I’ve heard a lot of good things about the previous titles from Supermassive Games (which I haven’t played yet due to their PS4 exclusivity), yet all of the reviews I’ve seen of this Dark Pictures Anthology project were mediocre at best. So it took me a while before I decided to check them out, starting chronologically with the Man of Medan. And, well, it’s not terrible.
The idea behind The Dark Pictures Anthology is actually quite interesting – creating an anthology of horror story adventure games in the vein of Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt (including the narrator character). All of the stories are supposedly completely disconnected and all play as a “cinematic adventure” game, or in other words – like a modern Quantic Dream title, full of QTEs and scenes that only move forward with no way to go back.
In theory, this could work really well. If the controls are fine, the QTEs aren’t annoying and there’s a clear understanding about what you’re about to do when you start your contextual interaction (which can be anything depending on the context), then this could lead to some exciting cinematic gameplay. The Anthology even adds a rather curious co-op playthrough option, where each player lives through their own scenario alongside the partner and both player choices affect the outcome. That said, I didn’t bother trying it out myself as it seems that it still can be quite buggy. Luckily, since the game got released, there was an update enabling the “Curator cut” of the game, which is allowing the players to experience the story from the co-op partner perspective.
But, being a horror story turned into an adventure game, the enjoyment of it hinges on the storytelling and the plot. And that’s where Man of Medan, the first game in the Anthology, is hilariously lacking. For one, the main plot of the game is spelt out for the players in the opening prologue and it’s hard to imagine any player not understanding what’s going on and why right there and then. Yet, the game doesn’t acknowledge the obviousness of it’s later “twist” until the final moments. Which, unfortunately, leads to both ease of some choices and confusion about the others, where it’s obvious that you shouldn’t do something because of how the rules seem to have been established. But in reality, you should do those obviously risky things because they’re good.
In a game about choices and consequences this leads to frustration if you’re trying to get invested into what you do. And since so much can go wrong despite the established rules, it’s very hard to actually get invested. Well that, and having flat and unlikable characters doesn’t help either. But yeah, trying to seriously play this game and “get the best ending” is actually going to lead to some bad experiences. I mean, in Curator Cut of the game you can get locked into a bad ending from one of the earliest parts of the game without having a direct input, instead affecting this outcome by a choice that isn’t even presented as a choice and instead as something you must to do progress the game to the next scene.
That said, playing Man of Medan as a fun stupid haunted house attraction, full of obnoxious jump scares and annoying QTE sequences can be somewhat enjoyable. I didn’t hate my time playing this game and I can see this being fun in a schlock way. But Man of Medan immediately establishes the whole Anthology as being a very mediocre uninspired “horror anthology”, without fun twists, thought provoking situations or good storytelling.