The Hills Are Alive
Sitting down last night to play Silent Hill: The Short Message was a truly surreal experience. As the first Silent Hill game to be released in a decade, this game comes with enormous baggage - and seemingly insurmountable expectations. I think it's common knowledge to most gamers, whether they've actually played a Silent Hill game or not, that this is a series cursed with the distinction of having ”peaked” over 20 years ago. Everything since the earliest games in the series has been highly scrutinized by a hardcore fan base that hasn’t really been satisfied with any of the attempts that a wide variety of developers have made at providing an adequate follow-up to the classic original quadrilogy of games. This pattern of diminishing returns came to a head in 2014 with the very messy fallout between Konami and Hideo Kojima - and the cancellation of Silent Hills, the first game in the series in a while to show some serious potential to rekindle what made the series truly special in the first place: terrifying gameplay rooted in a uniquely nightmarish artistic vision. The playable teaser for that game remains one of the most truly unsettling pieces of digital media ever created. Silent Hills’ cancellation is still a sore spot for fans after all these years - and the nearly ten-year radio silence that followed was interminable.

Cut to 2024. Silent Hill: The Short Message is the first game in the docket of Konami’s current resurrection of Silent Hill. A free “shadow-drop” released on PSN in almost the exact same fashion as P.T. was ten years ago, The Short Message looks to pick up right where we left off. It’s a first-person horror game with a strong emphasis on story and atmosphere and notably reunites series veterans composer Akira Yamaoka and art director Masahiro Ito. Right from the jump, this thing looks, sounds and feels more like a Silent Hill game than anything has for quite some time. The execution of the series’ iconic dread-soaked industrial ambience is on point with both Yamaoka and Ito bringing their A-game. Ito in particular delivers his best creature design since Silent Hill 3 with one of the most visually striking monsters I’ve ever seen in a horror game. It’s really good to have these guys back.

The Short Message is indeed short, compared to other games in the series. It’s about the length of a movie and can be easily consumed in one evening. I would say that this actually works in the game’s favor - it doesn’t get a chance to get stale or become less frightening or engaging. Once I was in, I wanted to see the story to its conclusion - and despite a rather difficult final stretch, would not be deterred. Runtime is something that can really be a problem for horror games - as things become familiar, the feeling of disorientation and helplessness begin to fade. Once fear isn’t a factor any more, you’re left with the mechanics of the game and its storyline to pull you through. For a mechanics-light game like this, the runtime felt perfect and at the end I was left wanting more in the form of a second playthrough, which I enjoyed even more than the first as I was able to pick up on subtle pieces of the story that I missed the first time around. Without spoiling the story, I’ll simply say that it deals with subject material that is unique to the series and feels like a conscious attempt to modernize and talk about current real-world issues through the unique lens of a Silent Hill story. Suffice it to say that I found it rather affecting and emotional. Perhaps the biggest difference between P.T. and The Short Message is that this is a complete story - one with fully fleshed-out characters and a proper story arc that’s less ambiguous than some other entries in the series but still feels abstract and dreamlike in many ways. Unfortunately though, one department this game doesn’t hold a candle to P.T. is fear factor. Kojima’s short-form horror masterpiece still feels quite far ahead of this in terms of the sheer terror it can elicit. That has a lot to do with the fact that while P.T. featured a main enemy that would constantly haunt you throughout the game, The Short Message keeps its monster encounters contained to Shattered Memories-esque chase sequences. While they are great at showcasing the excellent monster design and providing some of the game’s most harrowing visuals, they are brief and don’t provide that nagging under-your-skin sensation that something awful is standing right behind you.

If I have any other complaint, it’s that while the environmental and creature visuals are outstanding, the main character could have used a bit more work. I like that in keeping with series tradition, she is a very average person trapped in a hellish mental prison of her own design. I found her performance to be compelling and the character development that occurs over the course of the game’s runtime cements her as a truly memorable Silent Hill protagonist. I just wish that in cutscenes, I wasn’t slightly distracted by the slightly dated-looking facial animation and the fact that her hair is often clipping through her glasses. I almost wonder if it would have been a better choice to have her be fully live-action as in the unnervingly disjointed FMV flash-backs that showcase another character throughout the game.

Some presentation nitpicks aside, I found Silent Hill: The Short Message to be a truly wonderful experience - a brief but intense romp in a world that I had been eager to return to for a very, very long time. The special sauce that the series had in the past is here, make no mistake. You can see plenty of little flourishes of Silent Hill’s former glory - nods to a heritage that is among video games’ most beloved for a reason. I feel truly grateful for the return of Silent Hill. The upcoming slate of games has me filled with a mixture of excitement and apprehension - and I’m sure I’m not alone there. Silent Hill fans have been through a lot and I think that being critical is part of the DNA of the fanbase. Sometimes though, it feels like people get hung up on negative online discourse (part of the game’s meta commentary) and miss the forest for the trees. The Silent Hill series is full of incredible art, music, gameplay, characters and stories. This entry is no different and it feels more authentic and assured than a game in the series has for quite some time. It’s a perfect way to kick things off the new era of Silent Hill. I just hope that fans will allow themselves to find some enjoyment and appreciation of these new games. I know I will.

The Game Nobody Was Asking For, Now Beloved
See, the Pokemon Company of the late 90’s was a lot smarter than people give them credit for. This era of Pokemon games for consoles were defined primarily by NOT giving fans what they wanted. Instead we got bizarro experiments like Hey You Pikachu, Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Puzzle League and Pokemon Snap, games that decidedly did not realize the potential of a full 3D Pokemon RPG that everyone was clamoring for (and something that wouldn’t happen for many years) but instead teased the rabid fanbase with ideas of what could be, working them up into a frenzy. I remember being kind of baffled and underwhelmed by Pokemon Snap back in 99’ but as time has gone by, my appreciation for it has only grown. I really like the idea of this on-rails photography game where instead of making Pokemon battle one another, you are simply observing them in their native environment. Well, and throwing a bunch of junk at them. Not the most responsible thing to be teaching kids perhaps?

Aaand Boom Goes The Dynamite
Bomberman, as a series of action-puzzler games primarily found on Nintendo platforms, had a pretty good run in the late 90s. After that it's a bit unclear what happened. This came out as the series appeared to be winding down circa 2000 and it sadly hasn't really come back in any meaningful way. Anyway, it's always struck me as odd that Bomberman, as a series, isn't exactly beloved. This game, like everything else in the series (that I played) was super fun and had an adorable art style. Points deducted for the whole red/blue gotta buy both versions gimmick.

Having a Blast
Everyone has a moment in life where they get to call themselves the hero. For me it was when I installed this strange-looking-but-not-a-knockoff Bomberman game onto my entire middle school computer network to enjoy what were essentially my first multiplayer LAN parties during class. But the real kicker was hearing that the game was still being played by students years later, after I had moved on to high school. The knowledge that I was helping younger generations slack off and enjoy hilariously tense sudden-death matches voiced by the one and only Billy West filled my heart with pride.

Put Bomberman In Smash, You Cowards
Of all the games I could have played on the GameBoy Color, I chose this obscure thing for some reason. I've always liked Bomberman's design a lot I guess. This game is what some might consider a legit hidden gem. It's a great little 2D platformer that bears more than a passing resemblance to something like Spelunky. It was even good enough to inspire me to create my own series of comic books loosely based on the extended Bomberverse canon. Don't even get me started on that.

Just Make the Shadows of The Empire Movie, Already! What's Your Problem, Disney?
Shadows of the Empire, which was a fully fledged Star Wars marketing cycle minus the movie, is unjustly overlooked nowadays. This would-be Episode 5.5 is absolutely SICK for a number of reasons. It goes deep into the criminal underbelly elements of the original trilogy and features characters like Boba Fett, IG-88 and some freaky green dude named Prince Xizor. Since Han is down for the count in between Empire and Jedi, we get a different renegade gunslinger type named Dash Rendar, a guy so cool he had to be disappeared immediately after the events of Shadows so as not to distract too much from the main event. This game has everything you could want in a Star Wars game in '96: OG trilogy vibes, jet packs, a Hoth stage, a Boba Fett boss battle, space battles, blowing up a Death Star type thing. Yes it's on the N64, so everything looks like garbo by today's standards but man what a time.

From the Cradle to the Dam
If my parents had just let me have an N64 like a normal kid instead of necessitating that I go next door to my neighbor's house to play GoldenEye, I probably would have never become so fixated on that which I could not have and therefore, would not have developed what would become a life-long ravenous obsession with video games. This game was goddamn crack cocaine. I couldn't believe that such a beautiful thing could exist. And I think I'm still chasing that high to this day.