Popular Post JoaLoft Posted August 28, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted August 28, 2019 (edited) Probably the biggest question on your mind if you are a fan of Until Dawn: is The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan worth it?I’ve received a review copy more than a week ago, and I’ve finished the game close to ten times to clean up the trophy list and to put its design to the test. The embargo dropped just now, so I can finally share my thoughts. This is not a full-fledged traditional review, but my impressions below should give you a very good idea what to expect, and it is based upon dozens of hours of gameplay testing. Here’s what I think, based off of version 1.02. - In terms of audiovisuals: the game looks and sounds great, the face animations in particular. No real graphical issues as such like glitches, and the sound editing/voice acting deserve praise, despite the actors being given an ‘okay’ script to work off of.- There are some rare technical issues with the framerate: I’ve had it happen that the game really struggles and slows down to 10-15 frames per second (rough estimate), making the audio and lip movements desync for a few seconds. It seldom occurs, but it’s there. Hoping a future patch fixes this.- The fixed camera angles are still there and will undoubtedly annoy players, because of the wonky controls once a transition from one camera to the next takes place, but it didn’t bother me much.- The gameplay design is more open than most other interactive dramas, including Until Dawn. Based off of your decisions, characters could end up in different parts of the ship, opening up unique chapters and new areas to explore. New secrets, QTE’s, cutscenes and jumpscares included. Even the climax of the story can play out completely differently on a different location, based off of who is still alive at the end and which choices you’ve made. Gotta give credit where it’s due, this is better than what most of these games typically provide.- Continuing on my previous point: there is a lot of replay value to make different decisions and explore different narrative paths, and to play the game both alone and in coop with a friend.- The writing is really campy sometimes, and a few times it’s just borderline cringeworthy. That’s probably what they were aiming for, but I find it too important to not mention.- There are 50 secrets to find and some of them do have embarrassing spelling errors in their transcripts, even more noticeable if you cross-check with the actual collectible. It’s like this portion just wasn’t proofread properly.- Pretty short length, you’re looking at four to five hours to complete the story. That being said: the game has a lot of replay value and you’ll definitely be putting plenty of game time in Man of Medan if you want to get that platinum trophy anyway.I do want to talk about the overall story as well, but I highly recommend you only read this portion if you have already finished the game, or if you do not plan on playing the game at all.You’ve been warned.(CAUTION! HUGE ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW!) Spoiler At the end the culprit turns out to be a hallucinogenic bioweapon, codenamed “Manchurian Gold”. The chemical weapon started leaking onboard back in the 40s when it was being transported, turning everyone insane. Decades later, it’s still leaking all over the ship when you arrive with the group of protagonists. Meaning that the majority of jumpscares and paranormal enemies you face, are all hallucinations and pose no actual threat. Even though the reveal starts to slowly initiate towards the end of Act 2, this took away so much tension from the story and the game, that I lost a lot of interest and immersion in the eventual climax of the story. The pirates onboard still pose a very real threat, as do your friends once the character you’re controlling is starting to hallucinate and sees a monster instead of them. You can end up accidentally killing a protagonist being mistaken for an enemy, and vice versa! But most of the scares eventually turn out to be completely harmless, as long as you make sure your characters don’t fall down any holes or trip during any QTE chase sequences. A tremendous shame in my humble opinion, the actual story could have been much better. This all comes down to personal taste, so take these subjective paragraphs with a big grain of salt. Some people will like the final twist because of how grounded and realistically acceptable it is, but I can imagine most people will experience this twist as a huge letdown and were hoping for something more supernatural, myself included. As I played it more, I started appreciating the reveal a little more, but I still think a lot of potential was wasted here.And that’s not even mentioning the plot holes concerning the salvaging of the ship, and why no other ships ever came across the SS Ourang Medan, or why the US military never tried to recover the highly lethal and effective bioweapon. If only to prevent it from falling into foreign hands. All in all, if you enjoyed Until Dawn and you like interactive dramas, you’ll enjoy this one for its price point. It’s short but sweet, and despite its flaws, there is still a lot of appeal to be found here. As such, I wouldn’t say this is a must-buy in general, but if the game ever goes on sale for, let’s say, $20 or €20, this is a must-try. If you enjoyed Until Dawn, or if you’re into horror games and/or interactive storytelling games, and you don’t mind the shorter length: by all means, go get it and try it out. If anything, this first The Dark Pictures Anthology game has laid some good foundations for the rest of the franchise. If they fix and polish some of those issues, their next game could turn out to be an actual critical hit. I’d like to address one more thing: the trophies.Even with a guide, you’ll be playing through Man of Medan numerous times. You’ll need to complete a solo run, a local coop run (Movie Night mode), and an online coop run (Shared Story mode). On top of that, you need to finish the game once making only “Head decisions” and once making only “Heart decisions” (the game’s choice system works by a moral compass, making calculated and/or emotional decisions, respectively represented by a brain and a heart). And then you’ll need to make sure you finish a playthrough having saved everyone, having saved no one, having saved only the female characters, and having saved only the male characters. Some of the secrets can only be found in certain missable chapters, so depending on how thorough you are, you may end up investing another run or two for all the collectibles as well. And that’s not mentioning unlocking specific character traits and maxing out several relationships. True, you can combine some of these and you can replay chapters, but you’re still looking at least at a minimum of five to six playthroughs. And that’s just a calculated estimate, the actual number of playthroughs will probably be even higher for most players who play through it casually. Hope this has been helpful to all of you, have fun exploring the SS Ourang Medan soon in The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan! UPDATE (31/08/2019): Played a Shared Story run on version 1.09, and not only does coop add a really cool level of depth, the new patch seems to have fixed the frame drops, generally speaking! Definitely give the game a try in coop, you might end up liking this mode the most, considering how it opens up new conversational options, cutscenes, QTE's, and so on. Edited August 30, 2019 by JoaLoft 22 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhantomFear94 Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 (edited) Very insightful, +1. For me, the £24.99 price point and length makes its flaws more forgivable as it is probably not bad value when you take into account the replay value. I'll probably wait, though, I have Control, Blair Witch, and Daemon X Machina this month and I feel that this game may go into a sale sooner rather than later. If one of the latter two games I mentioned bombs, I may replace it with this. The platinum looks easy but quite convoluted, even for a choice-driven narrative game, with co-op specific trophies and collectibles you would have to go out of your way to get. I'll get around to it, but not a Day 1 for me personally. Edited August 28, 2019 by PhantomFear94 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoldenShaka Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 1 hour ago, PhantomFear94 said: Very insightful, +1. For me, the £24.99 price point and length makes its flaws more forgivable as it is probably not bad value when you take into account the replay value. I'll probably wait, though, I have Control, Blair Witch, and Daemon X Machina this month and I feel that this game may go into a sale sooner rather than later. If one of the latter two games I mentioned bombs, I may replace it with this. The platinum looks easy but quite convoluted, even for a choice-driven narrative game, with co-op specific trophies and collectibles you would have to go out of your way to get. I'll get around to it, but not a Day 1 for me personally. I'm very tempted to preorder because (supposedly) preorder orders include Curator's cut, I guess post launch won't be free. But not sure how significant is that content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnakeonaBoat Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 On those endgame spoilers along with Until Dawn spoilers: Interesting that the threat this time goes from supernatural to manmade, as opposed to Until Dawn, where we go from Josh's fake killer to the wendigo. The twist honestly sounds solid on paper to me, but I wonder if it's a good idea to use it on for the first game of their horror anthology. Feels like the kind of thing that would've worked best as like the second or third game in the series to really mix up the audience after playing the supernatural threat straight previously. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Finozzi1696 Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 This is one of the very few games I've pre-ordered this year, its already downloading and can't wait to start playing it this weekend! I was a huge fan of Until Dawn, its a pity we never got a sequel to that one, I thought they were going to aim for a Final Fantasy type of franchise were each installment would be separated from previous ones in terms of story and characters (maybe a few references or easter eggs here and there) and that each game would tackle on a different horror genre, but now it seems they're aiming to do just that with this new franchise so I don't know if they're planning to ever do a sequel to UD or to not follow TDPA's premise whenever they make one. Anyways, thanks for the review! personally I love fixed camera angles because even though they might be frustrating nowadays it reminds of the classical old survival horror gameplay style which I enjoy, and I don't know for me they make the game a bit more scary since its like the developers have control of the camera so it makes you feel a little bit vulnerable and hopeless hehe. About the short length, I feel like this helps the devs to spend more time on developing a better choice-based system were choices becomes more meaningful as well as developing a story that doesn't drags out too much compared to other interactive drama games. I'm glad that it still has a lot of reply value, I enjoyed collecting the totems and all the other collectibles in UD, specially because they actually helped you to achieve a better outcome and gave you meaningful info as opposed to collectibles in most other games, so hopefully they work that way in this game as well. Looking forward to start playing it soon! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Finozzi1696 Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 39 minutes ago, GoldenShaka said: I'm very tempted to preorder because (supposedly) preorder orders include Curator's cut, I guess post launch won't be free. But not sure how significant is that content. According to the launch trailer, it says at the end that "the Curator's Cut will be available for free late 2019". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggypossum Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 https://opencritic.com/game/7882/the-dark-pictures-man-of-medan https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/the-dark-pictures---man-of-medan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yen-Pop Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 Thank you very much for the insight! As a big Supermassive Games fan, I've been waiting on this one for quite awhile and I'm glad to hear it's not terrible! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoldenShaka Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 33 minutes ago, Finozzi1696 said: According to the launch trailer, it says at the end that "the Curator's Cut will be available for free late 2019". Nice, that being the case I will wait for holidays, still busy with other titles. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinastran Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 (edited) Wow. Watched a gameplay video. You weren't kidding about the spelling errors. This is an ID card at the start of the game: Edited August 28, 2019 by SinisterPledge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoaLoft Posted August 28, 2019 Author Share Posted August 28, 2019 Just now, SinisterPledge said: Wow. Watched a gameplay video. You weren't kidding about the spelling errors. This is an ID card at the start of the game: That's genuinely sad. I have to elaborate: this is the one exception. This one has intentional spelling mistakes, to indicate Fliss's permit is an obvious forgery. I'm referring to other in-game documents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinastran Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 1 minute ago, JoaLoft said: I have to elaborate: this is the one exception. This one has intentional spelling mistakes, to indicate Fliss's permit is an obvious forgery. I'm referring to other in-game documents. Gotcha, fair enough! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoaLoft Posted August 29, 2019 Author Share Posted August 29, 2019 18 hours ago, SnakeonaBoat said: On those endgame spoilers along with Until Dawn spoilers: Reveal hidden contents Interesting that the threat this time goes from supernatural to manmade, as opposed to Until Dawn, where we go from Josh's fake killer to the wendigo. The twist honestly sounds solid on paper to me, but I wonder if it's a good idea to use it on for the first game of their horror anthology. Feels like the kind of thing that would've worked best as like the second or third game in the series to really mix up the audience after playing the supernatural threat straight previously. I agree, it's different, but I can imagine not everyone will enjoy the twist. 17 hours ago, Yen-Pop said: Thank you very much for the insight! As a big Supermassive Games fan, I've been waiting on this one for quite awhile and I'm glad to hear it's not terrible! It's far from terrible, it's actually pretty good! That average score of 70% is pretty much right on the money. If I had to rate this game at the current state, I'd give it a 70-75% as well. If they fixed some of the issues and the story was a little bit better, it could've easily been an 80%. 16 hours ago, SinisterPledge said: Gotcha, fair enough! I did a stream last night and I rediscovered one of those collectibles: one of them is a document that says "I am investigating" and the transcript reads: "I am investigation". That's a pretty embarrassing spelling error to me, and there was another collectible missing punctuation in the transcript, messing up the sentence structures. These issues could've easily been avoided, and it only applies to a very small number of collectibles, but it's still a damn shame this aspect is not polished to perfection. Thanks everyone for your kind comments! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conor Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 (edited) It's a pity we live in a world where 70% (7/10) is seen as "bad". Like, if a game isn't getting in the high 80's or 90's then somehow it isn't worthwhile, or if a reviewer assigns such a score they are "biased" and "shitting on the game". What it says to me is that if i enjoy these kinds of games- which I do- then I'll likely enjoy this one too. Thanks for your input, I'm very interested in this now, I have Until Dawn and can't wait to get stuck into that as well Edited August 29, 2019 by Stan Lee 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sealightbreeze Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 Super excited for this. I pre ordered mine this morning. Can't wait to play it this weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaikichiKawachi Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 I mean, Until Dawn, is a 79 on Metacritic but I consider it one of the best games of the generation. Reviews are a good indicator of whether or not a game is a good, but even better is your personal experience . I l loved Until Dawn so I'm confident I will love Man of Medan too. I can't wait to play it over the weekend. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sealightbreeze Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 14 minutes ago, DaikichiKawachi said: I mean, Until Dawn, is a 79 on Metacritic but I consider it one of the best games of the generation. Reviews are a good indicator of whether or not a game is a good, but even better is your personal experience . I l loved Until Dawn so I'm confident I will love Man of Medan too. I can't wait to play it over the weekend. This is specifically why I bought this. Because it is from the same people that brought us Until Dawn. And I absolutely love that game 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djb5f Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 I liked Until Dawn a lot too, but the found the first half of the game much better than the second half when it went supernatural. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoaLoft Posted August 29, 2019 Author Share Posted August 29, 2019 1 hour ago, DaikichiKawachi said: I mean, Until Dawn, is a 79 on Metacritic but I consider it one of the best games of the generation. Reviews are a good indicator of whether or not a game is a good, but even better is your personal experience . I l loved Until Dawn so I'm confident I will love Man of Medan too. I can't wait to play it over the weekend. Oh yeah, the game has "Until Dawn" written all over it, in multiple ways. Even the intro credits song (Oh Death) remained the same, except it's being performed by a band this time around. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gone Fishing Posted August 29, 2019 Share Posted August 29, 2019 (edited) . Edited September 14, 2020 by Fragtaster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripple_Barnett Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 If anyone wants we can set up a shared story mode session (We take turns hosting the session) probably on Saturday when I get off work. Just add my PSN: Tripple_Barnett, message me, and let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abhinandhan22 Posted August 30, 2019 Share Posted August 30, 2019 Just finished the game and it's terrible. Highly recommend people to wait for a steep sale before picking this one up. Extremely disappointing after Until Dawn. Technical issues aside,the plotting and gameplay elements are so lacklustre and the scares don't progress beyond lazy jump scares Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoaLoft Posted August 30, 2019 Author Share Posted August 30, 2019 8 hours ago, abhinandhan22 said: Just finished the game and it's terrible. Highly recommend people to wait for a steep sale before picking this one up. Extremely disappointing after Until Dawn. Technical issues aside,the plotting and gameplay elements are so lacklustre and the scares don't progress beyond lazy jump scares Didn't experience any technical issues tonight when I did a coop run, with the newest patch. UD had a lot of jump scares as well, and truth be told: the plot is subjective matter. Some people will appreciate the big reveal, some people will not. But this is no bad game in my book, by all means. It is still well crafted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abhinandhan22 Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 1 hour ago, JoaLoft said: Didn't experience any technical issues tonight when I did a coop run, with the newest patch. UD had a lot of jump scares as well, and truth be told: the plot is subjective matter. Some people will appreciate the big reveal, some people will not. But this is no bad game in my book, by all means. It is still well crafted. Yeah UD did have tons of jump scares but from memory they were done much better compared to the ones here and regarding the technical issues, my first playthrough (co op) was smooth(although tons of pop ins) while my second playthrough (co op) had a bunch of stuttering in certain chapters. I personally think it's a bad game cuz there were never really any edge of the seat moments and the game focuses too much on meaningless exploration (which gets frustrating because of janky controls). Also thought it was badly paced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rally-Vincent--- Posted August 31, 2019 Share Posted August 31, 2019 Man of Medan is a short game, there isn't enough time really to get invested in the characters like there was in Until Dawn. The Plot could have been a bit more intruiging, the reveal was too obvious, but I like cheap horror movies, and my favorites are "group in distress", because you can always try to guess at the beginning who's gonna make it. I had fun playing it, too bad there are online trophies. On 28.8.2019 at 7:25 PM, SinisterPledge said: Wow. Watched a gameplay video. You weren't kidding about the spelling errors. This is an ID card at the start of the game: That was actually pretty neat. Alex comments on it that something is off. I was amused when I noticed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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