The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan Review (Ltm1900)
Perfect game for the Halloween season - experience supernatural and evil things happening on a scrapped ghost ship sunk during WWII.
A moderate time passed before I got the control of a character, the intensity built up all the way and never ceased. Walking around the narrow corridors in little light is frightful, the camera is extremely good - the angle changes all the time and captures at different places, I especially love that one under the stairs and see characters walking down, adding a lot of the intensity rather than a fixed camera from above or behind. Having the courage to walk around is basic, jump scares happen every 5 mins. Not all are scary but within the music it surely made my heart race.
The story is easy to understand and follow, a bunch of friends get together on a speedboat to dive for fun, then an unexpected event happens, and everyone is forced to the ghost ship. The story is in good logic, consequence has connections, player taking control on each of the friends so no one feels left behind.
In addition, player has options to act in the direct or indirect ways, like attack or run or hide, pick a weapon or leave it, district or defense, yes or no... But there is no obvious "right" answer, which keeps me interested all the time. However, not all the opts were chosen by me. Game frequently has QTE moments and under the pressure within a short time, I made mistakes. Years of videogame experience I failed to press WASD correctly results in so many deaths and disappointing ending. Since instant save applied there is no 2nd chance meaning what is done is done. I was mad at myself so many times, but this feature won replay values.
Besides the exciting gameplay, the facial expression and body motions are well made. I watched the behind-the-scenes videos to find actors had tons of dots drawn on their faces, almost like making a 3A FPS. Most of the story happens on the ghost ship but with various environments I don't feel bored. I especially love the scene where Brad comes to pass the same place multiple times with a corpse, made like a time paradox and seeing the friends hallucinating and killing each other is bald, crazy but genius.
The curator is a good setting, looking sharp and noble, making the player a writer or a movie director. Collectibles do not give much info, but sticking to the main story is fun, and I wasn't really expecting a reasonable explanation, see how bizarre things could go. The ending varies depending how many survived, no boss fight or maybe people were fighting themselves. I wanted to try again but due to the video glitch, I encountered the dark screen issue so had to give up.
I finished the game in 4.5 hours, the other half hours was trying to fix the black screen issue (only partially worked).