Also available on Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Windows Until Dawn is on of my favorite horror experiences specifically because of how it handled player agency and choice throughout the game. When I heard that the creators of Until Dawn were making a series of shorter horror games, then, I was super excited. I then promptly put off buying them for years until Man of Medan ended up on Game Pass. Now I'm probably to dive headfirst into the rest of the Dark Pictures Anthology series. Like Until Dawn, The Man in Medan follows a series of protagonists - five in this case - shifting perspective repeatedly throughout the game. The game isn't long, but there is a TON of replay value here as your choices can have major impacts on the way the game plays out. You can have everyone survive to the end, or you can have no one survive to the end, and from what I've read online, there are over a dozen different endings when you include variations of who survives. Some choices are pretty minor whereas others are major game-changing decisions, and it's often not clear into which category any given decision will fall until after you've made your choice. There's also no reloading a save to fix a screw up here as the game is constantly saving; once you make a decision, you have to live with the consequences of that decision no matter what those consequences may be. That right there is what makes this game so intriguing for me. There's no real way to cheese the system; if you want to see everything this game has to offer, you've got to just buckle down and play through it repeatedly. Fortunately, this is a pretty short game - probably five hours total - so it's not an especially massive time investment if you're just going for the major endings rather than the minor variations. The visual and auditory presentation is absolutely stunning here. This game doesn't even have a current gen optimization or upgrade, but it still looks breathtaking; my roommate walked in during one of The Curator's cut scenes, and he honestly thought it was a live action scene until I mentioned how good the graphics were and he realized it was CGI. The whole game looks absolutely incredible, and it's immediately apparent that Supermassive put all of their energy into making this as immersive a world as they could. The only thing that even slightly breaks my immersion is the somewhat awkward and clunky character movement, but the environments, character models, and story are all so well done that I hardly even noticed once I really got into the game. The basic premise of the game is that Alex, his younger brother Brad, his girlfriend Julia, and Julia's brother Conrad hire a woman named Fliss to take them to a specific spot in the Pacific Ocean to go diving where Alex is sure that there is a previously undiscovered plane wreckage from the WWII era. They eventually end up on the SS Ourang Medan (roughly translates to Man of Medan), a mysterious WWII era derelict freighter. Cue the spooky ghost stuff. Atmosphere is the name of the game here as far as horror goes, and just like Until Dawn, Supermassive knocks it out of the park. You get a glimpse of what happened on the Ourang Medan in the game's prologue, but nothing is really explained; I was able to piece together a few things, but I was still left with more questions than answers when the main story set in the present day picked up. As you make your way through the decrepit ship, everything about the environment serves to build tension. You'll hear creaks and groans as the old ship sways in the waves. You'll near rats squeaking and scurrying. You'll eventually start to see slight movement or vague figures in the corner of the screen, but as the game progresses, you become less and less sure of what's real and what's your characters' imaginations. Parts of the game are absolutely and truly scary, but the entirety is tense and foreboding. Even when the fear is in a lull, the general feeling of dread is not. Not everyone is going to dig the Man of Medan's gameplay style. It's not fast paced or supplemented by action like Resident Evil 8. It doesn't confront you with puzzles like Visage or Maid of Sker. It isn't making a grand point about society like Silent Hill or Outlast. It presents you with a story to participate in, and it lets you make of that story what you will through your choices and your own conclusions. There's something special in my opinion about the otherwise fairly pedestrian context the game's narrative as given since it's told as a frame story; you're sitting in The Curator's library as he tells you an unfinished story, and your choices determine how the conclusion plays out. If you're into choose your own adventure games or horror games in general, definitely make sure to check this one out, and if you enjoyed Until Dawn, this is an absolute must play. It's not a long game, but as is often the case with the games that impress me the most, it's not about the quantity of hours the game's playtime has but rather the quality of those hours, and the hours I spent on this game were top tier quality from start to finish. My Rating - A |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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