Until Dawn Review (PS4)

  Until Dawn seems like it's aimed directly at me; I'm a huge horror movie fan that was at the prime age when the movies it draws the heaviest inspiration from were released. I enjoy the survival horror games it pulls from when it decides to give you control, as well. I've come to love “choose your own adventure”-style narrative games for the hard decisions they present to you and the hands-off character building they excel at. I've been hungry for a modern horror game in general, and gravitate toward anything gory to ruffle up the squeaky clean, all inclusive, family friendly landscape the current gaming landscape is trending toward. Until Dawn tries very hard to satisfy all of these desires, and it even succeeds admirably at times. It's also soulless and shallow, and manages to trip over it's own feet for the majority of it's playtime.

  Until Dawn looks gorgeous. It's almost on par with a big budget CG movie. There were more than a few moments where I just had to sit back and appreciate how amazing current gen graphics can look. It might not cross the “Uncanny Valley”, but comes pretty damn close in certain instances. Of course, once I started interacting with the game it becomes clear this level of fidelity comes at the cost of having the game play like a CG movie as well. These are workaround tricks we've been subjected to since the original Resident Evil; fixed cameras, small spaces, awkward and stiff movement, unintentional humor when you to dare to veer off the mostly-on-rails path the game expects you to follow... You have to accept Until Dawn as a slightly interactive movie, otherwise you'll be having a miserable time out of the gate.

  The movie you're experiencing is veritable cliché stew, paying “homage” (or borderline fully ripping off...) such mediocre classics as Saw, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream, and Scooby Doo. The characters you control are tired stereotypes, but real credit must be given to the actors, writers, and motion/facial capture magicians who manage to make the too old “teens” fall on the side of tolerable. They're always one bad one liner or fohawk away from being extremely punchable, but overall they fit into the “30 year old teens” mold of the movies of the era. I'll be completely honest and admit I have no idea who any of these “stars” are because I'm over 30 myself and they seem like they might be big deals on CW teeny-bopper shows or something, but Peter Stormare continues to be a hero. He does what Peter Stormare does and makes silly and objectionable scenes at least interesting to watch.

  Grasping at bits and pieces of semi-effective horror movies leaves Until Dawn with a serious identity crisis. It tries every play in the book to make the player feel on edge, and unfortunately the most frequent trick it falls back on is jump scares. Even more unfortunate is the fact that most of these attempts fall completely flat. I'm not opposed to the “cheap” tactic of flashing something disturbing on the screen and making loud noises as long as it leads to something more substantial, but for it's first two acts Until Dawn relies almost entirely on this and falls on it's face. You switch between ill-advised and mood killing exploration in search of collectibles, to awkward object manipulations, to random quick time events, then something jumps out and goes “boo”. They seem to be going for standard movie pacing with the slow burn and false/lame scares building to something unexpected and horrifying, and on paper that's how it plays out... but this isn't an hour and a half investment like a traditional, by-the-numbers horror movie. While the last couple chapters do pick up steam, the payoff doesn't justify the hours of dullness you have to put up with to get there.

  Until Dawn tempts you to replay it's story multiple times, promising vastly different outcomes by manipulating it's “Butterfly Effect”, or the effect your choices have determining the fate of the characters. Even ignoring the aforementioned problem of replaying a roughly ten hour, very linear game to observe the magnitude of your actions, the choices you're presented with are painfully binary. Do you choose A or B? Often what result either choice will produce is opaque, and often you don't really want to do either. You're told, “Sometimes doing nothing is the best choice”... but that's a blatant lie. Aside from a few, very obvious instances where yeah, I probably shouldn't shoot a helpless animal (or maybe I should to make the game more interesting...), doing nothing just results in your character staring at the camera like an idiot for a comical amount of time. Once, the game just up and decided something for me when I took too long... This isn't unexpected for modern, choice-driven adventure games, but here it seems particularly egregious and you can almost see the flow chart on a whiteboard behind the scenes.

  Until Dawn isn't terrible. If you're easily impressed by pretty graphics, or you're just dipping your toes into the horror genre and like being easily startled you'll probably end up loving this game. For someone as jaded as myself looking for something a bit deeper, I still enjoyed the flashes of originality and great looking video game gore the third act and death scenes provided. It's not really viable as a “horror movie simulator” as the pacing issues and lack of control hold it back, and judging it as a pure horror game it fails much more often than it succeeds at horror and it's not much of a game. Like the prom queen bimbo in the movies it tries to ape, Until Dawn asks you to work really hard to squeeze a few minutes of enjoyment out of it that feels like everything you dreamed it would for a few moments, but at the end of the day it's really shallow and not worth the effort.