an uninspired, janky mess of a game that completely fails to resemble anything close to silent hill.
this game plays like absolute shit, and its gameplay consists entirely of walking slowly through tight, repetitive hallways and picking up notes which sometime trigger a cutscene or a really boring chase sequence. rinse and repeat for 3 full chapters, with some especially bad level design for the last chapter, and you have Silent Hill: The Short Message.
about the story, the protagonist is an utterly unlikeable person. she’s spiteful, selfish and responsible for everything that occurs in the game, including the suicide of her best friend. despite this, the game has the audacity to give her a redemption, and it comes from the character she neglects the most. this is without mentioning her lacklustre backstory, which is brought up once at the very end and adds nothing to the story at all, along with several other plot threads that lead absolutely nowhere.
overall this game is everything I don’t want silent hill to be, and it sucks how this is start of the so-called “series revival” or whatever Konami is calling it.