The Dark Pictures anthology has been the premiere medium for horror stories in video games for over half a decade now. Supermassive is continuously releasing quality horror titles that put the player through the intense experience of trying to make sure all of the characters (or maybe just the ones they like) see the morning after the nightmare.
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It’s a fairly short list right now, but it’s going to rapidly expand over the coming years as Supermassive has made it clear that they have no intention of slowing down. Each story covers didn’t genres, monsters, and fears that elicit all kinds of emotions from making your skin crawl to making it difficult to lie down for rest that night. Some of the scares stand up to the test of time better than others though.
Updated January 4, 2025 by Tom Hopkins: Directive 8020, the next game in the Dark Pictures Anthology, is due to release in 2025. This one sees a cast of characters face off against an alien threat that can mimic its prey. It’s certainly shaping up to a more sci-fi-leaning game than the others in the series. It’ll be interesting to see where it ranks among them.
4
Little Hope
Little Hope’s premise seemingly has a lot of promise. A group of strangers becoming trapped in an abandoned colonial town with a vicious history and a haunted disposition is an all-American nightmare. Tragically, this game falls flat on its face with an ending that completely takes the wind out of the events of the entire story. You may wonder what the purpose of becoming emotionally invested in the characters of Little Hope is if it’s all just for a rug pull that reveals they were never real in the first place? The answer is that there’s really no purpose to it at all.
The game certainly has its fans and many would say that just because it’s the worst Dark Pictures game still doesn’t mean it’s a bad game.
This game isn’t half-bad prior to that reveal. The idea of needing to save each character by redeeming them from something in their past is interesting. Seeing the horrifying outcomes of each iteration of a family seemingly reincarnating over and over again only to suffer an identical fate each time is a great idea, as well. Each title certainly accomplishes what it sets out to do by putting forward an intriguing storyline rife with as much mystery as it has terror lying in every dark corner. If they only could have held their ground on these concepts rather than abandoning them for some half-baked “Shyamalan-esque” twist it could have gone higher on this list.
3
Man Of Medan
Man Of Medan was Supermassive’s first attempt at following up Until Dawn’s wild success. It’s a good idea, to do something similar to Until Dawn but shorter and with fewer characters to give the developers a chance at releasing more titles like this episodically in rapid succession. Man Of Medan mainly suffers from its lackluster characters and another third act rug pull twist that’s almost as disappointing as Little Hope’s, although not quite as bad.
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Throughout Man Of Medan, you’ll sadly find very little in the way of character development to make you feel one way or another about losing or saving anyone throughout the story. And that’s a shame, because one of the main draws of this game’s predecessor, Until Dawn, is the array of characters that drew different emotions out of each player. Some you’d want to save far more than others, or maybe you want to save the annoying characters just to be contrarian.
Man Of Medan’s premise is its best quality. Frankly, there aren’t enough spooky tales that take place on decrepit ships. It makes for a background as isolating as it is claustrophobic and eerily foreign to any players not familiar with life out at sea. Many of the scares are great, as well. And each successive new demon (Or hallucination) further adds to the intrigue of what exactly is playing out on that terrifying ship.
2
House Of Ashes
- Released
-
October 22, 2021
- Multiplayer
-
Online Co-Op
, Local Co-Op - Engine
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Unreal Engine 4
- ESRB
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m
- How Long To Beat
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6 Hours
- Number of Players
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1-5 (Local Co-Op); 1-2 (Online Co-Op)
- PS Plus Availability
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Extra & Premium
- OpenCritic Rating
-
Fair
House Of Ashes easily ranks higher for a couple of reasons. The first being that this, for whatever reason, is one of the few games that doesn’t end with a fake-out twist that reveals that none of the horrors throughout the story actually happened at all. If you had a nickel for every time that happened in a Dark Pictures game, you’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
This game’s threat is the largest and most existential of any game in the series, so you have a game with as much heart as it has Lovecraftian nightmares and monsters galore.
The second is that the characters in this game may be the most well-written characters of any game on this list. They’ll send you and anybody else you’re playing with on a rollercoaster of emotions that’ll have you wanting them dead at times and holding onto your seat in hopes of redemption at other points.
1
The Devil In Me
When you have ghosts, hallucinations, witchcraft, and full-on monstrosities in your stories, you don’t expect a game about a human serial killer to be the one that manages to outshine them all. And yet, here The Devil In Me is. The story of a film crew trying to escape an elaborate and mechanically trapped mansion, operated by a famous serial killer, it manages to present the best overall experience of the anthology.
The Devil In Me is the longest of the existing Dark Pictures games, so you’ll need to keep the characters alive for longer than you may be used to.
The story’s greatest shortcoming is how stupid the cast appears to be. It’s hard to feel attached to or mournful of someone when just about all of them are consistently making terrible decisions. Running from a killer that likes trapping people into murder games? Better head straight into this brightly lit room with only one way out. Our friend died horrifically, sure, but let’s stop and talk about our relationship.
But what the game lacks in character, it makes up for in atmosphere. The narrative premise is a classic, drawing from the splatter film game of death concept seen in films like SAW and Cube. It effectively delivered in both fear and creativity, making us constantly afraid of every room and every hall, having no certain idea what bad news would await the characters we controlled. You don’t need to go extreme to create a thrill, and The Devil In Me shows exactly that.
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