By John Marshall
It took me a long time to get through Until Dawn, which seems odd in retrospect as all the right ingredients were there for the kind of horror game that would resonate with me. Ghosts, Murderous Psychopaths, dark haunted woods and cabins, Mr Robot!? But alas, there was something that just didn’t initially hold, perhaps it was the glacial pacing of the narrative, or that Until Dawn did such a tremendous job of aping the kind of Hollywood blockbuster films Dark Castle were cranking out in the early 2000s that I had seen it all before. Which is unfortunate to say the least, because under the hood Until Dawn was doing some pretty clever stuff with its branching plot’s butterfly effects, and it’s cute albeit gimmicky use of the PS4 controllers motion controls. It was in a lot of ways, a promising debut for a new franchise IP,
7.6Overall7Gameplay8.5Story8Visual7Audio
Fast forward to 2019, and Supermassive Games have launched spiritual successor and first installment of their biannual anthology series Dark Pictures, Man of Medan. Following the blueprint set out by Until Dawn, Man of Medan aims to offer a similar yet more bite-sized experience, that could prove to be a better fit for those looking for a quick dose of horror gaming. Featuring its usual assortment “hey i recognize that guy” hollywood actors, Man of Medan tries its hand at the ghost ship story.
After a brief scene setting prologue, Man of Medan puts you in control of a cast of young beautiful hollwood-ass looking people, investigating a ghostship and facing off against all manner of phantasms and ghoulies. Played predominantly from a fixed camera perspective, the player hops between multiple characters navigating the ship while being slowly beaten to death with expositional heavy archival pick-ups contextualizing the story.
As a delayed fan of Supermassive’s previous game Until Dawn, this ticks a lot of my boxes. Give me a good adventure yarn with some jump scares and some lore to dive into, and you will have me hooked. Sadly Man of Medan falls a little short of the promise, offering a game that's just a little too scant, and lacking in polish to wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.
Beginning with the aforementioned prologue set in the 1940’s out in the South Pacific, The meat of Man of Medan stars Brad, Conrad, Julia, Alex and Fliss - each fulfilling the classic horror movie character trope as they explore a spooky ghost ship. Are they likeable? That’s hard to say, but like all good horror movies they make great fodder for the eventual bloody and violent deaths that will ensure.
Spending the majority of the game investigating a haunted creaky old warship, players hop between characters at chapter breaks, exploring the ships dank dark interiors looking for diaries and logbooks, and interacting with flashing objects. When the eventual denizens of the ship rear their terrifying faces, the game quickly shifts gears to a QTE as you complete a manner of mini-games to keep your character from harm. Many of these you will have seen before if you have played TellTale’s The Walking Dead series, but there are some new spins on the mechanic, including an almost rhythm action esque sequence to keep your characters heart rate and breathing under control.
Should you fail any of the sequences, or pick one of the multiple choices on offer, the narrative does its best to shift and adapt, meaning that no full playthrough will be alike, In fact there is something to be said for venturing through the game a couple of times to just see how dramatically the narrative shifts. Similar to Until Dawn, Man of Medan features intermission sequences where the curator of stories Pip Torrens addresses the player directly with a few pithy one liners. Whereas Until Dawn cast legendary character actor Peter Stormare in this role, who did a phenomenal job of chewing the scenery, Pip Torrens presents a more cryptic performance, one that we can assume will expand as new entries in the anthology are released.
Man of Medan plays out over a few hours, which unlike Until Dawn means the general play experience is compressed offering a significant period of build up until all hell breaks loose. Unfortunately, what this translates to, is a play experience with a lot of downtime, with some of the best scares not kicking in until the latter half of the game. This is a shame, because when Man of Medan swings for the fences, some of its scares can be fantastic. Given this is the first in a series of games however, one hopes the developers will further refine this in future installments.
Speaking of refinements, Man of Medan features a variety of multiplayer modes, likely based on the very vocal feedback of Until Dawn being the kind of experience that lends itself to passing the controller between a group of friends. Local co-op mode Movie Night, assigns each player a set of characters creating a great cause and effect between friends as the actions one player does in one chapter can either benefit or hinder the next participants process. It’s a neat addition, offering a great kind of pass the controller play that even includes a nice scorekeeping element at the end of each chapter, grading on how well you can solve the game’s variety of mysteries to keeping characters alive.
Additionally Man of Medan offers an online Shared Story mode, dividing the cast of characters up between two players, turning the games traditional story into a kind of avant garde narrative pastiche. By hiding specific plot elements from each player, an opportunity to sabotage or set up each other becomes an option, and while this mode should not be considered for first time players, is a great way to remix the original experience.
So what we are left with is a promising debut for what will hopefully become a prolific horror anthology, one that offers some remarkable scares but falls a little short of its true potential. Regardless, Man of Medan feels like a step in the right direction, an evolution of Until Dawn’s play mechanics, with the promise of new characters and locales to explore. With the next title in the series “Little Hope”, already announced it will be exciting to see how this series can refine its formula. For now though, those looking for a bite sized horror experience should consider checking out Man of Medan, a spooky short and satisfactory experience.