Dawn of Medan

I should start by saying that Until Dawn was one of my favorite games of 2015. Considering it’s troubled development it’s kind of a miracle that it came out at all and wasn’t a complete disaster. Being a huge fan of the survival horror genre, Until Dawn seemed like it was going to strike the right chord with me. Expectations were high, which could lead to disappointment but the team at Supermassive delivered.

These games feature a lot of QTE’s and aren’t considered high art but they are lots of fun to play, especially when played with close friends on the couch like an interactive movie.  The story of Until Dawn was quite fun and unfolded based on your choices. It was even nominated for best narrative at The Game Awards in 2015. Looking back on that game I am now asking myself was Until Dawn as good as I remember it or am I wearing rose colored glasses. 

The Dark Pictures Anthology was hopefully a return to greatness for Supermassive by offering a series of survival horror games similar to Until Dawn. They announced that there would be 8 total games under The Dark Pictures banner with the first being Man of Medan. The cadence for these games is planned at two a year since they were a little more bite size and they will be able to utilize the engine across multiple offerings.

Fish out of Water

The Dark Pictures Anthology features a narrator, similar to the twilight zone, who introduces us to the world we are about to dive into. I liked the idea of the narrator throughout the game and thought it was a nice break in between the acts. After the introduction from the narrator, Man of Medan starts out very slow, even after we get to know the main characters. The first act dragged on and this is a problem for a game like this that is sold as a bite size Until Dawn experience. I dont mind the total length of this game but if the credits are rolling after 5 hours with plenty of exploration then it should hit the ground running. The game fortunately found its footing for the start of act 2 and was paced well with plenty of tension and enough dialogue to help you get your bearings.

Unfortunately, I found that by the time the third act began the game was just limping to the finish. The main reason for the limping finale is due to the story and its uneven tone. The combination of poor writing in certain sections along with poorly voiced scenes broke the immersion. The voice acting was missing the weight that it desperately needed in some scenes, including one where someone had just been shot in the head and the characters tone felt like she was making an order at Starbucks.

Until Dawn had the benefit of paying homage to the B movie slasher films from the eighties which gave it the freedom to be a little corny and oblivious. Man of Medan feels like its trying to go for something more serious by taking on nonfictional events that have actually taken place and trying to solve them during an interactive horror adventure game. The tone that this world created has left no room for immature, and unrealistic dialogue that these young adults would never say in reality.

Exploration isn’t overly encouraged and doesnt offer much in the way of added benefits. There were very few times over the course of the story that exploration actually had meaning to it. Most of the time you would just find notes scattered throughout the boat that did little to help your journey and instead just tried to build the world it was trying to create. The problem is that you dont get invested in these characters or this world and finding out why certain things happened on the boat in 1940 . However, there was one time during exploration near the end of act 2 or the start of act 3 that basically revealed why things were happening. This was a huge spoiler that would have been a great finale at the end of act 3 but instead took the wind out of the sails for the rest of the game. This spoiler completely eliminated all of the tension and thrill that the game had going for it in the second act.

The Social Network

One of the great improvements that The Dark Pictures does over Until Dawn is creating a social aspect to the game. Until Dawn was a game that became very popular with the streaming community and it was also a lot of fun to play with friends. Trying to make fast decisions together was a fun and excliarting experience. This time around Supermassive understood that their game was designed to be played with friends. Man of Medan features two different was to play with friends on top of the ability to play solo, which is still a lot of fun.

You can either play in “Movie Night” where anywhere from 2-5 players can play. At the start of the game you assign each person the characters they will be controlling for the rest of the game. In theory, this sounds like a fantastic idea but on our first run, we didn’t know who any of the characters were or what they were like so we just randomly assigned. If they could have implemented a feature where it shows the percentage of the game the player is active or if it randomly assigned based on length it would have been a much better idea. There were times during our session where I wouldn’t play for over an hour, which is a bit of a disappointment when the game is only around 4-5 hours. By the time we finished the game, I estimated that the breakdown between the two of us was about 75/25.

The other mode is “Shared Story” and this is a great concept as well. This involves two friends who are playing at the same time online, controlling different characters simultaneously. I truly think that this style of game excels when played in locally with friends so it would have been really great to see shared story mode borrow from EA’s A Way Out. It was an online or local coop game when if played locally would use split screen functionality with each players screen size getting bigger or smaller depending on importance of gameplay.

Horizon Until Dawn

There are a few key differences between Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures for Supermassive. First, the game isn’t being published by Sony, instead it is being published by Bandai Namco, which I am curious how it affects quality control and budget. Second, the game is no longer developed using the Decima Engine from Guerilla Games.  The same engine used to make Horizon Zero Dawn, a very beautiful and technically stable game, and the upcoming Death Stranding from Hideo Kojima. It seems that this engine is exclusive to Sony properties. I am not sure why they chose not to work exclusively with Sony for this horror anthology but that has clearly affected the budget and not using the Decima has clearly led to a worse game in my mind than Until Dawn was in 2015. Supermassive’s last two games before this were both made with Unreal Engine 4 so they should have been able to work out a lot of the bugs by now.

Unfortunately, the game features very uneven visuals throughout the game in every aspect. The narrator for example looks life like but during some very serious scenes the characters facial animations were laughable. There were environments throughout the ghost ship and during the dive that were visually fantastic, but then there were times when the group is on the smaller boat and the visuals were almost PS2 quality with limited textures and effects. During very serious scenes on the boat your AI companions just stare at the wall, rather than look around like a real person would do. There are just too many inconsistencies between visuals and animations to ignore during some chapters, which is unfortunate because there are slices of Man of Medan that does show Supermassive returning to the great form that was Until Dawn.

Verdict

Man of Medan doesn’t have the same leisure that Until Dawn had as it came out of nowhere to be such a pleasant surprise. It also doesn’t have the luxury of having inconsistent tone as it isn’t trying to replicate classic slasher flicks and their ethos.

At the bite size length and the bite size price, Man of Medan is still an entertaining game that is worth playing despite some of its flaws if you enjoyed Until Dawn. I hope the team at Supermassive still has the flexibility to improve upon some of the aspects in Man of Medan that didnt hit the mark. My anticipation is still high for the next instalment in The Dark Pictures Anthology, Little Hope, which is due out in 2020.

6/10