LogFAQs > #970509423

Felt like have a little topic to just write about stuff. Was initially going to discuss The Devil in Me in my horror topic but it just purged so whoops. Here it is instead.

The Devil In Me + The Dark Pictures Anthology Overview

This original horror anthology video game series developed by Supermassive Games is such a baffling franchise. Why? Perhaps because they're a developer who keep riding off a very successful one-hit wonder - that being Until Dawn. Maybe they just don't have the same Sony budget they had back then, maybe different creators within the company shifted around or left, or maybe the focus was always on cheap scares and wacky fun, so this new direction just works better for them.

Either way, the Dark Pictures series is a franchise I find myself playing with each new release. I'm hopelessly devoted to horror games, the good and the bad. And I do think there is some good in these games to go along with the vast globs of terrible. I think they try to make each game stand out on their own, even if they are never as scary as the inspiration they're based on. There is always something interesting to take from each, even if you won't be scared to death by the end of them. They present decent mysteries the keen-eyed player can make their way through if they're diligent enough.

There are four games in the series currently - Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes, and the most recent, The Devil in Me. This series has been cheap to get into, with the releases costing around $40. It's a nifty idea, really, a small anthology of creepy video game horror stories with mid-sized budgets. I approve and it feels perfectly line with the anthology film format in franchises such as V/H/S or Creepshow. It's easy to see why they hook so many player, whether you're a horror fan or not.

But to me, it's also a franchise that needs better quality control. For example, this most recent instalment, The Devil in Me, boasts expanded gameplay features like platforming and balancing. Each character also comes equipped with their own unique abilities - Mark, for example, has a camera you can use to take photos, and a monopod to reach items just out of your grasp.

Except these features only serve to pad gameplay, not drive the narrative forward. It would have been better to drop these entirely and let the story come through. Maybe it's just how I played but I only really found most of these abilities to be used three times at best throughout the game's six hour runtime. Hell, the example I used in Mark's camera isn't even something necessary you need to use to complete the game or to contribute to any endings, it's merely for collectible purposes only.

The Devil in Me, like the rest of the franchise, also relies too heavily on jump scares and it's constantly the same one throughout the game. There was one or two I found clever throughout but overall it just gets tired. There's no variation to the jump scares sound either, they're just the same bone-chilling sound effect re-purposed to the point of being redundant.

The jump scares are only a fraction of the problem of the game's horror. The plot bites off way more than it can chew, and the writing is an utter mess. The killer's ambiguity is presented as a compelling mystery, but despite being present on screen for most of the game's runtime, I never really cared about the killer's identity and his mixed bag of motives that run the gamut of "trophy kills" to a "troubled youth" or "abused child". If it was meant to be an intriguing take on the idolization of serial killers, mission failed because I found everything to do with the killer slapdash, lazy, and almost entirely devoid of any connection to the game's main cast. This type of storytelling is unfortunately all too familiar in this series.

Dark Pictures got away with doing the same twist twice initially - both Man of Medan and Little Hope have the horror playing out almost entirely in your head. I dislike this concept especially for replayability purposes, but the games just make less sense when you realize how little there was to be scared of to begin with. It's always these late-stage, last-hour twists that make the games all the more infuriating. These horror game stories really need to learn when to stop, lest they continue to drag out tired clichs for gameplay and narrative momentum's sake.

As expected, The Devil in Me also fails in its terrible directing. Terrible cuts, confusing character placement, overwrought horror cinematography, and terrible dialogue can sometimes leave the player being baffled as to who, what, why, where, how and when something happened. You know, I'm so sick of the magical teleporting killer who's omnipresent and can just appear as the plot needs. The Devil in Me suffers from this issue in no small way - it very much leads to even the characters wondering if it's more than one killer - because he just keeps appearing without any real logic.

The Devil in Me is not the worst entry in the series by any means. I adore the environments here, and despite all the clunky writing, the game's art design manages to hold it together as a whole, and actually impressed me greatly with its lighting and claustrophobic interiors in particular. The game stars Jessie Buckley as Kate, and well, she's one of those actresses who could star in just about anything and ace her role with immense talent. She takes an otherwise pretty bland character and infuses her with strong individuality, vulnerability, and charm. She almost single-handedly saves the games' case for me.

One way or another, Dark Pictures will continue to lumber on with a whole new season in the works. Next year, we already have two games to look forward to (or to suffer through, your choice) - Directive 8020, which looks to be a sci-fi horror tale, and Switchback VR, which is a spiritual successor to the horror rail-shooter Until Dawn: Rush of Blood, which was actually a pretty fun experience. I wish both games well, and I will be playing both, and I hope this franchise can take its storytelling to the next level instead of rehashing its same old predictable beats and tired horror tropes.