however getting in 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 change 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 easy the primary two occasions, 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 photos inside a maze in an effort to take away padlocks off a door blocking your progress, all of the whereas the monster chases you. The surroundings is so non-descript and troublesome to navigate that you find yourself operating round like a headless hen blindly looking for these pictures. You’ll be able to by no means actually get your bearings, and the door it’s essential unlock is at a lifeless finish, so when you mess up, you have mainly killed your self. The very best half is when you do fail, you must restart your entire course of yet again. It is terrible.

You possibly can say the identical of the sport’s body charge, which makes an attempt a clean 30 frames-per-second however by no means achieves it. Basic gameplay persistently hitches whilst you’re exploring the condominium 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 Quick Message is just asking for 90 minutes of your time, it is a tad harder to actually slate it. We would not advocate setting apart the time wanted to see the sport via to its conclusion — what it has to supply merely is not price it. Nonetheless, 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 Quick Message a chore to play a lot of the time. Whereas there are some intriguing full-motion cutscenes and heavy story particulars, they are not price pushing via the boring sequences in between to expertise them. Silent Hill: The Quick Message is totally free, although, so all it is asking for is 90 minutes of your time to see when you get pleasure from it greater than us.