Why “Until Dawn” is my Game of the Year

(I know, we’re only in September. I also know Fallout 4 is due out this year but I’ve never played a Fallout game –  don’t.I’ll get there. – and I want to be honest about my 2015 choice and realistically, this’ll probably be it!)

Until Dawn is a Playstation 4 exclusive, developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment. It’s an interactive survival horror game in which you have the potential for multiple endings, deaths and carnage all caused by even the smallest, most insignificant seeming decisions, playing largely on the Butterfly Effect.

The story features eight teenagers who go back to a lodge up in the Blackwood Mountains for their yearly get away, this year in memory to two friends who vanished on the mountain the previous year. However, they soon learn they’re not alone on the mountain and their vacation takes a sinister turn – and it’s up to you to play out who will survive until dawn.

When I first heard about Until Dawn while browsing the “Coming Soon” section of the Game website, I was absolutely stoked. I’ve been playing horror games since I was really young, beginning in the seaside arcades on House of the Dead machines. Done correctly, the horror genre of video gaming makes for a lot of fun, with really terrifying stories, scares and a lot of laughing at yourself (after you’re done crying and mashing the pause button at intervals. Just me? Oh.)

In the past year I’ve also fallen deeply in love with multiple choice games – the Telltale Games have always been a source of great enjoyment for me, with their graphics, amazing story telling and original spin-off ideas of much loved series and stories. The decision making aspect always added something really enjoyable for me, the idea I could choose my fate and help my characters survive and thrive in these often unforgiving worlds.

So when I heard there was a survival horror game with incredible graphics, staring real actors using motion capture, in which it was multiple choice, I was already sold. I couldn’t wait. The trailer looked like it jumped right out of an R.L. Stine book I read as a kid, Truth or Dare, from his young adult series of books Fear Street. It was a book I loved, and was really scared of, as a child, so I knew immediately I would love Until Dawn.

I had the usual fears as the release date came closer; what if it wasn’t that good? What if they reached too far and hyped it up only to have it be terrible? What if I’m so let down by this game that I’ve genuinely been so psyched for?

These fears were proved unwarranted a good ten minutes into the game.

First off, I want to talk about the graphics and how visually stunning they are. The motion capture technique they’ve used is honestly so incredible; the characters looked beyond vivid and real. Their eyes are astounding, without trying to sound too much like I’m wooing them, and even hair textures and skin are given such huge amounts of detail – it’s genuinely impressive as hell. My only slight gripe is the mouths – this is something that’s been brought up by other players on YouTube and in a few reviews, that the mouth movements are a little bit odd. And I do have to agree, however I don’t think it takes away from any part of the game, or from the sheer impressiveness of the graphics and scenes. It’s all so beautifully laid out and I don’t have any real complaints.

I want to take a moment to talk about the cinematography too; a lot of reviews said the game had clunky angles and that it brought down the game for them. Maybe I’m just used to awkward angles in games, maybe I’m just a giant dork who’s played too many older video games, but I thought the angles of the game really amped up the fear factor for me. A lot of the time you genuinely can’t see what’s up ahead, and there is this constant feeling of oppression, of being watched and followed and not knowing what the hell is around the corner. It reminded me of a media studies segement I read about the opening scenes of the movie adaptation of Steven King’s The Shining – the reason the kid on the bike in the opening is so unnerving is because the camera follows, and there’s this constant fear of not knowing what’s coming next. I genuinely got that with Until Dawn, and whether it was intentional or not, it really added to that tension and fear I craved from the game.

The story is also critiqued by reviewers, saying the last half is far-fetched and silly – I have to strongly disagree. Until Dawn gave me a supernatural twist I genuinely did not see coming, also because I haven’t had this particular supernatural monster be involved in anything I’ve watched, read, or played since about 2006, when Supernatural had an episode on it. I’ve had a fear of that particular thing since that time, so almost 10 years going now – so seeing it, here was just icing on the “I love being terrified by video games” cake I was gobbling down.

I also love the way the story is done – I was so apprehensive about the whole Native American thing when I first noticed it, because a lot of media tends to fall captive to certain tropes and stereotypes and being incredibly misinformative. After I finished the game, I did some research and the people who did the research for this game, did an incredible job. It was looked into very thoroughly, researched and properly executed so that the creature, the mountain and the everythings, all fit really nicely together without having to force any generics or tropes. It’s really great and I’m beyond happy about it.

One thing I will say about the story, is that it’s pretty short – don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty good length and it’s a game you will want to play multiple times to see what endings you get and what events you can cause; but it also can be a pain. With the multiple choice stuff, also comes stats that affect the characters personality (their braveness, funniness, honesty etc.) and also stats on how they relate to other characters. With the story being pretty short, there isn’t much chance for certain characters to develop relationships, be they aggressive ones or loving ones. I’d have loved more of a chance to have these people interact a little more.

The multiple choice/butterfly effect controls are also great. It literally does keep to it’s promise that every decision, even tiny and indecisive, totally changes an outcome later – changes if someone lives or if someone dies. It’s a lot of stress, but it’s really well executed. Every decision you make and how it effects you later gets logged in a little selection to show you how and why it’s changed your outcome. I would say I’d have liked a little more of that, because some of it is just literally having the same events, but with another person in the background. But hey. There’s still a tonne of opportunity and it is interesting to see how certain decisions completely save your ass, or fuck you over later.

My final thing is the speech and writing of the characters. My God, almost all of them are the most awful teenage people in the world. Like, one character is an absolute angel and was my priority of the game to keep alive – but the rest are kind of jerks. They argue, cheat on their spouses and are just so mean to each other. The writing also feels so much like it’s plucked straight out of a cheesy 90’s American horror, with lines such as “Oh, I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over your sluttiness.” – it’s so bad. But it made me enjoy the game even more – I liked that it was so cheesy, and generic, it sucked me in to all the tensions and expectations of horror I’ve come to love over the years. Combined with the atmosphere, the setting and the absolute terror of the game, it’s really a joy to watch these characters develop, to watch them try and survive until dawn.

In conclusion; Until Dawn is a hell of a lot of fun. It’s cheesy writing combined with the incredible atmosphere’s, scenery and wonderfully timed scares makes for a genuinely terrifying, edge of your seat horror game with a lot of investment in what happens to the characters. The story is genuinely well researched and executed, with two huge plot twists I did not see coming that involved a really original supernatural element. Despite the main playthrough being rather short, it’s fun, it’s decent and the replay value is undeniable.

Game of the Year.

PS;

This is how close I sat when I first started Until Dawn.

This is where I usually ended up after about two hours.

Enjoy.

Thoughts on the Until Dawn Release Date Trailer

Until Dawn is an adventure survival horror game being developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony as a Playstation exclusive. It was initially intended for the Playstation 3, with Move support, however it was then re-introduced to the world as a Playstation 4 exclusive.

Today, Sony’s youtube account released a new trailer for the game, complete with (finally) a release date; horror adventure fans can mark August 28th on their calenders!

If you have yet to view the trailer, you can do so right below;

The plot is that a group of friends go to spend the night in a log cabin in a mountainous area, and during this time they’re targeted by a serial killer who plans to pick them off one by one. The game will feature multiple different story lines, so it will take more than one play through to really understand what’s going on. Each characters story takes about nine hours to complete, and every choice you make could have disastrous consequences.

Honestly, I am really excited for this game; the cancellation of Silent Hills has left me a little lost for scary games I want to play this year, and I’m hoping this will scratch that itch. Granted, I know it’ll be an entire different game to Silent Hills and P.T., but really, I just need something that’ll freak me out and make me terrified to keep my console on.

My first impression of the trailer was “Wow. This is cheesy as hell.” The game takes place with a group of teenagers. In a cabin. Far away from help or civilization.

And they have to go fire up the boiler.

That is in the basement.

This whole thing is playing out rather like an R.L. Stine book I read back when I was twelve (not Goosebumps; he wrote some more mature horror based books, but I can’t remember what this one was called for the life of me.) when a group of kids gets stuck in a ski-cabin and they start to die one by one with no clue why they’re being killed. Even the game trailer looks more like a CGI horror movie trailer; I can’t think of a single horror based game where the trailer has been like this, but every horror movie trailer I’ve seen in my life looks like this, complete with a shot of the scene where the horror will take place, friends talking about some sort of context, then oh no scary noise! And then the flickering strobe effect before all the actiony scenes, featuring running, slamming doors, screaming and gross-gory quick cuts.

I love it.

I love that it’s playing out like a horror movie; it is going to be a multiple choice game, so chances are a lot of the game is going to be watching the consequences of your actions play out. The one thing that makes me wary, but that is sort of fair and makes the game more interesting (or frustrating, we’ll find out come August.) is that the game will have a strict Autosave feature, so you can’t reload from your last save if you make a decision you regret. This fascinates me a lot, especially as someone who really enjoyed both of The Walking Dead  and Game of Thrones Tell-Tale games and who often regretted decisions.

One thing that bothered me about the trailer, that I hope is just a trailer issue and will be fixed when the game gets released, is the lip-sync. The voices don’t really match up to the mouth movements on the screen, and if it took me a little out of the trailer in the beginning, there’s every chance it’ll bother me throughout the game. I’m just going to go on the assumption it’s just trailer footage, and when release day rolls around, all will be absolutely perfect. The graphics look fantastic, honestly, they’re so damn crisp and the faces are so realistic. It all reminds me very much of Heavy Rain, a game that was so amazing to look at that it was just a tonne of fun.

I think the whole, watching it as a horror movie and not being able to Take Backsies on bad choices will make the game all the more scary really; if they can build up a great villain, tonnes of tension and raise the stakes on your choices, then this game could be a massive success. I’m really, really eagerly anticipating the release of this game and I hope to God it’ll scare the living shit out of me.

If any of you have any other scary game news, or just wanna talk about this, leave a comment and we can chatter away!

Fare thee well,

Fran.

Bloodborne and The Order: 1886.

Yesterday on 2/2/2015, Game in Kingston hosted a Game Lock In, with Playstation, to set up a tonne of Playstation 4’s equipped with two eagerly anticipated exclusives coming this year. I got to attend, and be the twitter runner for half the night (until my phone decided to die, at which point the honor was handed over to someone else) and now I will tell you how awesome these two games were. Because they were.

Sorry but there won’t be any photos or gameplay; Playstation didn’t want any photos of the screens taken at all, as this was an exclusive event and it kind of cuts out the exclusivity of the whole thing if I just went posting the game!

Onto the games;

The first game I tried of the two was The Order: 1886. This is a third-person action adventure based video game due for release on 20/02/2015, and it’s awesome. The premise of the game in total is that it’s set in an alternate universe London, where humans have taken on beastly traits and become Half Breeds. Hope is found in the form of really badass knights, who are named after King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and have super badass weapons. Like shotguns and sniper rifles.

This game is incredible. I got to play a good 10 minutes of it, and every minute of it is absolutely wonderful. The graphics are absolutely out of this world; it’s so seamless and gorgeous to look at. Everything flows together wonderfully, and the detail is so fantastic it’s absolutely unreal. If I can count the hairs on a mans mustache and the pores in his forehead in a video game, it’s great.

Gameplay wise, it’s seamless. All your actions flow into one another really wonderfully, and there aren’t any hiccups or glitches I could see in what I played. The controls are the usual “triggers to shoot, analog to run” but there are some really lovely touches in terms of combat you can use. No spoilers here but it’s pretty damn cool. It’s hard to give a comment on this overall because, again, it was a ten minute chunk, but it was really fun and challenging, but not overbaringly difficult to get the hang of.

The Order: 1886 while being gorgeous graphically, is also gorgeous in design. Everything is super steampunk looking, and the designs of everything from the scarily powerful shotgun to the coat your Knight wears, are insanely beautiful to look at. The design team did an amazing job on this game and the attention to detail and hard work put in is obvious, and it pays off delightfully.

Honestly, overall, this is my most anticipated game of 2015 already, right up there with Dying Light (WHY THE DELAY, PUBLISHERS?!) and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. It looks stunning, it plays amazingly and when the ten minute demo ended, I audibley groaned; I didn’t want it to end. Everything about this game is so captivating and gorgeous, and I wanted to play more – and I only played a random, ten minute chunk, with no context or clue to what was going on. So I can’t even imagine how hooked I’m going to be when this drops on the 20th.

Then I got the chance to skedaddle over to Bloodborne, the anticipated Gothic and terrifying game coming March 2015, from Hidetaka Miyazaki, who also directed Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls.

Bloodborne is set in a Gothic city named Yharnam, where it’s rumored to be host to a medical remedy, and travelers take the pilgrimage to Yharnam to find this cure to help with their illnesses and ailments; you are one of them. However, upon arrival, the town is plagued by grisly beasts and monsters, which you must overcome in order to survive.

Graphics wise, it’s also gorgeous. Climbing up this gothic background, looking at all the dark and stunning city scapes and buildings, is a real treat. I don’t know if you were one of those kids who was sort of semi-obssessed with gothic looking monsters, but I was, so this hit all the right spots design-wise. The attention to detail in the costumes and weapons was stunning, and the way you could adjust your chosen weapon to fit your battle style (such as the hammer that has a sword in the handle. It’s like handling Mjolnir and excaliber all at once.) was so interesting and awesome.

In terms of the gameplay, this game is really difficult. Or maybe it’s all to do with the fact I’m absolutely terrible. But we’ll say it’s difficult.

The enemies are really tough, and your health is really low and dangerously vulnerable. I didn’t make it all the way through the ten minute demo, but those who did got to face a large, werewolf-esq looking creature with a bloody fancy and giant antlers, with one half of it covered in moving, gross looking hairs. It also walked on two legs. Horrifying. And as I awed at it and said “Holy shit it’s huge”, a Sony rep looked at me and said

“This is only a sub-boss.”

So if it’s anything like what I’ve heard about it’s cousin Dark Souls, you’re in for a really challenging game, with big monsters and tough enemies and having to use your wits and skill to defeat them. Which explained how I lost four times, what with me having neither.

Overall, Bloodborne looks like a real treat for Playstation users, with hack and slash fun whilst being challenging. It’s gorgeous, it’s creepy as hell and overall everything is just badass and cool. I’m super excited, and I will be picking it up when it releases in March.

Playstation were really great for giving gamers a chance to try these guys out, and Game were pretty damn cool in playing host. If either of these games interest you, check the Twitters of your local stores and see if they’re doing a lock in! You won’t regret heading down.

Fare thee well,

Fran