I have put maybe an hour or two into Silent Hill 2, and I know it's a game that I need to finish at some point. I know the great twist, I've had that spoiled for me god knows how many times. I honestly put it into the same camp that I have movies like Alien in: even if there's something in there that surprises me, having the big moments ripped off like a band-aid purely through pop culture osmosis dampers my curiosity somewhat. All of this is to say, while you may not personally be excited for new Silent Hill games, I'm just curious to see something new. Since I was only really around for P.T. once that was spoiled for me, too, I'm not counting it—which leaves me with the newly released The Short Message.

I did not get the hate that this got over its leaks, and having finally played it, I still don't. Having seen those leaks, I actually have more of an appreciation for this; I know now that this was pretty cohesive in its themes and intention when it needed it to be and never deviated from that. I don't mind a lack of subtlety, as long as the bluntness of what you're working on is there for a good reason, and I found the reasoning for it here to be acceptable. It's laser-focused on what it wants and needs to say from beginning to end, and this focus is echoed throughout the spaces you explore. Although I can see someone being a little irritated that this is linear to the point where doors don't unlock unless you read certain notes, most of those notes serve the story and not the lore. There are notes that serve the lore, but they all feed you the right amount of information while giving you space to think. What impressed me on an immediate level were the cinematics. I genuinely can't tell if they were live-action or rendered, although I know that they were likely rendered. It's uncanny as hell, but it's equally impressive. What impressed me throughout, however, is how well this serves as a mood piece. Each and every location, whether it was important or minor, made me feel something. This is more of a vibes game than something substantive or scary, and while that might be disappointing if you're going in expecting serious scares, it kept me hooked. One concern I do have, if this is the playable teaser many are making it out to be, is that the only area where I noticed evident performance issues was when I was near fog. If the new Silent Hill games are all going to lack the fog or run like shit because of it, we might be in for a doozy. But regardless of that one scene, the rest of this was pretty solid! ...for the most part.

Yeah, those chase scenes, man. I'm a little biased because I already don't like chase scenes, but something about them here felt either like filler or downright infuriating to deal with. If it weren't for the last chase sequence, my rating for this would absolutely be three-and-a-half stars because the vibes were just that immaculate for me. But no, god, no. I don't know if I ever want to go through that again. Put it this way: the game doesn't make a big deal about which rooms you go into because of its linear trajectory until the final chase sequence, where it expects you to remember the layout of the map like the back of your hand while elements of it feel completely different. It expects you to find five photographs in this mess without giving you a map or checkpoints. At a certain point, the stress I was intended to feel gave way to frustration. The only reason I didn't stop playing there was because I wanted to see the ending. That was it. The ending was nice, and there was a cute little tune that played over the credits (way more people worked on this than any other free game I've ever played), but I don't think that forgives it. It was that bad. At least the creature design was cool, though—although I found it to be scarier in the leaked concept art than I did in the final product. Consequences of having that kind of stuff leak, I guess. Whoops! Feel bad for the developers on that front, because I'm probably not alone in that.

What I liked about this, I really liked. If a new Silent Hill game is made from this mold, I wouldn't mind, actually. The Silent Hill 2 remake being a horror game that needs to have a trailer dedicated to its combat should say something about how skeptical I am of that, but I might also check it out when it's on sale. If this and that trailer is Konami's way of getting people back on the Silent Hill hype train... I mean, I wouldn't call this embarrassing. This was cool. But, 7/10.

"As a French studio addressing a global audience, the game does not engage in any foreign policy and is not inspired by any real-life events."

Oh no.

What's the point, then? If you're going to be telling a story through the perspective of a bodycam, should the medium not be the message?

I'm willing to give these developers the benefit of the doubt, maybe there will be more to this than that. But as it stands, that kind of statement attached to a game with a premise like this is only slightly less on the nose than EA or Ubisoft making a game adaptation of Bumfights with hyper-realistic graphics where you play as both the cameraman and aggressor and then claiming that the only bit of reality mirrored in it is that the homeless exist.

If I paid money for this thing I'd be furious with how short it is. My first go around the novelty lasted about 4 minutes before I just got frustrated and annoyed. I powered through begrudgingly, pretty much hating it all the way to the end.

The post game content (optional challenges and level speed runs) is where I actually found myself enjoying it some. Less banging your head against a wall figuring out what the game wants from you, more knowing what you have to do and devising a plan for how you're going to go about it.

It feels shitty to criticize this at all given that it is easily the best free DLC ever, it easily offers more content than the majority of paid single player DLC.

But Valhalla isn't great. It focuses on combat (which was certainly the best part of the disappointing Ragnarok), it has great callbacks to the original trilogy, and it offers touching story beats that feel like a definitive conclusion to this chapter of Kratos. But more than anything else, it's boring and fails as a rogue-lite. I can't fathom why anyone would continue to play this after finishing its story, and even then completing the story itself is just frustrating with how often your success is rewarded by having to start all the way over because Kratos "needs to think."

Nice of them to be constantly throwing the suicide hotline number in your face because wasting time on this will make you want to kill yourself.

Legitimately probably the worst thing I've ever played. Powered through the first 2 chapters then got to the part of chapter 3 where it turns into the Slenderman game and I said fuck it.

The "deep" depressed girl dialogue is unintentionally hilarious with how absolutely stupid it is. The terrible voice acting doesn't help either. Not scary whatsoever, the little bit of gameplay other than walking is abysmal, the story was entirely predictable (in addition to just dumb). Can't believe this game hasn't been given the Forspoken treatment with the dialogue being meme'd to death. Any day now.