I am undecided if it is my advancing age or the literal pandemic that arrived sizzling on the heels of this sport’s launch, shattering (maybe completely) our collective means to precisely understand the passage of time, however I actually cannot consider that The Darkish Footage Anthology has been round for half a decade already. Man of Medan nonetheless appears like a new-ish sport to me, so the realisation that right this moment marks the fifth anniversary of its launch is a sobering one.
After all, there at the moment are 4 Darkish Footage video games on the market that you may play proper now — 5, actually, for those who personal a VR headset — and we just lately caught a long-awaited glimpse of the collection’ subsequent core entry at Gamescom ONL. It would be fairly unreasonable to anticipate Man of Medan, because the franchise’s debut, to be anyplace much less than about 5 years outdated at the least, below these circumstances.
The Darkish Footage Anthology is a choose-your-own-grisly-death horror collection from Supermassive Video games. It is a clear non secular successor to their breakout hit Till Daybreak, and each primary sport to this point has taken a subtly totally different strategy to the repeated base idea of “5 folks get trapped in a horror trope and need to struggle to outlive”. Up to now we have seen rich vacationers held hostage on a ghost ship in Man of Medan; a school area journey stranded in a ghost city in Little Hope; a military unit bump into a long-buried historical temple in Home of Ashes; and a documentary movie crew menaced on the non-public island of a serial killer in The Satan in Me.
Opinion on which video games labored and which did not is split, which is maybe to be anticipated given {that a} totally different group of horror followers will get their flip at seeing their favorite sub-genre represented each time. However every subsequent entry builds to a higher or lesser diploma on the suggestions from prior video games, so unsurprisingly the newer entries are usually barely better-received on common. However because it’s Man of Medan’s birthday, please let it have its flowers as I make my case for why it is nonetheless the most effective sport in The Darkish Footage Anthology — and actually, is perhaps Supermassive’s finest horror sport up to now.
Let’s get the apparent criticism out of the way in which: sure, Man of Medan’s shock story twist was very divisive when the sport first got here out, and never with out motive. I will not spoil it right here simply in case the reader hasn’t performed it, however I am going to admit even I used to be a bit let down, although not sufficient to make me take pleasure in the remainder of the sport any much less. Certainly, forgiveness is within the stats, and I’ve since completed MoM six or seven extra occasions even figuring out the place it is headed.
Man of Medan does certainly comprise just a few narrative wobbles, and the identical criticisms that apply to the remainder of the collection — the protagonists’ absolutely mocapped facial animations generally changing into scary within the improper means is a giant one — can equally apply to MoM. However there may be one factor that Man of Medan does so properly that I would argue, on this sense at the least, that it is even higher than Till Daybreak.
The entire level of Supermassive’s horror output is that any character can die, anybody will be the only real survivor, and any sufferer/survivor combo with the principle solid is feasible. Because of this, each certainly one of these video games technically has dozens — and even lots of — of potential endings, which you’ll be able to’t actually argue with in terms of replayability.
However more often than not, after just a few playthroughs you will have seen by way of the matrix a bit, and realised that at the least a few characters have plot armour that ensures they’re truly protected proper up till close to the top of the sport. One of many worst offenders for that is truly the most-lauded Darkish Footage sport up to now, Home of Ashes, which makes for essentially the most satisfying first playthrough from a narrative standpoint for the precise motive that repeated replays get outdated quick: over half the principle solid is actually utterly unkillable till the ultimate two chapters.
It makes a level of narrative sense to make sure that your core theme is correctly underscored earlier than the principle gamers chunk the mud, in fact, however that is the place Man of Medan comes into its personal. Of the 60-odd potential character deaths proudly boasted in MoM’s advertising and marketing, there is a diploma of flexibility unseen elsewhere in Supermassive’s output. Whereas it is not fairly true that anybody can die at any time, sufficient conditions can go quite a lot of totally different ways in which it is totally potential to achieve the finale with any mixture of characters, who’ve gone down some very totally different paths to get there relying on who they have been with and when and whether or not everybody survived. And the story will not undergo for it, as a result of the online of relationships that the sport builds up between the 5 protagonists is such that any duo (or trio, or quartet, if certainly the entire group hasn’t made it this far) can carry the ultimate confrontation in a means that works.
Provided that branching narratives are the underpinning of Supermassive’s by-now-established legacy within the area of horror video games, I’m adamant that Man of Medan needs to be recognised because the entry that also finest demonstrates the unique level of The Darkish Footage Anthology. It might be the best when it comes to gameplay, and your mileage might range as as to whether the characters are annoying (I truly suppose they’re the most effective DPA solid but, however that is one other debate for one more day); and naturally there’s That Ending to deal with. However for those who truly need a horror journey sport that you may play repeatedly and see completely totally different scenes and situations play out based mostly in your divergent decisions? 5 years later, Man of Medan nonetheless reigns supreme.