Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Until Dawn’

It’s hard to believe that Until Dawn is finally here. First announced for the Playstation 3 back at GamesCom in 2012, as a survival-horror fan I was instantly enamoured with the idea of playing through a slasher flick. The first-person perspective, Playstation Move-based title was to be the game that would have me dust off my Move controllers, and the immersion of actually controlling the character’s flashlights would likely prove too much for me to handle.

Then, Until Dawn disappeared, only to re-emerge at GamesCom 2014 as a Playstation 4 exclusive. In its transition to a new generation, Until Dawn lost its first-person perspective and Move support, and gained some gorgeous visuals and a talented, recognizable cast. Pretty fair trade, if you ask me (though that Move support actually looked awesome).

https://youtu.be/4yQsa3uwkR8

Now it’s August 2015, and Until Dawn is finally here, though unless you were waiting for its release, you probably had no idea, as Sony’s marketing machine is apparently turned off for this title. It sort of makes sense, as earlier this year the publisher released another very cinematic, short (really short) title (The Order: 1886) that had gamers polishing their pitchforks because ‘it wasn’t a real game’.

The story is rife with horror tropes, and for the most part, they actually all work pretty well. You’ll take control of eight (old looking) teens gathered at a remote (Canadian) mountain lodge over the course of one night. They’re there on the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of two of their friends (who disappeared from the same remote mountain lodge), to remember them, and to, of course, party. Things turn sour pretty quickly, as the group discovers that they’re not as alone as they thought they were. It’s then up to you to ensure that they survive UNTIL DAWN… Did I mention that the surrounding area also contains an abandoned sanatorium and a partially collapsed mine with a terrible history?

Yep, the story is cheesy (and campy) as hell, but every trope and cliché actually lends itself quite well to the tone of the game. You feel as though you’re playing through a slasher flick, but a fun slasher flick that never takes itself overly seriously. Until Dawn builds a phenomenal atmosphere, and can be truly terrifying at (many) times, but you’ll find yourself laughing just as often as you feel your palms sweating from fear. It’s really a great balance that’s designed to keep you playing the game, which is a huge paradigm shift from all-scary games like Alien: Isolation (which I love but can only play in 20-minute chunks).

Now, to really enjoy Until Dawn you’ll likely need to be a fan of either horror (duh), David Cage style games like Beyond: Two Souls or Heavy Rain, or at least open minded to an atypical gaming experience. Just like the aforementioned titles, Until Dawn plays like more of a heavily interactive movie than it does a traditional video game. Sure, you’ll get to walk around a lot of tense, dark, scary locales, but most of the ‘action’ is regulated to tough, time-limited choices and quicktime events. Things start out fairly forgiving, miss a quicktime event and you’ll likely have a chance to recover, but later in the game I found times where one missed button press led to a character’s demise. There are also some truly terrifying (and clever) ‘Don’t Move’ moments, in which you must hold the DualShock 4 controller as still as possible in order to remain hidden. These were definitely some of the most stressful moments in my play through of the game.

As I mentioned earlier, you’re taking control of eight potential survivors over the course of the game. The evening is broken up into ten chapters that seem to split playtime fairly evenly between most of the characters. Between each chapter you’ll have a therapy session with Dr. Alan Hill, a creepy as hell psychiatrist who analyzes your fears, which characters you like and dislike (you’re going to dislike Emily), and tells you just how much you’re screwing things up. According to Supermassive Games, every character can survive the night, or everyone can die, depending entirely on the choices that you make. This means that you’ll probably want to replay the game (I know that I did the instant that I finished it), and that things can turn out starkly different each time you play. As always, there are a variety of collectible ‘clues’ to be found that provide you with some interesting backstory, and (of course) gets you closer to that cherished Platinum Trophy.

Visually, the game is gorgeous. It runs on the Killzone: Shadowfall engine which seems to have aged extremely well over these past two years. There really isn’t an aspect of the game that doesn’t look good. Indoor and outdoor environments have a very real feel to them, trees and branches sway in the wind, your characters leave tracks (or even blood) in the snow. Cinematography in the game is simply brilliant, constant, tense camera angles echo the early days of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and do a fantastic job of making you feel as though you’re seconds away from the next scare, even if you’re nowhere near it. The characters themselves look and sound phenomenal; Supermassive used recognizable talent like Heroes Hayden Paettiere, Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek, and many more, and performance capture technology akin to Rockstar’s LA Noire to skyrocket the game’s production values and make it feel even more like an interactive film.

Optimization, however, leaves a bit to be desired. The game can go from silky smooth to a stuttering mess from time to time, which can really break the fantastic immersion felt the rest of the time. There’s the occasional lip sync issue, and I had a few instances where sound effects seemed as though they didn’t hit at just the right time (which is, of course, immensely important to a horror title). Other (non-technical) issues are few and far between; a so-cheesy-its-bad line of dialogue here and there, etc. I’ve read a few opinions stating that the story took a too-crazy turn for its third act, but I found the misdirection to be incredibly clever, and the third act to be, by far, the most tense section of the game.

If you can’t tell from the 1000+ words you’ve just read, I had a freaking blast with Until Dawn. I played through its ten hour journey in just three sittings, and it was one of the hardest games in recent memory to actually stop playing. I’m itching to jump back in and just see what else I can discover, see how many characters I can actually save, and to dig deeper into the troubled history of the mountain.

Until Dawn scores a campy 4/5.

+ Visuals, sound, atmosphere are phenomenal

+ Extremely well paced, interesting plot

+ Stellar performances

– Occasional technical issues

– A few lines that are too cheesy for their own good

– Emily is the worst

Coolest feature that I wasn’t able to test: If you own a Playstation Camera, the game will actually record your reactions to certain scary moments. Super clever.