izigame.me

MY RATING:
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 ✘ ✘ ✘
7 / 10


To be honest, unfortunately I didn't play Until Dawn. So I can't say whether that's absolutely important or necessary for The Dark Pictures Anthology. But I would have been interested because of the comparisons that are always written about. Well, it is how it is and maybe it's a good thing because that way I don't get tempted to use phrases I don't like like "but the other one was better" and the like.
I'll try to reveal as little as possible about the plot, but I'll briefly touch on the little story that introduces the game.
The game begins with a US Navy freighter docked in a port in Northeast China. The two soldiers Joe and Charlie went ashore and of course they drank too much.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822836100
When they return, Joe is summarily knocked out by a superior and taken to the infirmary and Charlie has to go to the ship's brig. Strange things happen on the ship during this time and after escaping the infirmary and the holding cell, the two stumble across corpses all over the ship whose faces you can still see the fear...
First thriller then horror and from satisfying to brilliant
Man of Medan is all about a small group of five young people who want to take a little vacation on the high seas to get away from it all for a while and spend time with their friends, a few beers and illegal diving after a sunken plane wreck.
Of course everything that can go wrong goes wrong and the group quickly finds itself on a spooky trip. The group experiences the first critical situation in the form of pirates (fishermen) who sneak onto the group's boat at night. Even here there are one or the other situation to be mastered and if you are not careful you will soon have the first victims to mourn. But the real excitement and horror comes when the ghost ship suddenly appears and the pirates decide to go on board with the group and...
The oppressive atmosphere and the narrow corridors, paired with a mixture of exploration, "dramatic" reaction tests during escape or fight scenes, as well as the hide-and-seek game in which you have to control your pulse by "rhythmically" pressing a button, bring the game across relatively well and the challenges are great sometimes quite crisp and you also have to have fast reflexes.
Decisions, some of which only become noticeable in the course of the game, are displayed in a course direction and depending on how you decide, the course changes. The pictures that you will find throughout the game and that show you forebodings, i.e. insights into upcoming scenes, can be helpful. If you pay close attention here, you can later make “the right choice”, which can sometimes decide whether a character lives or dies. You can find insights into what happened on the ship in the form of documents or notes.
The curator, who plays a special role in the game, comments on your decisions in single player mode and also forms the link for the other parts. He usually appears before decisive experiences, can also give you hints if you wish, but does not influence what is happening.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2822836143
From a technical point of view, the game is unfortunately not entirely flawless. Controlling the characters can sometimes be a bit sluggish and walking seems a bit stiff. I would recommend playing the game in English if you can. At least I thought the German soundtrack was ok but not great, especially since things were said that weren't right or weren't said. Sometimes the audio track doesn't fit or there are no lip movements or there is a delay.
Achievements and Multiplayer
All achievements worked perfectly for me and some of them can also be obtained in the story or single player mode. But these are partly dependent on your decisions.
With this, and also with the various options to play the game, the replay value should be boosted a bit. That's actually okay for me, but it could be a bit tedious for achievement hunters, since you have to play through the game in multiple runs with a wide variety of options.
The game offers you a multiplayer mode in two options. You can play the game as movie night, which means you can relax on the couch with 4 other friends enjoying the game and everyone making their own decisions. Unfortunately, in this mode there is only one controller that has to be passed back and forth between the players and those who are not in turn can only watch.
The other option is the online co-op mode, where you play online as usual with a friend who controls the second character. If you have the game in the library you will be shown the Friend Pass and when you start the game a key. Sounds great, but unfortunately there is a catch. The Friend Pass or the key that you can give a friend entitles him to play. However, this is only a trial mode, which has probably caused some resentment. In principle, that's actually ok because the other person has the opportunity to look at the game first, unfortunately, as far as I know, this isn't clearly mentioned anywhere.
So if you want to play online for two, the purchase is essential for both players.
But why doesn't Man of Medan work quite as well for me or let's say as I hoped?
On the one hand, the characters are rather boring stereotypes whose personalities remain quite unformed, so that somehow you don't really want to "close your heart" to any of the protagonists. On the other hand, they all seem somehow unsympathetic and throughout the whole time the characters of the five remain so flat that I almost don't care if and who dies when. An outburst of clichéd characters who surpass themselves at the risk of their lives would have been desirable or, in my opinion, would have done the game a lot better. I somehow had the feeling that the characters were deliberately made unsympathetic so that the changes caused by the various decisions that you make during the course of the game stand out better and the partially superimposed dialogues supported this impression. Unfortunately, the twist was transparent to me quite quickly and one or the other may know that. If you have already seen a lot of movies and series or played games, then it can happen that you are no longer so surprised, can foresee what will happen and maybe even "dull" a little as far as the horror or the jump scares are concerned.
Nevertheless:
If you look at Man of Medan as a short story, the game is pretty solid overall and the length also fits well with the arc of suspense and even if I think that Man of Medan is not the super hit, it was a nice spooky adventure for one At times you can get excited because the decisions can also have unforeseen consequences.
A clear recommendation on my part, if you want to play the game, is to make the room as dark as possible and turn up the surround system to the max.
See you in Little Hope

MY PROS AND CONS:
✅ good graphics
✅ atmospheric sound
✅ cinematic staging
✅ rewarding co-op
✅ entertaining story
✅ Decisions affect the course of the story
✅ Detailed locations
✅ mysterious curator
✅ Bonus material
✅ multiple endings
✅ alternate history
✅ increasing level of difficulty
✅ good tutorial
❌relatively short
❌minor technical defects
❌pale characters
❌Cracky animations
❌Waiting times in co-op mode
❌too little horror (for my taste)
❌Predictable jump scares
❌sometimes confusing camera
❌strange cuts
❌abrupt and unspectacular ending
PLAYED WITH: 🎮 📺

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/939850/