Until Dawn - Part Two (PS4)
Normally, this section of the review is where I go a little in depth to the gameplay mechanics like combat, types of enemies, powers/moves you can learn, things like that. With this game, however, it's a little different because none of those aspects are present. So this one is going to be a little different. But first...
Brief Recap
The story centers around a group of friends in high school who go to one of their families lodge in the mountains for a party. Some of the group decide to play a joke on one of the girls, Hannah, and trick her into thinking she's being hit on by Mike. They lure her into one of the lodges bedrooms and as she begins undressing they all begin to laugh and reveal themselves. Embarassed, Hannah flees from the room and the cabin out into the wilderness. Her sister Beth goes to find her and together the two are confronted by a dark figure at the edge of a dangerous cliff. Hannah slips and together, her and her sister tumble down the mountains to their deaths. But their bodies are never found and they are labeled as mysterious disappearances. One year after the horrible night, the rest of the gang goes back to the lodge, but will they be able to survive until dawn?
The controls for this game are very simplified, as you spend the majority of the game guiding any one of the characters and choosing different options for them at forks in the road. That will be easier to explain in the rest of this review.
Until Dawn is broken up into ten episodes, each one with a specific theme. The first one, friendship, centers around all of the friends coming back together once again, while a later episode, loyalty, will test your ability to be true to your friends rather than being honest. In these episodes, you won't always see every character available to you, but you will definitely see and control more than one of them.
There is a seamless blend between cutscenes and gameplay, some sections being cutscene-style conversations that your only gameplay will be choosing how a certain character will respond. Other sections involve the player much more with exploring and investigating. While controlling the character, you are driven towards one objective, either exploring or escaping a specific area, or trying to find one of the other characters.
In addition to these objectives, there are a handful of back stories that you can also find clues to, revealing more details of the specific story. These include learning more about Beth and Hannah, uncovering what happened around the events of a mine collapse on the mountain, and details of a missing person who is rumored to be on the mountain. The player can pick up photographs, newspaper articles, letters, and physical clues. Depending on how many of these you pick up, there is a full video that will iron out the details based on the pieces you pick up.
A greater portion of the game is you walking around with your character and exploring. All of the different elements are featured in the form of quick-time events. There are sections where you are running away or towards something, or climbing up or down a tricky area, and you'll have to press different buttons as they are prompted to you. All of the shooting and fighting sections will have the character draw their weapon and you'll have a short time to center an aiming reticle over a target if you want to successfully hit whatever it is you're aiming for.
The main element of the game is a system inside of the game called the Butterfly Effect. It's based around the idea that any decision you make will have a big and eventual outcome later in the game. Choosing one path over another could very well mean the difference between life and death for any number of characters. These choices can also effect the balance of things around you. In the first chapter, one character Chris is showing off his shooting skills to Sam on a little practice gallery behind the building for the cable car. While doing this, a squirrel will run into the area and sit on a barrel and Chris will have the option of shooting one of the normal targets or shooting the squirrel. If you shoot the target it keeps nature in balance for the time being whereas shooting the squirrel will offset that balance.
It's a different style of game for sure. It keeps the drive of it all focused on the story itself instead of how the story unfolds. There have been games before that have featured a smaller-scaled version of this. The Mass Effect trilogy comes to mind as one. In the first game there is an optional side mission you can play and depending on the outcome of it, if you import your save file to Mass Effect 2 you can hear a discussion on the news about the situation you were involved in. But (at least to my knowledge) there hasn't been something on this scale. The amount of choices you can make amounts to hundreds of different paths you can take through the game and just as many ending variations that you can see.
Lastly, in between episodes, there a short Analyst sections. These take place in first person with you seated across a desk from a therapist (who is played by Peter Stormare, and it is definitely safe to say that I lost my shit when I saw him, he was my favorite character in Prison Break). During these sections you will have to answer a series of questions, and these can affect what happens during the next segment of the game. One of these sections has you flipping through a small book with dozens of drawings in it. On each page, you are asked to choose which of the pair frightens or unsettles you more. At the end, the therapist will reflect on which three images scare you the most. Upon returning to the game, you will see a lot more images of the things you decided are frightening to you, but you'll also see images of the things you said weren't frightening. I chuckled a bit at this as I felt it was the game taunting you like "I thought you said you weren't afraid of dogs?"
Overall, Until Dawn is a highly enjoyable play. It's definitely a little off the beaten path with it's style, but it's still a lot of fun to play. But for now, let's take a look at the "challenge" in this game.
During the QTE's, the speed of them can vary depending on the urgency of the situation or the length of the sequence itself. When things are more urgent, your reflexes need to be on point and near perfect. Sometimes enemies will be charging directly at you and even though time will slow down a bit, you'll need to be fast getting your aiming reticle lined up with the target in time. In the lengthy sections, the first couple of button prompts will seem extremely sluggish once you get to the later prompts that barely seem to last long enough for you to blink. As I mentioned above, the difficulty will vary depending on how your reaction time is. For me they were a moderate challenge as I tend to get involved in the cutscenes and a little spacey, so when they pop up I tend to just react and press whichever button my thumb is hovering over.
The challenge of the game itself comes mostly from how much you would like to see every possible outcome and save or kill all or specific characters. If you are satisfied with just seeing the story play out once based on your initial judgement to each situation then this game is going to be a piece of cake for you. The more you want to see, however, the more difficult it will become. You'll have to go back through and try to determine which specific action it was that caused a character to die and try and fix it.
One last area of difficulty worth mentioning, and is still going to vary from player to player, is the ability to overcome the horror. With the simplistic style of the gameplay, you will become very involved in the narrative and what's going on as you spend your time either watching or simply guiding each character, so it becomes easy to fall into a comfortable rhythm with the game. If you are more into the horror and jump scares then it might not be that difficult to deal with. However, if you scare easily then there might be a few extra hurdles for you in this game.
Overall, Until Dawn can be a very easy game with no challenge for you. That all depends on how you are with the above listed aspects. So before my final verdict on this game, let's look at what's good and what's bad about it.
- Cinematic camera angles. Since there isn't much more to do for the player than guide the characters, it gave them a lot of wiggle room with how to set up the shots. The flow between fixed angles and over the shoulder is the perfect mixture to keep you on your toes throughout. You'll find yourself walking down a hallway with the camera over your shoulder, then you'll round a corner and the angle will adjust to looking back at you from the opposite end of the hall, or through the rafters or a shelf. They took every viewing advantage they could and made it work.
On the fence
This was going to be my one con for the game, but as I wrote the rest of this review it became harder to decide if it was a good or a bad thing, so I've resolved to leaving it in the middle gray area. The interactive movie experience. It works for this game specifically, which is why I wanted to list it as a good thing. It's because of this aspect that a lot of the scares in the game work as well as they do. At the same time, though, it eliminates a lot of key elements for a game. I think it would have been better overall if there was more of a balance between game and viewing experience, but this game leans heavily towards being just an interactive viewing experience. I feel that if Until Dawn had seen a download-only episodic release then this strict format would've worked for it a lot better. But as a full release disc, I would've liked to see some more freedom with the characters. Give each one the potential of a weapon they could pick up and swing around in a semi-destructive environment. Something, anything, rather than just walking around and picking up clues and following timed button prompts.
With this game, there are numerous outcomes. You can have all eight characters survive, you can have all eight die, or any combination of survival and death. You can choose to play it how you would yourself in the specific situations, you can try to play true to the characters traits, you can let your feelings towards certain people affect how you play their segments. There are tons of different options with this game, and it definitely has the potential to pull you back in for multiple replays as it can turn out different every time. For my first run through the game, I decided to play it out as if I was in control of one of my favorite horror movies. I fit each character into their specific role and tried to play it how their Hollywood counterparts would. (It didn't go exactly as planned...I won't say who but at the end of the game I only had two people left standing). That being said, this won't be the final time I mention this game on my blog. I intend to go back through and play it again and achieve a different outcome at least a couple of times, and I will do a third follow-up review on how well this game replays.
But for now, that is all on Until Dawn.It's a fun game with an amazing story. If you love horror, you'll enjoy this game. If you enjoy actually playing games, then this one isn't a must-play for you.
Coming Soon
My next "big" review (I'm still trying to come up with differentiating terms) will be on Resident Evil 4 on the PS2. I also have a couple of quick reviews planned to hopefully be up over the next week. I'll also be hosting another vote on my Facebook and Instagram pages (possibly even Tumblr). As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I'm expecting a son in early September, who's name will be Leon Isaac. So my August "big" reviews will be the games featuring the inspiration for his name. Resident Evil 4 for Leon, and one of the Dead Space games for Isaac. The vote will be choosing between which of the three main Dead Space games for me to do on this blog. That is all for now, hope you enjoyed this review of Until Dawn and stay tuned for more. Feel free to follow and comment on my blog if you have an questions, suggestions, or critiques!
HG
Brief Recap
The story centers around a group of friends in high school who go to one of their families lodge in the mountains for a party. Some of the group decide to play a joke on one of the girls, Hannah, and trick her into thinking she's being hit on by Mike. They lure her into one of the lodges bedrooms and as she begins undressing they all begin to laugh and reveal themselves. Embarassed, Hannah flees from the room and the cabin out into the wilderness. Her sister Beth goes to find her and together the two are confronted by a dark figure at the edge of a dangerous cliff. Hannah slips and together, her and her sister tumble down the mountains to their deaths. But their bodies are never found and they are labeled as mysterious disappearances. One year after the horrible night, the rest of the gang goes back to the lodge, but will they be able to survive until dawn?
The controls for this game are very simplified, as you spend the majority of the game guiding any one of the characters and choosing different options for them at forks in the road. That will be easier to explain in the rest of this review.
The Gameplay
This game is a horror thriller with an interactive-movie feel to it. The usual gameplay mechanics of combat and enemies are gone, and you are left guiding eight teens through one horrific night. So instead of hacking your way through countless enemies that are spawned from nightmares, you are faced with hundreds of different tiny options that will affect the rest of the game.Until Dawn is broken up into ten episodes, each one with a specific theme. The first one, friendship, centers around all of the friends coming back together once again, while a later episode, loyalty, will test your ability to be true to your friends rather than being honest. In these episodes, you won't always see every character available to you, but you will definitely see and control more than one of them.
There is a seamless blend between cutscenes and gameplay, some sections being cutscene-style conversations that your only gameplay will be choosing how a certain character will respond. Other sections involve the player much more with exploring and investigating. While controlling the character, you are driven towards one objective, either exploring or escaping a specific area, or trying to find one of the other characters.
In addition to these objectives, there are a handful of back stories that you can also find clues to, revealing more details of the specific story. These include learning more about Beth and Hannah, uncovering what happened around the events of a mine collapse on the mountain, and details of a missing person who is rumored to be on the mountain. The player can pick up photographs, newspaper articles, letters, and physical clues. Depending on how many of these you pick up, there is a full video that will iron out the details based on the pieces you pick up.
A greater portion of the game is you walking around with your character and exploring. All of the different elements are featured in the form of quick-time events. There are sections where you are running away or towards something, or climbing up or down a tricky area, and you'll have to press different buttons as they are prompted to you. All of the shooting and fighting sections will have the character draw their weapon and you'll have a short time to center an aiming reticle over a target if you want to successfully hit whatever it is you're aiming for.
The main element of the game is a system inside of the game called the Butterfly Effect. It's based around the idea that any decision you make will have a big and eventual outcome later in the game. Choosing one path over another could very well mean the difference between life and death for any number of characters. These choices can also effect the balance of things around you. In the first chapter, one character Chris is showing off his shooting skills to Sam on a little practice gallery behind the building for the cable car. While doing this, a squirrel will run into the area and sit on a barrel and Chris will have the option of shooting one of the normal targets or shooting the squirrel. If you shoot the target it keeps nature in balance for the time being whereas shooting the squirrel will offset that balance.
It's a different style of game for sure. It keeps the drive of it all focused on the story itself instead of how the story unfolds. There have been games before that have featured a smaller-scaled version of this. The Mass Effect trilogy comes to mind as one. In the first game there is an optional side mission you can play and depending on the outcome of it, if you import your save file to Mass Effect 2 you can hear a discussion on the news about the situation you were involved in. But (at least to my knowledge) there hasn't been something on this scale. The amount of choices you can make amounts to hundreds of different paths you can take through the game and just as many ending variations that you can see.
Lastly, in between episodes, there a short Analyst sections. These take place in first person with you seated across a desk from a therapist (who is played by Peter Stormare, and it is definitely safe to say that I lost my shit when I saw him, he was my favorite character in Prison Break). During these sections you will have to answer a series of questions, and these can affect what happens during the next segment of the game. One of these sections has you flipping through a small book with dozens of drawings in it. On each page, you are asked to choose which of the pair frightens or unsettles you more. At the end, the therapist will reflect on which three images scare you the most. Upon returning to the game, you will see a lot more images of the things you decided are frightening to you, but you'll also see images of the things you said weren't frightening. I chuckled a bit at this as I felt it was the game taunting you like "I thought you said you weren't afraid of dogs?"
Overall, Until Dawn is a highly enjoyable play. It's definitely a little off the beaten path with it's style, but it's still a lot of fun to play. But for now, let's take a look at the "challenge" in this game.
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
In Until Dawn, the challenge really comes from the game itself and how determined you are to see every possible outcome. There are no enemies, at least not in the conventional sense, and therefore no combat except for how i described earlier. There is however a bit of a challenge in the quick-time events themselves. But regardless of which area we're speaking of, the level of difficulty will vary depending on the player and their reaction time.During the QTE's, the speed of them can vary depending on the urgency of the situation or the length of the sequence itself. When things are more urgent, your reflexes need to be on point and near perfect. Sometimes enemies will be charging directly at you and even though time will slow down a bit, you'll need to be fast getting your aiming reticle lined up with the target in time. In the lengthy sections, the first couple of button prompts will seem extremely sluggish once you get to the later prompts that barely seem to last long enough for you to blink. As I mentioned above, the difficulty will vary depending on how your reaction time is. For me they were a moderate challenge as I tend to get involved in the cutscenes and a little spacey, so when they pop up I tend to just react and press whichever button my thumb is hovering over.
The challenge of the game itself comes mostly from how much you would like to see every possible outcome and save or kill all or specific characters. If you are satisfied with just seeing the story play out once based on your initial judgement to each situation then this game is going to be a piece of cake for you. The more you want to see, however, the more difficult it will become. You'll have to go back through and try to determine which specific action it was that caused a character to die and try and fix it.
One last area of difficulty worth mentioning, and is still going to vary from player to player, is the ability to overcome the horror. With the simplistic style of the gameplay, you will become very involved in the narrative and what's going on as you spend your time either watching or simply guiding each character, so it becomes easy to fall into a comfortable rhythm with the game. If you are more into the horror and jump scares then it might not be that difficult to deal with. However, if you scare easily then there might be a few extra hurdles for you in this game.
Overall, Until Dawn can be a very easy game with no challenge for you. That all depends on how you are with the above listed aspects. So before my final verdict on this game, let's look at what's good and what's bad about it.
PROS
- Perfect horror setting. This game combines all of the ideal horror settings into one game. A cabin in the woods, a sanitarium, dark mines, the woods. It's all here, and it's all beautifully done.- Cinematic camera angles. Since there isn't much more to do for the player than guide the characters, it gave them a lot of wiggle room with how to set up the shots. The flow between fixed angles and over the shoulder is the perfect mixture to keep you on your toes throughout. You'll find yourself walking down a hallway with the camera over your shoulder, then you'll round a corner and the angle will adjust to looking back at you from the opposite end of the hall, or through the rafters or a shelf. They took every viewing advantage they could and made it work.
On the fence
This was going to be my one con for the game, but as I wrote the rest of this review it became harder to decide if it was a good or a bad thing, so I've resolved to leaving it in the middle gray area. The interactive movie experience. It works for this game specifically, which is why I wanted to list it as a good thing. It's because of this aspect that a lot of the scares in the game work as well as they do. At the same time, though, it eliminates a lot of key elements for a game. I think it would have been better overall if there was more of a balance between game and viewing experience, but this game leans heavily towards being just an interactive viewing experience. I feel that if Until Dawn had seen a download-only episodic release then this strict format would've worked for it a lot better. But as a full release disc, I would've liked to see some more freedom with the characters. Give each one the potential of a weapon they could pick up and swing around in a semi-destructive environment. Something, anything, rather than just walking around and picking up clues and following timed button prompts.
Final Verdict
In the end, I thought Until Dawn was a great game. It took a new spin on survival horror and made it work for itself. It's creepy and scary, but it manages to be thought-provoking and test the players mental facilities a little bit too. This game reels you in and then messes with your head. So in my personal opinion, this game is near perfect. I'm a huge fan of survival horror and horror themes in general so this game was right up my alley. However, from a gamer point of view, this game may not be ideal for your collection. It is essentially a choose your own adventure, except after you make your mind up for what you'll do, instead of having to flip to a different page, you immediately see the consequences of your actions play out. So if you're looking for a game to be more involved in, you can slide on past this one and pick up something else.With this game, there are numerous outcomes. You can have all eight characters survive, you can have all eight die, or any combination of survival and death. You can choose to play it how you would yourself in the specific situations, you can try to play true to the characters traits, you can let your feelings towards certain people affect how you play their segments. There are tons of different options with this game, and it definitely has the potential to pull you back in for multiple replays as it can turn out different every time. For my first run through the game, I decided to play it out as if I was in control of one of my favorite horror movies. I fit each character into their specific role and tried to play it how their Hollywood counterparts would. (It didn't go exactly as planned...I won't say who but at the end of the game I only had two people left standing). That being said, this won't be the final time I mention this game on my blog. I intend to go back through and play it again and achieve a different outcome at least a couple of times, and I will do a third follow-up review on how well this game replays.
But for now, that is all on Until Dawn.It's a fun game with an amazing story. If you love horror, you'll enjoy this game. If you enjoy actually playing games, then this one isn't a must-play for you.
Coming Soon
My next "big" review (I'm still trying to come up with differentiating terms) will be on Resident Evil 4 on the PS2. I also have a couple of quick reviews planned to hopefully be up over the next week. I'll also be hosting another vote on my Facebook and Instagram pages (possibly even Tumblr). As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I'm expecting a son in early September, who's name will be Leon Isaac. So my August "big" reviews will be the games featuring the inspiration for his name. Resident Evil 4 for Leon, and one of the Dead Space games for Isaac. The vote will be choosing between which of the three main Dead Space games for me to do on this blog. That is all for now, hope you enjoyed this review of Until Dawn and stay tuned for more. Feel free to follow and comment on my blog if you have an questions, suggestions, or critiques!
HG
