| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | 7.90 |
| Overall | 7.90 |
|
Until Dawn started as a move exclusive title back in 2012 which then disappeared from the public eye for years until it resurfaced as a PS4 game. I felt the stigma of it being a failed PS3 game meant this release would be nothing more than some poorly updated PS3 game on PS4 with the removal of move support. Wow I was wrong, Until Dawn was totally revamped and it one of the best looking games ever made. This is every bit as huge and ambitious a game as any Quantic Dream title and it is actually better than some of their games. Until Dawn is a playable horror movie where you get to control who lives and who dies. The game begins with a party in a secluded house in the cold mountains where a bunch of teens are playing a prank on a girl which ends in tragedy. Fast forward a year and they are all summoned back to the house, in the middle of a snow storm, in the dead of night… if the plot sounds familiar it is because it is supposed too. This game is an homage to horror movies and at the same time it tries to flip some horror tropes on its head. The cast stars the usual stereotypes; the jock, the cheerleader, the nerd, the bitch, the jokester and so on. What is great is that these characters get far more fleshed out than the ordinary horror movie due to the extra length a video game provides. This game succeeds because it executes the choose your own adventure horror movie perfectly. It doesn't try to many different mechanics, it doesn't randomly switch genres as the story goes. It is a horror movie from start to finish, a good one even. Player interaction is rather basic but one still feels very much a part of the experience. You get to move the characters around a beautiful environment presented with Resident Evil style static camera angles that make the whole game look stunning. All the action is handled with QTE events much like a David Cage game, fail QTEs and the story alters a bit. In major moments a failed QTE can result in the death of a character which can be nerve wracking, especially the devious don't shake the controller QTEs. The characters are really where this game shines as it presents a large cast of horror movie archetypes and every one of them is playable and more importantly killable. All of them can live or die leading to all kinds of branching stories and attempting to keep all characters alive or trying to kill them all creates an intriguing challenge. Some of the reasons for deaths are kind of random, one death in particular I felt I had no real hand in but others feel entirely on the my actions. The best ones are ones where you need to use horror movie logic to avoid death; for instance should you go investigate the weird noise on your own… Don't be stupid. But being stupid is also part of the fun, during horror movies many love to yell “don't go into the dark room!” but in reality you do want them to go in there because of the curiosity of what is going to happen. That feeling of being a demented god controlling the fate of these characters is why this all works, it's a kind of story we are all familiar with, instantly relatable to anyone who plays it. I would say this is the best “play with others watching” game ever made, people who know nothing about video games can instantly jump in and get the concept of controlling a horror movie. Believe me this game has some strong characters that will elicit a strong emotional response, if you ever wanted a certain character to die in a movie you know the feeling. Well now you can do something about that, but when you have the power to decide their fate would you still feel the same way? If you choose to view Until Dawn as a survival challenge where the goal is to keep everyone alive there are some built in game systems to help make that possible. There are the usual hidden collectables that give tidbits about the story, some even offer clues that can help you down the line. What is unique to Until Dawn is the butterfly effect system which documents every decision you make that alters the story in some way. This allows you to easily know how to branch the story different ways but without any way to quickly access those branches it seems like a pointless addition. There is a chapter search but the game is split into ten chapters over about 10 hours so there is a lot of replaying that will happen when you try to see different outcomes. There are no scene skips or speeding up the dialogue which also makes replays a grind. Until Dawn has a sort of built in hint system involving totems that are found hidden in the game world. There are different types of totems and each type offers a vision of the future. One type my show you the choice you should make at a certain point. Others show you a preview of how a certain character will die. If you can figure out when and how that will happen you can perhaps avoid the death. That is about the extent that actual thinking is involved in the game, most choices are pure impulse and reflex based. Personally I much rather have a game filled with puzzles and more skill based traps but this game wants to mostly be a simple choose A or B adventure game and it does that very well. It still works due to the amount of choices and how fun the entire ride is. Until Dawn has some superb performances from its actors, all of whom are professional actors for movies or TV. The character models are incredible and capture the faces to a level where it just feels like you are watching Hayden Panettiere in a horror movie. The story is purposefully filled with horror movie cliches which it expertly plays on what you are expecting throughout. The long length of the video game medium allows them to tell a much larger story so some of it does feel bloated, especially the first few hours but it becomes focused by the end and the payoff is fantastic. This game's biggest strength is the cast but I felt the promise of being able to change their personalities didn't really materialize. Some characters do break free from their usual role in ways you didn't expect but I didn't feel I had any part in that. Maybe I haven't explored the multiple paths enough to see how much input the player has but from what I played yes you can control their destiny but you can't really change who they are. Graphically this game is beyond stunning. As a Resident Evil fan I am now dying to see a static camera angle RE game, give me tank controls too. All the models are fantastic, the performances some of the best of the year, the music feels like a movie. In every way this is an extremely well put together game that feels like a big time budgeted game. There is so much potential with games like these. Quantic Dream has been doing it for years but Cage’s games have this layer of surrealism to it, his concepts are a bit too out there for true mass market consumption. This is basically a genre movie turned into an interactive game, this is something instantly relatable to anyone that enjoys movies. The limited interaction makes it accessible to most anyone to the detriment of it being a more complex game but Until Dawn still offers way more interaction than say Gone Home or Her Story. It's a good compromise between a gamers game and something a person who has never touched a controller can still understand. Play this with your significant other, play this if you like horror movies, play this if you enjoy different gaming experiences. Until Dawn has all the elements to become a cult classic and I hope we get more games like this in different movie genres. |
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Posted by Dvader Wed, 27 Jan 2016 03:46:08
Fri, 29 Jan 2016 14:32:19
Wasn't this supposed to be a vr game?
Sat, 30 Jan 2016 01:03:30
No it was supposed to be a move game.
Sat, 30 Jan 2016 01:42:56
If anything, you make it sound less interactive than Her Story...
Sat, 30 Jan 2016 04:40:16
no. you can do way more than her story.
Sat, 30 Jan 2016 17:15:49
I will not play this Until the Dawn of a price drop.
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