The Dark Pictures Anthology

[Neon Ignition]

I started this on Friday and had it wrapped up at midnight last night. Supermassive's new game is the first in an anthology series that will land with a new 4hr or so long instalment every six months if all goes according to plan. What is the game? Well, it's Until Dawn. Literally, there is nothing about the gameplay experience that separates this from Sony's first party hit other than window dressing. Instead of the Psychologist we now have the likeable Curator who guides us through a horror story in which we control 5-6 characters, ultimately deciding who lives and who dies. The first instalment is called Man of Medan and opens with a prologue set during WWII. After this opening action moves on to the main characters, a group of 5 who are deep sea diving for a relic which leads them on to a ghost ship.



The game looks gorgeous, the biggest issue I'd probably levy against it is that like Until Dawn it's overly focused on jump scares and the game pretty much prods you to work out what's happening throughout yet blows its secret very early on which undercuts some of the suspense. For the most part it works though and the game does a great job of creating a sense of place to the setting. If you didn't like Until Dawn there's absolutely nothing here to change your mind but fans will find a decent slice here, it'll be interesting to know if they can maintain or improve quality with future entries.

My ending - Everyone survived.

[Neon Ignition]

Just started Little Hope so I'll repeat what I did with the first post and put it all in one when I've finished the new episode. I find replaying Until Dawn pretty much impossible, the experience doesn't hold up at all on repeat once you know what's coming but in just doing the opening to this it's a reminder that as new experiences these are very quickly engaging.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm around a third of the way through House of Ashes for which it was interesting to see has received by far the best reviews of the three installments so far. Purely on what I've played so far it's a little hard to work out why, it's very polished but the gameplay experience has been the lightest to date with the cutscene to gameplay ratio leaning hard on watching. The story is taking a very long time to get going, I'll be nearing halfway and it's still setting things up. Hopefully the rest of the game shunts things on as the other two eps were faster to establish themselves.

[wakka]

I don't know why I've never posted in this thread, I've played all of these.

Until Dawn remains, in my opinion, by far the best. I really liked that game and had a blast playing it on release - I did it in two parts with my partner. We were up till 4am the first night, glued to it!

It's a really well done playable slasher, although I completely agree NI that it totally falls apart if you ever try to replay it. You come to realise many of the choices were quite illusory, and actually that the fun is in making the decisions in the first place. Once you're simply selecting path B because you chose path A last time, the sheen comes off pretty fast.

They've all been a bit downhill from there sadly, and although we still enjoy them they're games I'd hesitate to recommend really.

Man of Medan is for me the weakest entry so far. It starts well, has a saggy middle, then one of those third act reversals which kind of undo a whole lot of what the audience was caring about for most of it (so beloved of early 2000s films, which is what these games are sort of like a lot of the time). It also has the least interesting setting - a floating empty (or is it?!?!?) boat, Mary Celeste style, from WW2.

Little Hope was a better effort. This one sees your gang of teens dumped off in a mysterious Silent Hill ish town in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Spooky time travel goings on enliven proceedings.

I've installed this new one, but not sat down to play it yet. I'm intrigued by the setting and the fact that the characters are soldiers this time, rather than stock teen characters. Looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

[Neon Ignition]

I think part of the issue is that Until Dawn was a hockey teen horror in most ways and the writing for these games is... just okay which meant Until Dawn's theme actually fit the quality of the writing. The more mature DPA games though can seem clunkier because of it, like they never entirely land... hopefully Ashes breaks that in the end

[wakka]

For me they've all been hokey teen horrors so far, which I'm fine with. I just didn't feel that either Man of Medan or Little Hope were as exciting or interesting as Until Dawn. Off the top of my head, I can't put my finger on why that is. I think it might just come down to the fact that Until Dawn had more time and more budget (I seem to recall it was in development a very long time, as it was originally devised as a PS3 game that played quite differently to the end result).

[Neon Ignition]

Probably, it's amazing it moved so successfully from being a Move game to what it became too.

I'm not about 50%+ of the way through Ashes... still very much the same. Interesting to see it's struck such a chord the other two didn't with reviewers.

[wakka]

Oh yeah I'd completely forgotten it was supposed to be a Move thing. I can imagine how that would've worked, a hell of a lot of QTE waggle probably.

Still not started Ashes. To be honest more of the same is exactly what I'd been anticipating, so I'm fine with that. They don't set the world alight but I do enjoy them.

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, there's so far no real negative I could pull from Ashes compared to the other two. It just so far features less horror

[dazza_cole]

Hoping the ending isn’t as anti-climatic as Little Hopes. With Until Dawn and Man of Medan I played them through multiple times to see the various endings, had no incentive to do that with Little Hope

[Neon Ignition]

Finished it now, ended up losing a couple of characters because at one point I fell asleep at the controller and the story kept on going

I enjoyed it and without going into spoilers I can see why for some this one would appeal more than the previous two. For me I found the tone and suspense of the previous entries to be better than this one but it's still a solid addition overall.

[wakka]

I'm about halfway through now, possibly a bit more.

And I have to say, I can see where the reviews are coming from. So far for me this is a much stronger entry than Man of Medan or Little Hope. While the moment-to-moment dialogue is about the same quality as those games (i.e. not incredible), I think the pacing and structure are much better.

With Little Hope, my heart kinda sank a bit every time I switched character. It seemed to happen just as things were getting interesting. There was also far too much plodding about in the dark looking for twinkly things to go and 'Examine'. It's interesting that you mention that this is more cutscene driven with less exploratory gameplay, NI, because I'd totally agree, and I think it works much better for it.

The bits where you wander around a room looking at stuff are generally the least interesting parts of these games, for me at least, although I wouldn't want them expunged entirely. So keeping them as short, tight and constrained as they are here I think works very well to keep the pace and energy levels of the story nice and high.

In fact it's probably the longest 'wander about looking at stuff section' that's the weakest bit so far for me. It was also that most hoary of videogame challenges, 'Find a way to turn the power back on'. I absolutely hate finding ways to turn power back on. It's usually a lift or a generator, and either way, I don't want to know about it. Games developers, please, think of something else for us to do other than find the magic widget that gets the power back on!

But that aside, I'm enjoying this one the most out of all them except Until Dawn. Having a lot of fun playing this entry

Also, I think the HDR implementation is pretty great, too.