Genre: Third Person Adventure, Interactive Horror

Platform: PS4

Available on: PS4

Release Date: August 25, 2015

Until Dawn was originally announced in 2012 as a PS3 Move exclusive title with a first person perspective, then quietly disappeared immediately afterward. In 2014 it was reintroduced as a PS4 exclusive, now a third person interactive horror, with dramatically upgraded graphics. My girlfriend loves horror games and movies, and has been really excited for Until Dawn since…well, before its release – but we keep getting sidetracked by the onslaught of new games coming out. I’m literally playing through about fifty games right now. It’s ridiculous.

I finally found a deal I couldn’t resist and threw my poverty pennies down on a copy, in a weird little second hand store of needful things in my girlfriend’s neighbourhood – and now that we’ve played through it almost to platinum trophy, here’s the verdict.

Let’s get into it.

Graphics/Presentation: 9/10

The uncanny valley is getting pretty fucking uncanny. Until Dawn looks absolutely amazing, tested and proven in a room full of drunken fools. The character models are just incredible. The eyes are so good, the skin texture palpable, everything rendered in sharp, crystal clarity – but those teeth, man they still look fucking weird. The animations are mostly smooth and very realistic in all aspects of the game, with the exception of that floaty effect from the interaction – or lack of interaction – of the character animation while moving on the static pathways and around obstacles.

Voice acting is well done, if not outstanding, and serves the terribly written characters well – their annoying personalities were portrayed effectively enough to make those hard choices that much easier, when the time came for trophy hunting…I’ll say that. The sound design is very well done and used to great effect, to conjure quiet moments, little traps to draw you into a sudden abrasive punch in the face, and send you flailing in a heart pounding panic induced scramble to escape the blood curdling scream chasing you into the darkness.

Overall, the entire presentation of Until Dawn is incredibly well crafted, especially considering it’s a heavily modified port of a PS3 Move title that never happened. The animations themselves are great, but the character interaction with the world they’re in lacks the proper physics or connection, and pulls you out of the immersion a bit, giving you that floating, or sliding/skating on ice feeling that really pronounces that separation of the character from the environment, and makes the controls feel clunky and somewhat awkward.

Gameplay: 7/10

Until Dawn plays similar to Telltale Games The Walking Dead series interactive choose your own adventure stories, only the graphics are amazing and the programming is built competently and is not plagued with technical issues.

The main focus here is the branching choices you’re faced with as the story plays out. The story itself doesn’t really change at all in structure, no matter what choices you make, but who lives or dies certainly does. I’m not sure exactly how many “different” endings there are, but it can range from everyone dies to everyone survives and everything in between. This is really the only real change to the story that your choices make, but that’s really the point of the game. It’s not multiple branching stories – it’s one story with multiple branching outcomes.

For a game that is an interactive homage to 80’s horror films, it works very well. After all, the major point of all these movies is who will die, how and when. Until Dawn takes you on a ride and let’s you choose who lives and who dies, and if you’re a fan of horror movies, you’re probably going to love this game.

The actual game mechanics are likely adopted from an earlier point and click style developed for the motion controls. It’s just a much better looking, smoother running version of what Telltale Games has been doing for years, to give you an idea of what to expect. There’s not much else to it. Serviceable, but compared to any other third person action adventure game on the market, it’s a bit stiff and dated in comparison to what other developers are achieving at AAA levels.

One thing to be noted, is that going back to replay for trophies was really more of a chore than it was enjoyable. Perhaps if there was a few months between playthroughs (like rewatching a movie you love), I would have found it more enjoyable? Either way, it just didn’t have the same effect on round two.

Story: 6/10

The story isn’t terrible. It’s generic and full of plot holes that make no sense if you actually stop and try to work it out, but it also has some surprises and twists and it’s executed so well that most horror fans will find it entertaining, and that’s what the ticket price is for.

It’s incredibly difficult to impress Mr John Thursday with a story, because he’s an arrogant, condescending asshole who thinks most writers (approx 96%) are pretty much shit and have the creative chops of a block of wood, and generally produce nothing unique or inherently all that interesting.

The characters are so terribly written, I can only assume it was done intentionally to invoke that spirit of shitty, cheesy horror movie cliches, in some attempt at fan service. If this was my social circle and this was what I knew as friends, I would have killed myself long before I ever got to the fucking cabin. They’re all horrible humans, and even worse friends and lovers, which is unfortunate, since it made it really hard to feel bad for any of them.

This is a common horror movie trope – write a script of absolute cunts and then slowly torture and kill them all off, to satisfy the bloodthirsty crowd. But like all the mistakes Hollywood makes in their executive decisions to dumb down creative properties to appeal to a wider audience, it’s just a huge fucking missed opportunity, and usually results in the butchering of what could potentially be a masterpiece of art – and when that shit is allowed to happen, it changes the world.

What would have happened if Guillermo Del Toro had accepted the endless offers from Hollywood to fund his movie, Pan’s Labyrinth – if only he would remove the gore and make it lighter toned to appeal to a mass audience.

The world would have another generic kids movie with a fluff message about how hopeful life is? Instead, he rejected every offer, used his own paycheck to fund the movie and made it the way he envisioned.

What did the world get from that? A fucking alarming masterpiece that is timeless and will be remembered as one of the best works of film ever created – and that’s just one small slice out of a huge, convoluted pie.

This is the world we live in. Someone wanted to neuter the creativity to whitewash anything potentially distasteful and make more money from a wider audience. Turned out to make a shit ton of money anyway. Imagine how many masterpieces have been lost to the void because some fucking self interest fools who don’t think beyond short term gain are running the show and deciding what does and doesn’t get made. Actually, don’t. It’s depressing.

Imagine how you’d feel if they wrote a really good, likable, genuine character and then fucking killed them ruthlessly. Imagine how that would make you feel. Exactly. That shit would haunt your dreams.

In Conclusion:

Until Dawn is a fun piece of interactive movie horror and easy to recommend to any fans of the genre. Sure, it’s riddled with flaws and human stupidity and corporate influence, but it’s well made and entertaining, and really looks amazing. I played a healthy chunk of it in a room full of semi-inebriated people, some of whom are intellectuals, more inclined to have taste in “films” rather than “movies”, and yet everyone in the room was very clearly impressed with how good it looked, and everyone seemed highly entertained throughout, and thoroughly enjoyed screaming at me to aid in the decision making process. Games are entertainment. I’d call that a win.

Pros: Graphics, variety of choices, solid voice acting, fun surprises and twists in the story, great atmosphere

Cons: Gameplay is a bit dated, characters are generic and horribly written, not a lot of replay value, even considering all the multiple choices

7.5 / 10

7.5!!! You fucking dumb. This is my favourite game. You’re garbage and deserve to die for real.