This article originally ran under a different banner/website in November of 2019 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! MY LOYAL FOLLOWERS!!! THERE IS NO DENYING THERE IS NOTHING AS EXHILARATING AS A TERRIFYING GHOST STORY!!! Everyone gathered around a warm cozy campfire. It’s light flickering against the dark. You begin to tell your hollow tale of misery and dread. As you dive deeper into your story you see everyone around the campfire inch closer and closer to you. Eyes wide with anticipation. They continue closing in as the hero of the story moves closer to their end. Silence befalls the group, leaving only the sounds of their rapid heartbeats. Just as the hero opens the door to reveal the horrors, someone jumps out of the shadows deliberately trying to scare the group. Screams echo the forest walls followed by cursing and laughter.
Naturally, this is the atmosphere Supermassive Games is trying to capture with their Dark Pictures Anthology, a series of bite-size horror games in the vein of Until Dawn. With Until Dawn still pretty fresh in my mind, Supermassive Games has presented Man of Maden as the first game in the Dark Pictures Anthology. Will Man of Maden be the next ghost story to set the campers on edge or will everyone be bored and longing for their sleeping bags? I, THE VIDEO GAME DOOMSAYER, will be answering that question today.
Our story begins with a cast of annoying college kids Alex, Bard, Julia, and Conard. They hire skipper Fliss to take them out on her small boat to investigate a sunken warplane and party in a typical spring break fashion. After annoying some local fishermen in a typical spoiled rich kids fashion, the fishermen return at night to kidnap the group. Their plan is to ransom them off but as most ghost stories go, this soon becomes harder than they initially planned. The small boat soon crashes into the abandoned World War 2 ship and the fishermen forced their captives aboard the steel death trap. After discovering most of the crew of the ship suspiciously dropped dead, the gang must piece together what happened on the ship while escaping their captors and the evil spirit haunting the ship.
The gameplay is rather unchanged from Until Dawn. One minute you are walking around a rickety creaking ship with Resident Evil-style camera angles. Camera angles always make me feel like the views are from the perspective of the monster stalking us. During these slower moments, you hunt for clues to help piece together the mystery of what’s stalking you. Much like Until Dawn, you are also given dialogue options for conversations between characters. Supermassive Games also added an option to say nothing in conversation, which is an excellent option if you are trying to stir resentment amongst the group.
When the monster is done watching you read the Captain’s log, the game transitions into a chase sequence that resembles a Simon toy. The orchestra will awake as you hammer quick-timed events to leap over hazards and dodge monster swipes. While the formula has been copied over from Until Dawn, Supermassive Games has trimmed off the fatty bits. I often felt Until Dawn had too many moments of nothing happening in order to build suspense. Supermassive Games, in an attempt to make Man of Medan a four to six-hour experience, cut down the slower moments while still continuing to build suspense.
My other complaint with Until Dawn was this single-player experience was better when experiencing it with friends. While I am sure I am not the only one to subject a random hobo to Until Dawn, Supermassive Game must have thought the idea of exposing vagabonds to their game was brilliant. So brilliant they added a co-op feature to Man of Maden. Along with the standard online co-op mode, they also included what is called Movie Night. Movie Night is a couch co-op mode where you and up to four other players are given specific characters to control. The game will inform you to pass the controller to the corresponding players. While a neat idea, my hobo friend and I got through Until Dawn by switching off in between chapters. He dumpster dives for food and I am a rambling lunatic, I think having a butler informing us when to pass the controller is just too formal for us.
The other issue with Movie Night is I would have a hard time picking which character to play in Man of Medan. With Until Dawn, I happily sign up to play Sam, Chris, or Ashley. With Man of Maden, I would probably disinterestedly flip through the characters until somebody yelled at me to pick someone. That’s due to the fact that none of the characters in Man of Medan were likable. Yes, I agree that characters in Slasher films should be unlikable so we don’t feel guilty about watching Jason Voorhees snaps their spine in half. However, there should be at least one character that you hope walks away from the wreckage. Not to spoil anything, I thought I had saved three members of this Scooby Gang only for the game to swiftly kill them off out of nowhere. Some might expect me to explode in rage, but sighed and turned off the game. Disinterested, I moved on, which doesn’t paint Man of Medan in a favorable light. Even this game’s version of Dr. Hill, the Curator, had me glaring annoyingly at the game. The Curator is supposed to be the narrator of this anthology, but he just doesn’t have the over-the-top charm of Peter Stormare’s Dr. Hill.
Speaking of downgrades, I desire to know what happened to the controls in this game. I swear the characters are wearing roller skates with extra grease on them. While a common problem in Until Dawn, I frequently had characters taking two to three extra steps after I let go of the controls. I recall trying to view this one portrait and the character kept skating pass it like a malfunctioning rumba. If it was just a clue I probably wouldn’t have bothered, but the portraits are Man of Medan’s version of the totems from Until Dawn. Unfortunately, I found these portraits were just vague in comparison to the totems in Until Dawn. On top of having characters with banana peels for shoes, I swear the QTE’s in Man of Medan only work when the game feels like it. Numerous times I hit those keys properly only for the game to call foul. Maybe Man of Medan doesn’t like mouse and keyboard, but other than that I am clueless as to why these controls feel worse than Until Dawn.
Overall, I can’t help escaping the feeling that corners have been cut to create this anthology. At the end of Man of Maden, we are treated to a short tease for the next game in the anthology: Little Hope, a story revolving around a Silent Hill-inspired town. While I am not opposed to the idea of an anthology, I am concerned with the quality of new installments every six months after seeing the quality of Man of Medan. While I prefer the length of Man of Medan, it lacks the ingredients that made Until Dawn special. The characters in Until Dawn were more than just annoying teenagers and I would chalk that up to lackluster writing and acting. With what felted like a rushed story and no Hayden Panettiere, Rami Malek, or Peter Stormare, Man of Medan just falls flat.
Surely, the Dark Picture Anthology could benefit from releasing themselves from the shackles of their six months schedule. This could allow them time to tighten the controls. To craft a story on par with Until Dawn. Maybe this could allow them to maybe get the cast of American Horror Stories to join them. I, for one, would be aboard a Dark Picture Anthology game with Emma Roberts. Alas, I believe Supermassive Games will choose quantity over quality. I will be there as always. Standing on my soapbox. Longing for Supermassive Games to see the errors of their ways. Attempting to warn them of their end.
