REVIEW: Until Dawn

SPOILER WARNING: Yeah there’s a “whodunnit” aspect to this spooky story that you wouldn’t want spoiled for you, but I think what you should REALLY be mindful of before you give this (or any review) a read is that the core “choose your own adventure” mechanic of this game can, and almost certainly WILL, be influenced by the accounts and testimonials of other players. Trust me, you’re doing yourself a favor if you go into this game as fresh and blind as possible. That said, ye be warned!

I didn’t froth at the mouth over Quantic Dream’s 2010 PS3 release “Heavy Rain” like my friend and fellow Geekpr0n writer Manda did when it was first released. It seemed to have a solid film noir aesthetic backbone to it and the promise of an immersive interactive “film” experience sounded to me more like a grab for attention from those of us who have been enjoying the stories of video games since back in the days when we had to make half of them up in our heads. Still, I gave it a shot, and I also started to play more of the games that Telltale was putting out (Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us). And you know what? I began to “get” what was so unique about these games. Their emphasis on the player’s choice affecting how the story played out was allowing developers to successfully invite players into virtually any story and have them be the most vial part of it in a powerfully convincing way.

“Until Dawn” aims to take this idea and run screaming and shrieking into a dark snowy forest with it. Published by relatively fresh-faced British developer Supermassive Games, this time around instead of the post-zombie apocalypse or a gritty detective story we’re scrambling and stumbling down the plot path of every late 90s and early 2000s horror film in the book. There are screams! There are saws! There are people who know what you did last Summer! (Well, Winter in this case). And let’s not forget that there is indeed a huge ostentatious cabin in the woods for the whole ordeal to go down in!

In fact, there are several cabins!

It almost feels pointless to even bother fleshing out the story beats since if you are in ANY way shape or form a fan of the horror genre, this whole game will seem like a collage of scenes and ideas ripped wholesale from their origins and stitched together in a clunky distorted mess. The running mental checklist I had going as I played the game my first time? Secluded cabin in the woods? Check. Cast of impossibly good looking asshole college kids? Check. One year anniversary of the untimely death of friends? Check. Masked boogiemen roaming just outside the frames in every scene? Check. Condemned but not uninhabited sanitarium nearby? Check. Basement full of movie props and costumes? Check. Dozens of old native American totems and omens inexplicably laid out everywhere? Checkaroonie!

Yup, the story is cruising on autopilot through what is essentially the sort of stuff James Wan and Wes Craven would pen over a lunch break together. That’s not hard to see even five minutes in, but luckily even the game itself seems to be in on the joke. Early on the cringe-worthy tounge-in-cheek dialog leaves very little room for doubt that this is a game for those of us out there who would rather point and laugh at staggering tired horror tropes than be genuinely scared by them. Once you’ve made peace with that, the game gets a lot better.

Speaking of cringe-worthy, the big hook in “Until Dawn” that it obnoxiously tries a bit too hard to cram down our throats is its spin on the player choice system. There’s a truckload of butterfly imagery throughout the game as well as several menu and dialog exchanges that emphasize the so-called “Butterfly Effect” of nearly all of your actions. Telltale’s games were the first time I had “Your Choices Will Affect The Story” spelled out plain as day for me, but this game is almost relentless in its constant barrage of notifications that something you did will affect something later. If you are the sort that gets hung up on all the “what-ifs” your choices may possibly summon, that might be a big enough distraction for you to not want to bother.

Choose their destiny!

For my money the choice system (and by association the bulk of the quick-time events, which serve as the game’s core “gameplay” mechanic) seemed a bit more tantalizing precisely because in this game, I couldn’t take anything back. There were no checkpoints I could rewind to if I messed anything up. Whatever choices I made, I was going to have to live with for the whole game. The weight of each stumble through the woods was just as heavy as each consideration I hesitated to make as the cast members bickered and argued with each other. And since the game includes a simple and welcome way to track the cause and effects of each choice made right in the menu system, it didn’t take long for the sourness of the early game’s shallow teen slasher homage to give way to general intrigue and even empathy for these poor kids.

While the writing smartly knows where it’s aiming and lands on its target, the voice acting performances by the principle cast might actually surprise your expectations for this sort of material! “Heroes” actress Hayden Panettiere and “Agents Of SHIELD” mainstay Brett Dalton definitely pull their weight as the ostensible leaders of the kids, and though he’s popped up here and there in a lot of Hollywood features I don’t know that I’ve EVER seen such a commanding performance by Peter Stormare as the creepy, enigmatic analyst Dr. Hill.

Arguably the scariest part of the game!

Make no mistake the voice acting is top notch, but the graphics do leave a bit to be desired. The game was originally slated to be released on the PS3 before it was announced as a next-gen PS4 exclusive, and from where I stand it looks to me like the character animations and texture rendering were never allowed to take advantage of the newer console’s additional processing power. The characters do all look like their respective actors but the uncanny valley that all of their faces and movements rest in simply cannot be ignored.

There are a few other gripes I could toss out but they are minor. Piloting the characters seems stiff and their resulting awkward spins and circles breaks the immersion even moreso than it usually does in these kinds of adventure games. Hunting for clues to the game’s mysteries will often have you wandering all over empty rooms and down wrong-way paths, stalling out the game’s momentum. And while it can be commended for its bold choice in not allowing you to rewind the story, the choice of either starting the game fresh or seeing your current game through to the end with no alternatives an not even any additional save slots seems frustratingly unnecessary.

What will you do? No take-backsies!

Still, if you’ve ever yelled at a character “don’t go in there, you moron” when chomping popcorn at a cheap Tuesday night slasher flick, “Until Dawn” will challenge you to take the wheel yourself and see if you can do any better among the sewers, psychos and monsters! I found myself anticipating the game’s climax not only to see if I could get all of these brats out in one piece, but also just to get another shot at correcting all the mistakes I had made it up to that point. It’s got a lot of replay value and buckets full of the all the juicy material us nightmare junkies live to scream at!

“Until Dawn” is available now for the Playstation 4.