Every game in the dark pictures anthology are crap, let's get that out of the way, that is not opinion, that is objective fact, buggy, horribly written games, with worse plot writing than an episode of the teletubbies, which are sold under the pretense of the player having agency in the story and your choices having consequences when they do not. That being said it is quite impressive how they have managed to make each subsequent game even worse than the previous.
Anytime people say valid criticisms people just say " oh you're looking at until dawn through rose tinted spectacles" but they are the ones blindly worshiping despite not being able to provide a single justification for their worship. Until dawn is the oldest game in the supermassive backlog and to this day it remains the best, not from a "fanboy" perspective, but from an objective one to this day it remains :(excuse the formatting here, it is fine when editing the submission box but for some reason warps when submitted)
-the longest
By comparison devil in me is the worst because it factually is not what it claims to be, it is a game sold under the context of being an interactive story with choice based story telling, it factually is not that, none and I do mean none of your choices matter. A game with 5 playable characters, navigating 37, that's right, 37 chapters, facing multiple situations where they live or die depending on your "choices" and what does that culminate to? Let me tell you, it culminates to you getting 1 of just 2 endings and both of them are so similar that in reality there is only 1 ending. The game has less gameplay than pacman, less of a story than bananas in pyjamas and is more linear than a COD campaign. And lastly the 2 drops of icing on the cake of this entirely linear game with its 2 static endings? 1:There is no "good" ending, it does not matter what you do, there is no possible ending other than the most cliched ending scene in all of horror because with this latest instalment supermassive have not even pretended to care enough to put in any actual effort.
2: Yet again everything that happens has no rhyme or reason, just cheap jump scares and bad things happening " jus bcos", there's no motivation, no driving forces, no reward, no delusions, no identities are revealed, no face seen, there is literally nothing, a vapid empty shell inerlaced with a few cheap shock value jumpscares and absolutely zero substance to be found. You will find more cohesive stories and more developed characters on a colour by numbers on a childs cereal box.
So I am left wondering who the target audience for this is supposed to be, it's like saw but with even less story, even less character development and more tame gore., it has no choices so it isnt for fans of interactive stories, it only has 2 identical endings so it isnt for people who buy into the "choice" gimmick, so it is a game that caters to nobody and is so watered down from the premise it is sold under that anybody over the age of 7 will see it for how thin it is within the first 20 minutes.
Tl:dr. It basically ticks all the boxes of the lazy slop supermassive has churned out consistently with this "anthology"
Anytime people say valid criticisms people just say " oh you're looking at until dawn through rose tinted spectacles" but they are the ones blindly worshiping despite not being able to provide a single justification for their worship. Until dawn is the oldest game in the supermassive backlog and to this day it remains the best, not from a "fanboy" perspective, but from an objective one to this day it remains :(excuse the formatting here, it is fine when editing the submission box but for some reason warps when submitted)
-the longest
- which in turn gives the characters the most amount of time to interact with the cast, not just limited to static pairs. Gives them the most time to develop or where applicable unravel and allows the story the most room to breath and grow organically, without feeling like crap is shoe horned in for plot convenience or cheap shock value over actual story telling ( something every dark pictures anthology game is guilty of)
By comparison devil in me is the worst because it factually is not what it claims to be, it is a game sold under the context of being an interactive story with choice based story telling, it factually is not that, none and I do mean none of your choices matter. A game with 5 playable characters, navigating 37, that's right, 37 chapters, facing multiple situations where they live or die depending on your "choices" and what does that culminate to? Let me tell you, it culminates to you getting 1 of just 2 endings and both of them are so similar that in reality there is only 1 ending. The game has less gameplay than pacman, less of a story than bananas in pyjamas and is more linear than a COD campaign. And lastly the 2 drops of icing on the cake of this entirely linear game with its 2 static endings? 1:There is no "good" ending, it does not matter what you do, there is no possible ending other than the most cliched ending scene in all of horror because with this latest instalment supermassive have not even pretended to care enough to put in any actual effort.
2: Yet again everything that happens has no rhyme or reason, just cheap jump scares and bad things happening " jus bcos", there's no motivation, no driving forces, no reward, no delusions, no identities are revealed, no face seen, there is literally nothing, a vapid empty shell inerlaced with a few cheap shock value jumpscares and absolutely zero substance to be found. You will find more cohesive stories and more developed characters on a colour by numbers on a childs cereal box.
So I am left wondering who the target audience for this is supposed to be, it's like saw but with even less story, even less character development and more tame gore., it has no choices so it isnt for fans of interactive stories, it only has 2 identical endings so it isnt for people who buy into the "choice" gimmick, so it is a game that caters to nobody and is so watered down from the premise it is sold under that anybody over the age of 7 will see it for how thin it is within the first 20 minutes.
Tl:dr. It basically ticks all the boxes of the lazy slop supermassive has churned out consistently with this "anthology"
- terrible camera work
- jank movement
- buggy controls
- bug riddled animations
- predictable, cliche writing
- "choices" are meaningless
- "choices" are poorly implemented with some being instakills for no reason
- no character development
- lazy ending that is a tired old trope
- the big bad is always bad, but especially so in this game, no voice, no dialogue, no story, no backstory, no motivation, no reasoning, no development, we don't even see the face, there is no conenction/weight or significance to the character whatsoever, which in turn makes his involvment in everything impotent, there is no twist or reveal or resolution, there is factually and literally nothing. There is a cheap jumpscare involving a crow and that crow is a more compelling creation than the antagonist driving the events of this game. Even in terms of formulaic games, this franchise is sloppy, lazy, predictable, seemingly written by the worst writers in the modern gaming world, poorly made, poorly optimized, poorly animated, awkward cutscenes, disjointed dialogue, interactions that don't come across as even being close to bordering on the possibility of being vaguely similar to how humans interact..... just all around a very low quality and undeniably low effort product churned out for a hollow cash grab.