izigame.me

The Devil in Me has a very good foundation based on H.H. Holmes, but that's about the only interesting thing about this game.

A group of documentary film makers receive a mysterious call inviting them to a modern-day replica of serial killer H.H. Holmes 'Murder Castle'. But on arrival they soon discover they're being watched, and even manipulated, and suddenly there is much more at stake than just their ratings...
Story & Characters.
The Devil in Me manages to build up an eerie atmosphere, and there were many times I was on edge and felt scared. The game has a very good foundation, based on H.H. Holmes, but the developers lost themselves in the making of the script. Many parts of the game is just complete garbage and completely illogical, with many plot holes. The game begins with a prologue where we get to play a newly married couple, checking in at H.H. Holmes hotel. This part is poorly written, with really bad voice actors having pillow fights before being murdered. It was very ridiculous and the worst I've seen when it comes to voice acting, script, and execution from Supermassive Games.
We are then introduced to our 5 main characters who receive an invitation to a castle on an island where they can stay and spend the night while filming their documentary. What they don't know is that they have been tricked into becoming part of a killer's games. If some random person offered you a free vacation, would you believe it and go? Stupid. The characters are not very likeable and are very slow and stupid most of the time. The characters are very lifeless, the facial expressions are ugly and do not feel believable, and the dialogue is bad most of the time. There is a dog in this game, and it only has a few minutes of screen time. Still, you care way more about the dog than all of the characters combined.
Decisions & Deaths.
The funnest part of these games is when there are likable characters that you actually care about and want to see survive, and how the choices you make affect those characters, in a reasonable way. This was not the case with this game, and is the biggest reason why it is a worse game than its predecessors. Many of the decisions you make in this game lead to serious consequences that are completely impossible to figure out beforehand, and can lead to the sudden death of the characters. The outcome of the decisions you make or the outcome of the QTE's, whether you fail or not, are very uneven. Many times it doesn't matter which of the decisions you choose or how well you perform, because it still leads to the same outcome. Sometimes all you have to do is fail a single QTE or make a wrong decision, and your character dies. Other times you can get five Stay Calm moments in a row, and it doesn't matter if you complete 0/5 or 5/5, the result will still be the same. Then why even put that in that scene in the first place? I'm referring to a scene where Kate is being chased by the murderer on the rooftop and hides in a locker.
Another stupid example is the suffocation chamber when you have to choose whether you want to save Kate or Erin. Me and my buddies thought the killer wants us to choose, so we let the time run out, and maybe both will survive. But no, it automatically killed Erin. The right choice is to pick "Kill Kate". If you choose to kill Kate, the door opens for Erin. Kate is suffocating in there and she then notices that there is a leak in the window so Mark can break it and save her. She notices this AFTER you have made your choice, and there are no clues as to how to save both, not even a Black Framed Picture. HOW are you supposed to know this? This was so idiotically written that we wanted to shut down the game.
Charlie has a way of dying that is one of the dumbest ways ever in any of these games. You have to use your balance and walk across a board that is between a house and a cliff, and if you fail, you fall to your death, which happened to us and we found it really boring. It would have been better if he had just broken his ankle or something, which makes it harder for him to survive later, but not impossible. That would have been more exciting.
In one of the endings, you manage to escape from the island with a boat. The killer tries to chop the boat with the axe just as you leave, but he fails. The boat drives out to sea at full speed and after a while, out of nowhere, the killer slams the axe on the side of the boat and climbs into the boat. If you manage to fight him off, you throw the anchor at him, the anchor gets stuck in his chest, the chain gets stuck in the engine, and he is pulled into the engine under the boat and there is a lot of blood in the water. We then learn that he survived. I have so many questions regarding this final scene. Where was he while the boat was speeding out to sea? It is a small boat, where there are not many places to hold on to, and since he was nowhere to be seen, he must have been under the boat. How does he manage to stay under the small boat for so long? And manage to get the axe with him as well? How can he swing the axe like that from under the boat to the edge on top of the boat? How did he survive after being shreded by the engine? Or, how could the engine shred him if the chain gets caught in the engine and slows it down or even make it stop? How could the boat continue to run after the chain got stuck in the engine? Where does the blood come from? Either the killer is pulled into the engine, blood comes out, he is shredded and dies, the engine is destroyed by his body and the chain, causing the boat to stop. Or, he gets pulled overboard, the chain somehow comes loose from the engine, he survives, and the boat continues to run at full speed. It can't be all these things at the same time. Just very illogical and stupid.
In another ending, without going into the details of how to accomplish this, Mark and Kate manage to survive by escaping the island on the ferry. Just when the ferry is about to stop at the mainland, it starts to go back to the island where the killer is. The killer then stands there waiting for them, with a sniper rifle, and shoots them dead when the ferry approaches the island's coast. Sooo poorly written. Why didn't they just jump off the ferry when it was like two meters from the mainland? Nope, they stay on the ferry and go back to the island, just to die. And why not contact the police when Mark reach the mainland? So the ending was a real anticlimax, no matter which ending you get, because you also don't get to know who (or what) the killer is.
Something else that was also very illogical was how the killer manages to control everything everywhere at the same time. For example, how he can close certain walls while hunting his victims? He is not in his control room at that time!
One more thing...
Mark can take pictures of special objects/scenes whenever Mark is playable. When you aim the camera, and the reticle turns green, you know that you should take a photo of that object. But why? It has no impact whatsoever for the sake of the story, nor can you look at the pictures you've taken. There are 27 different occasions that Mark must photograph, but it is only for the sake of an achievement.
The Verdict.
The Devil in Me felt like a rushed ending to the first season, and it's far from their best game. A good idea and a good scary atmosphere that scared me many times, but the cons of the game are too great. The script was too poorly thought out and sloppily executed, the characters too dumb and unlikable, the decisions were mostly pointless and the deaths were unsatisfactory and stupid. Also too much platforming for this kind of game. Hard to say if I recommend this game or not. If you are not a super critic, and a fan of Supermassive Games and have some friends to play this couch Co-Op with, then yes I recommend you to play this game, at least once. Otherwise, probably best to stay away. 4/10.