The first season of The Dark Pictures series provided us with acceptable horror experiences. Yes, some of them were not at the required level, but at least the House of Ashes part was special. Hopes were high about the fourth and final part of the first season, titled The Devil in Me, especially since it is the most part of the series based on a wonderful story that can move the series and the Supermassive Games studio forward. Unfortunately, The Devil in Me is the most disappointing game in the series, especially when it comes after the studio’s last game, The Quarry.
The idea of ​​the story is interesting, but the execution is disappointing
The Devil in Me is about a TV show crew that focuses on making documentaries about real murders that happened in the past. While working on a documentary about the first serial killer in the history of the United States of America, H.H. Holmes, they are invited by a stranger to film in a hotel that is a replica of the real H.H Holmes Hotel. The crew sees this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to present the best episode of the show, and they are heading there.
Things soon turn upside down, and it becomes clear that this guy wants to memorialize H.H Holmes in his own way. Now instead of filming the documentary, they must survive a new serial killer who intends to take them all down and be the H.H Holmes of the new age.
On paper, the story sounds good, but as an execution, the reality is quite the opposite. Supermassive Studio couldn’t capitalize on the unique story it created, and the result is completely uninteresting and unenthusiastic events. This is the first story in the whole series that could not attract us, and we did not care about the characters and did not fear for their lives in any way.
As usual, the story has more than one ending and it all depends on your play style and choices. But if you want to complete the game once, it will require you to play about 6 hours, which is the normal duration for all parts of The Dark Pictures. You can, of course, restart the game afterward and make some other decisions to get a different ending.
Nothing new, and nothing old is repeated in the gameplay
For some reason, the options don’t affect the events as they should
In any Supermassive game, choices are supposed to have an effect on events, and the consequences are always dire if you make too many mistakes too frequently. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen here with The Devil in Me.
There is a character we wanted to kill in a certain situation and we made some mistakes in a row, but the character didn’t die in the end. There are so many choices in The Devil in Me that don’t in any way affect the final outcome, which made the experience feel more linear. This resulted in us hitting the good end on our first try, which is the first time we’ve hit the good end from the start in any Supermassive game!
The idea of ​​quick pressing the buttons (Quick Time Events) is still here, and it has been applied well to make many situations more exciting, especially since the game requires you to have intuitive speed and strong focus. This also applies to scenes where you are supposed to keep your heart beating and hold your breath. Yes, it has become repetitive from previous games, but it is still scary at times.
Where is the horror, we do not see it
The Devil in Me took us about 6 hours to finish, and during that entire time we were terrified except for one 10-minute scene in which you are required to walk in the dark and follow the sounds around you in order to complete the story. Literally this is the only scene that made us feel awe, fear, and managed to make our body shiver.
Aside from that one scene, the game doesn’t have anything else terrifying about it, and the director relied mainly on cheap jerks and scares that don’t scare us as someone who’s played horror games their whole life. If you want to rely on the horror genre, better give it a go!
We want to talk a little bit with whoever designed the camera angles
Like House of Ashes, the game here relies mainly on a 360-degree camera that you can move in any way. This is supposed to be a good thing that allows you as a gamer to enjoy everything in the game. But it seems that the camera angle designers at Supermassive Studio had another opinion.
The camera angles and movements here are some of the worst we’ve seen in this series. In many situations, the camera is too close to the characters, which makes it difficult to see many scenes in front of you. We wish the studio would go back to the fixed camera system they did so professionally in games like Until Dawn and The Quarry. That perspective alone made those experiences even more terrifying.
Graphics and audio
Perhaps the most frightening thing about the game is the design of the characters’ faces
Do you really want to see horror in The Devil in Me? Just look at the characters’ faces and their expressions. Sometimes it feels like you’re watching a game released 10 years ago and not a game released in 2022. The faces are so weird that some scenes made us laugh hysterically with the characters’ facial expressions and reactions.
Compare this game to The Quarry or House of Ashes, and you’ll find a huge difference in the seemingly rushed motion capture in The Devil in Me. This brings us to the cast and unfortunately there isn’t a single character we were drawn to throughout the action. The reactions are colder than our fridge freezer!
Fortunately, this does not apply to design environments
Finally, there are some very conscientious people at Supermassive Studio who have given us the design of fantastic environments. There is great attention to detail in the design of each room of the hotel. Even the hotel’s surroundings make it feel like a whole new generation game from how graphically beautiful we got.
Although our experience of the game was on the PlayStation 4 platform, the game looks great on it graphically, and as usual there is no big difference between the PS4 and PS5 version except in the display resolution itself. The graphics are almost the same on both platforms!
The acoustics and soundtrack were presented very professionally
Although we didn’t like the voices of the characters and the acting, the sounds of the game itself such as movement, environment, and interaction with objects were great. The scene that we talked about at the beginning of the review (which made us scared) was professionally designed beyond description. We recommend playing the game with a surround sound headset so you can enjoy the full experience.
The same applies here to the soundtrack, which was also very special and wonderful in many situations and chases with the serial killer. The composer did a great job and his music alone significantly improved the experience.
The provocative thing here is that the scene we’re talking about is just a fleeting kiss that could have been completely avoided in the game, especially since the two girls’ relationships do not show any kind of love. Even at the end of the game when one of them died, the other didn’t cry or feel any grief for her. It is support for agendas without any apparent or logical reason!
In the end
The Devil in Me “deservedly” wins the title of the worst in the Dark Pictures series, so much so that “Man of Medan” and “Little Hope”, which “have a lot of difference in the community”, are still better. Everything in this game has been made in such a way that you feel that the studio was in a hurry to finish it as quickly as possible. The gameplay does not have anything new to mention, noticeable problems in the bulk in the graphics and facial movements, and unfortunately the experience as a whole is completely unsatisfactory.
The second season of The Dark Pictures will open with Directive 8020, and we hope the studio learns from the mistakes of the first season and offers us an experience worthy of its distinguished history with games such as Until Dawn and The Quarry.
Carryminate evaluation
- Story and characters: 3
- Play style and effect options: 4
- Design characters and environments: 5
- Sound effects and soundtrack: 8
Advantages
- The design and graphics of the environments are great, especially the hotel
- Sound effects and soundtrack Well from the experience
- One scene in the game had me scared for minutes on end
Disadvantages
- Not interesting story at all
- Boring characters that don’t attract you and don’t make you care about them and their lives
- Character design and motion capture are very poor
- The director relied on the horror of the shocks that did not shake me
- It’s basically a non-terrifying horror game
- Choices do not greatly affect the course of events
- Camera angles made me want to bang my head against a wall
