Until Dawn (2015)

Until Dawn is an interactive horror movie where you aim to help a gang of college-age teens survive a violent night in an old cabin in frigid Alberta. Typically you'll be making major decisions for them to guide them along the route you see fit, doing some light exploration of environments to find clues so they can figure out what's going on, and also attempting to successfully pass some button-press quicktime events during key action moments of the story.

This was technically not my first time playing Until Dawn. I played through it overnight with friends back in college, but it's been long enough that I had forgotten most of the story beats anyway. I think I appreciated it more the second time around, though the game's technical issues were made all more apparent now that mine were the only hands on the controller.

The game mostly does a good job of giving you choices that feel meaningful. It also keeps track of your choices and how they impacted the story, which is cool if ever you decide you want to check the impact you had. Early on you answer a questionnaire heavily reminiscent of the one in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, for those familiar with that game's approach to tailoring its horror. Tough to say whether that game was a direct influence on this one, but it's very cool to see the mechanic resurface regardless. It was fun deliberating with my partner over which options to go with.

The story is about what you'd expect from something designed to take after classic teen horror flicks, warts and all. It's good dumb fun, but there are some plot points that feel very contrived and make zero sense under scrutiny, such as Sam and the others leaving the basement where they were safe to go looking for Mike. So a bit disappointing to have the odd missing character motivation and plothole here or there, but it doesn't dampen the fun much in the grand scheme of things.

What does dampen the fun are motion controls that are capable of messing up key moments in the story. I had fun tilting the controller to move my flashlight around and interact with the environment but it also often bugged out, resulting in janky character animation and difficulty aiming where I wanted to. It even got a character killed minutes before the end credits, which was an unfortunate sour note to end the game on. I'd recommend either turning them off entirely or playing with the settings so they can't screw things up when they go haywire.

Even outside of motion control shenanigans though, the game's got some odd quirks here and there with how characters' faces and bodies animate. The game looks pretty good even a decade since its release (it really didn't need a remaster) but the jank is common enough and can distract from the mood the game aims to establish.

I liked Until Dawn a good deal better than The Quarry. I feel like the characters have a bit more nuance in how their relationships shift over the story and the classic horror it pulls from is just more interesting to me. In the same way though, this game is best played with others to watch, discuss with, and help make decisions when they come up. Maybe make some popcorn too, to get the true movie experience.

I think Until Dawn is overrated and I personally greatly prefer The Quarry both in terms of characters and gameplay, but it is still massively superior to all of the Dark Pictures Anthology installments.

The characters are shallow and stereotypical, but the game doesn't really pretend they're anything deeper than that - it's a campy B-movie "dumb teens stuck in a cabin" horror, and they all serve their purposes fine. You'll probably enjoy some and dislike others, which adds some nice stakes in who you're trying hardest to keep alive.

I think the "it has so many endings!" note is overblown considering all of those 'endings' are just the same ending with different combinations of characters alive at the end and thus slightly different people having lines to say in the police interview montage at the end. For that reason, I wouldn't really expend too much energy on trying to get multiple endings unless you want to 100% it or you messed up first run and want to try an 'everyone survives' playthrough for the sake of it.

Graphics are nice, and were very impressive at the time, but the facial expressions are janky to the point of unintentional hilarity (characters will smile and have it look more like a pained grimace, with Jess and Emily specifically coming to mind here).

Still, it's fun for what it is. Just don't take it too seriously.

Earlier this year, before Twitch became a huge dumpster fire, I was watching at least four or five different streamers play through The Quarry and generally quite enjoying experiencing the game that way. I watched so much of it that I felt almost no need to play it myself as I would have been completely re-hashing old ground. However, I felt an itch to try one of these games, and I'd never played the original hit Until Dawn despite it sitting in my game library thanks to PS+, so I fired it up and almost immediately became very engaged in the tale.

To start, I don't really love adventure games that much. I've played a fair amount, a lot of them of the TellTale variety, and while I have enjoyed some of them, the lack of good control, of agency, always bothers me. I read plenty of books, so if I want to experience only the story portion of something that's where I head. I love the idea of interactive stories, but when it gets to the actual playing of them I just feel restrained.

Despite that, the hooks of Until Dawn are pretty good. It's so hokey, from the performances to the characters to Peter Stormaire doing whatever the hell he was doing between sequences. It was very hard to take the story seriously, but maybe that's the point. It did jump scare me a few times, and I think it does tension quite well, but as far as quality narrative goes, I think it only works in a Tommy Wiseau kind of way. But that was enough to keep me engaged throughout, and it is enjoyable not actually feeling attached enough to the characters that you worry about them dying. The biggest issue with that is their deaths feel so meaningless when you don't fulfill the proper steps of their story. I also got a little upset when all but 2 of the people I had managed to save ended up getting blasted in the final scene, and all because of one decision rather than a slew of decisions leading up to that moment.

But I am impressed with the intricacy of the branching narratives. I don't think I'll ever play the game again, but I'd be interested in looking at the story-tree branches, and how things come apart and then back together.

In the end, I did come away with the desire to see the other Supermassive games, so it's probably a win overall despite my issues with this one.

Lana: Honestly one of the best games of all time in my opinion that everybody should at least play once in their lives. It was amazing to show it to Rodrigo who never played it before and thus experience it again :) (why did u have to make mike shoot emily tho whyyyy). 9.5/10

Rodrigo: Very fun game! it was very scary and spooky tho and sometimes i had to pause for a little to calm down :( BUT it is very cool that any decisions you make can determine the outcome of the characters! i created chaos and i loved it!!!! (I WILL KILL ALL YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTERS, LANA)

9/10 would play again!

Until Dawn is a horror game with eight protagonists where the choices you make determine who will live or die.

The game looks great and is very well voice acted and I enjoyed the gameplay - a mixture of timed choices and QTEs. The branching narrative - it is possible for every character to die or for all of them to live - is very ambitious with decisions you make having unexpected consequences later.

The main problem I had was with the story - which is very clichéd and forgettable - and with the dialogue - which at times is very cringeworthy and very B-movie like. The first few chapters are good and very creepy but (as with so many horror films) once you know what you are running from it's a lot less scary. The game also relies on 'gross-out' horror more and more which I'm not a fan of.

I have no intention of replaying it - once was enough - but the game does allow you to repeat individual chapters if you want to see how difference choices play out.

Overall it's fun and I enjoyed it - it's only around 10 hours long and I definitely recommend trying it as long as you don't dislike QTEs. I hope that someone makes a similar game in the future with better dialogue, more interesting characters and a better story.

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Story= plot, engagement, characters, world-building

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

Gameplay: 3/5

Story: 4.5/5

Presentation: 4/5

A good blend of terror and mystery. This game has a ton of jump scares accompanied by loud sounds which really makes the scare hit well for me. The choices also are very punishing be careful what you choose to do throughout the game.

What a fantastic game this turned out to be. The last time I did a "choose your adventure" type of thing was freaken Goosebumps book when I was maybe, 8!? Turns out, this type of thing transfers beautifully to the medium of video games. I must say, I did fantastically well on my first playthrough, only killing 2 teenagers.

Spoilers Ahead:

The teens I accidentally killed were Jessica and Josh. With regards to Jessica (who I killed in Episode 4), my screw-up was not taking all of the "shortcut" routes on the chase scene. I also missed a damn button press while climbing the wall! :( By the time I found Jessica, I was too late and she was all busted apart. RIP Jessica. I replayed this episode this morning and made a point to a) take all the shortcuts, and b) not screw up any button presses. I succeeded in getting to Jessica, and although she fell down the mineshaft anyway, she was still alive at the time - I'm curious to see how "successfully chasing after Jessica" on the Butterfly Effect screen will affect the story later. The other idiot I killed was Josh (which turned out to be an interesting, if totally unbelievable twist -- seriously, he seemed completely normal [given the circumstances] at the beginning of the game, then he just goes off the deep end!?). Apparently I missed some item that would have helped him identify his sister Hannah (before she kills him). This one will require a bit more investigation. Since I already saved Jessica, if I can pull off saving Josh that will mean I saved everyone, so I'd probably take a break on this playthrough, or... do a hard reset of the story and go on to playthrough #2, which I will call: Awful Teenagers: The Game. In AT:TG, the goal is simple - to destroy all relationships, while still attempting to keep everyone (clinically) alive. Odds are, choosing the "worst" conversation options will result in the most death, so we'll see how interesting the story will get when I abandon being a "people pleaser" and turn everyone into monsters.

This game rocks. I never get into story-focused games but this is just perfect entertainment for a maniac like myself.

This is your typical run of the mill teen slasher with dumb decisions and unlikeable characters, yet I had a great time with it. The game takes a bit of a turn in the 2nd half of the story but was done well and kept me invested right up until the end. Though no characters really stood out, I felt the voice acting was really well done but facial animations could of done with more work. Jump scares are so badly utilised in today's world but they were executed very well in this.

I played this with my non-gaming spouse, which was a fun deviation from my normally solitary experience. The writing and acting started off pretty rough, but we were drawn in over the course of the story. We watch a lot of horror movies together and this was a fun and novel spin on that experience.

Once we finished the main story, however, we were both pretty disappointed at the lack of replayability given how little your choices in the story really seem to matter. The story beats are the same regardless. That was kind of a downer.

And once again we can thank Shenmue for QTE being the default choice when the story needed kind of a gameplay element. It's frustrating because the interactive story genre is a perfect gateway to people like my spouse who don't normally play, but these gameplay-lite sections rely on the player's familiarity with the controller buttons and are consequently frustrating to that exact subset of people who don't play games... Should have tried the motion controls instead.

Starting out, this game seemed like it was going to be a huge cheesefest. But as it played out, it became more and more of a solid game.

First, the bad:

• Walking around can be pretty clunky. You have two speeds: walk, and slightly-faster-walk. And the camera angles can make it a little tough to find your way around at times.
• You have to be ready for a QTE at almost any time. It's amazing after hundreds of hours of playing, how hard it is to remember where the circle, square, and triangle buttons are when you're rushed.
• I'm pretty sure I got screwed by my controller's rumble setting off a gyro for one of the "Don't Move" QTEs

And now, the good:

• The story is actually really, really good. It starts out as pure teenage horror schlock, but if you take the time to find collectibles, a lot more of the story gets filled in. Stuff that simply doesn't make sense at first eventually falls together.
• Your decisions seriously matter. Probably more than any other game I've played. I thought I was super smart, and picked up on an obvious clue at the beginning that guided my choices to a pretty decent outcome in the first half of the game. Then a couple bad decisions in the last hour or two ended up killing half of the characters in the game (including the one who, in my head, was the "main character" for the game).
• The graphics are mostly solid. A couple characters dip into the uncanny valley, but the rest look believable.

After Dawn is a great game. I can see myself coming back to play again around Halloween next year for a different ending.

I don't like horror and I can't watch horror movies at all, but I really liked this game. One of the funniest and most enjoyable games that I played lately. Some argue that "this is barely a game", but I think it's the opposite. Almost zero learning curve, simple control scheme, no long tutorials, no skills or upgrades, no confusing HUD... Just pick up and play and have fun. That's what games should be, right? It's a shame that I didn't know about the Playstation Camera feature. But I guess that's another reason for me to give this game another playthrough.

And "Don't move" game mechanic was absolutely brilliant.

Conceptually I like horror games but I cannot seem to get through them anymore. The tension just gets to me, even if I pause and take breaks. And yet I am still interested in the story and try to come back to them. This was the case for both Resident Evil 7 and Until Dawn. Anyone else have this problem?

I made it through a number of previous Resident Evil games, but maybe these modern ones have much higher fidelity graphics and are just better at presenting horror as more than just jump scares.

Of the interactive storytelling-type video games (aka, what I call "TellTale-like games") that I've played, Until Dawn may not be the best (there's a reason we call them "TellTale-like games" and not "Until Dawn-like games"), but it might be the most intense, the most "just one more chapter before bed."

It's a typical horror trope: Get the partying kids in a cabin in the woods and let loose a killer, right? I'm not well-versed enough to know whether the trope started with The Evil Dead*, or if The Evil Dead merely made the trope ubiquitous.

While Until Dawn doesn't subvert the trope the way films like The Cabin in the Woods did, the video game medium does allow Until Dawn to play the trope in a much less expected manner--largely due to the amount of narrative and character development that can happen in 9 hours vs 2 hours.

So: Late teenagers/early 20-somethings get together at a cabin. Except in this case the cabin is a mansion nestled in the middle of the mountains. And by mansion, we literally huge-ass mansion, with a whole host of off-shoot locales (including an actual cabin). They are gathering on the one year anniversary of the disappearance of two sisters--at that very Mansion-cabin. But remember: Anything can happen in a 9-hour narrative.

The characters all feel pretty standard, especially through the first couple of hours. I decided early on that NOBODY WAS FUCKING. I hated these people and they were not going to have fun on my watch. But by hour 6, some of them had started to grow on me. I would hesitate to call them good people, but they were fun to spend time with. The highlight is Sam, the only character who is kind of likeable from the outset and never wavers in being pretty cool (probably because she's the character voiced by the Big Budget name: Hayden Panettiere). But the longer a character stays alive, the more interesting they become. (The exception being Matt, whom the narrative forgets for large chunks--I even forget that he hadn't died, and was a bit startled when I realized during the credits "wrap-up" that he was still in the game. I'm hoping that's just a problem with the decisions I made on this playthrough, but I'm guessing not.)

Anyway, while the main "action" of Until Dawn is based around decisions and some QTEs (not to mention an occasionally used battle mechanic pretty similar to The Wolf Among Us: hit the target, squeeze RT), they managed to evoke memories of Resident Evil 4. At least, the parts of RE4 that are walking, not shooting. I mean, let's be honest: While the pivotal moments of Until Dawn feature interaction, there's a lot of walking around. It's not aimless, per se, but it did make me think of the "walking sim" term that people like to use with games like The Witness.

Regardless, even if it's a game that is 80% walking sim with creepy noises and 20% decisions and QTEs, it's a fun experience! Recommended, if you like your games cut from the TellTale mold and, uh, horrory.

*I realize that technically Friday the 13th predates The Evil Dead, I'd argue that is a differently flavored film and, despite the presence of cabins/partying/woods/slasher, is not technically a cabin-in-the-woods film.