Games I Beat: Until Dawn

Until Dawn
Story Driven Horror
1 Player
System: Playstation 4
Developer: Supermassive Games
Year of Release: 2015
Beaten: September 2nd, 2016

I don't technically enjoy this game. Until Dawn isn't really a game though. The bits I enjoyed were the same sort of bits I enjoyed in Telltale's Walking Dead series. Getting to take part in a movie is an interesting experience, but unfortunately it doesn't have any staying power. Being worth experiencing while not necessarily being worth owning can pose a bit of a problem. Although Red Box exists, but I've never used one and don't know how quickly games get removed from their catalogs. This is weekend rental movie, game, is what I'm trying to say.

Until Dawn is a story driven horror movie, game, in the form of "new-age" adventure games. You walk around, poke at things, choose divergent dialogue options, deal with QTEs and by god if the other character's won't remember this. With every character being more or less a horror trope the game doesn't really explore new territory, but as a fan of horror movies this one was worth a watch, play. There are two major spoilers, both of which I wound up guessing prior to the game revealing what was happening. Even so, one of them left me quite happy.

A year ago you and all your other useless drunk dickhead college buddies prank an insecure girl while partying in a cabin in the woods during winter. She runs out, her sister chases, they wind up dying. They see and hear something... odd, and before they fall off a cliff to their death a strange man tries to help them. Naturally a year later their brother invites everyone back up and they all oblige. Strange, spooky things start to happen. You've got the jock, the whore, the nerd, the fool, the virgin (who acts like a whore), uh, basically another jock, a nice girl, and Claire from Heroes (remember: Save the cheerleader, save the world!). While what ensues is nothing revolutionary there is a lot going on and covers a lot of horror tropes in a mostly enjoyable way. It doesn't bring anything to the table other than a good time, and that can be a fine thing.

As stated above everything is pretty standard newer adventure game game play. The most action pack the game gets is a REALLY quick timer on QTE events. It's alright, it doesn't draw me into the game more and everything feels clunky, especially walking around, turning specifically. Never in other movies do we see actors having trouble getting stuck on shit, that's something for those plebeian video games. While superficial, the nice (usually) graphics honestly helped with my enjoyment a lot.

As the game's main draw is the plot, to talk about that would be to ruin it. If you enjoy horror movies, give this a watch, play. It takes about six hours all told and you get to choose which of the little shits get to live or die. Or you might fuck up a couple, like I might have (sorry Ashley, I thought you and Chris would have been a pretty good couple). There is a ton of clues and other stuff hidden around the game, and while I managed to find most of them without any help, there's enough missing that makes me want to go back and collect everything. Although... I probably won't. It's just really difficult to get excited about revisiting such a linear movie, game, just to see the alternate scenes. I've grown quite irritated with Telltale style games as of late, but something about Until Dawn drew me in. Will you last? Until Dawn?

Note: I wanna talk about a spoiler, but I'm hiding it in this image. If you know, or don't give a shit about what's going on up in those mountains feel free to hover over it!