Until Dawn

[Thorpesaurous]

Here's the GameInformer Review.

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/un...station-4.aspx


It's something that's looked really cool during production. But it has suffered from numerous hang ups. It was originally produced to be a PS Move game.

The premise sounds awesome. A real teen thrasher movie. A bunch of playable characters, real deaths, and multiple endings.

I don't know how to feel about it's production from the same team that made Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain is a game that I have really mixed feelings about. The story was very good (I'd go so far as great if it weren't for a few of the out there sequences), some of the set pieces were awesome, but man some of the exploring stuff was brutal, as the characters moved brutally slow. And they let you interact with an exhausting amount of useless stuff that led me seeming to spend half the play time reading about the content of everyday drawers.

So I'm really torn on this. But if it keeps reviewing this well, I'd have to give it a try.

[West-Side]

I thoroughly enjoyed Heavy Rain.
It felt more like a movie than a game but I thought the twists and turns in the game were terrific. I was genuinely intrigued about the ending and it definitely delivered. Write a review if you try this game Thorpe; I'll consider buying it if you think it's similar to Heavy Rain.

It's actually one of the few games that caught my interest this year and I totally forgot about its upcoming release. I will be buying Madden 16 tomorrow. The new additions sound terrific.

[Thorpesaurous]

So I went on a spending spree Thursday after work, and I got The Witcher, Phantom Pain, and this. I knew I was biting off more than I can chew, and I'm sure that at least one of these games is going to fall by the wayside for me, but they all seem excellent in some way or another and wanted to at least have the option to go to any of them if I felt like it.

Having just come off Batman, I was a little hesitant to get into something as big as either The Witcher or MG. So I read the playthrough of Until Dawn wasn't terribly long, and figured I'd try that first.

I had a mixed relationship with Heavy Rain. The story was really cool. It's also kind of right up my alley, sort of a true crime mystery set up. I enjoyed the off beat exploration and Quick Time Event based gameplay based entirely on decisions, and the notion that the story changed as you went. Those kind of out of nowhere sequences of QTEs, with the pressure of knowing your results had lasting impact, made the game increasingly intense as you went on.

That said, I was incredibly frustrated by some of it. The exploration was excruciating at points because the characters moved so painfully slowly that the exploration sometimes was exhausting. In addition, almost everything could be interacted with. It seemed like every drawer could be opened, although 99% of the time there was nothing in there. So for a completionist like me, and frankly because of the nature of the game as far the investigation element, I'd think almost everyone playing, spent way too much time reading about spoons. And to add to that, there were moment when you'd find something.
There were also elements of the story that felt weirdly out of place. The main investigator had some crazy glasses that allowed him to do in field forensic work, which is fine as a shortcut, but considering how grounded the rest of the game was, it felt weird. He also had a bizarre out of body experience as I recall that just felt out of place to me at the time.


So Until Dawn is put together by the same people. And for the most part, they've addressed the majority of my issues. The pacing is much better. I still get a little frustrated by the speed at which I can move my character, but they did add a faster walk to one of the triggers, so you can tell they've thought about it, it just still doesn't feel fast enough, although in their defense it may ruin the nature of the story if players were sprinting around with no cause. And while I haven't finished yet, I'm pretty sure I'm close, and the story is really really awesome. A group of High School kids go up to one of their parents cabins in the woods in Canada. It's a mansion lodge. Three of the kids, two twin sisters and a brother, have a very wealthy dad who's a movie director. The lodge belongs to them. The kids play a prank on one of the twins, and they are embarrassed, run into the woods, and are never seen from again. A year later, the brother re-invites everyone back up in an effort to get some closure, and from there all manner of weird shit happens.

You will play as all of the kids from time to time. The story can vary so much as having them all die or all survive from what I understand. They do this nice status screen where you can monitor the character's personality traits. Honesty, Charitability, Bravery, Romance, Funny. And it shows you the maintenance of your relationships with each of the other characters, so you can use that information to inform your decisions. Do you want to be more honest with this character? Or is he sort of shady in your playthrough and you want to keep him being secretive? And those decisions aren't as easy as you'd think. You may have some piece of information that maybe you'd deem to hard for a friend to swallow, so perhaps you decide to hide that from them to protect them. That still affects your honesty. And if the friend finds out you lied to them, maybe it has the opposite effect on your relationship with them that you intended by trying to protect them to begin with.

The story plays like your really in a B Movie Teenage Slasher flick. All those things you yell at the screen for the characters not to do when you're watching those movies, now you have to do them. Sometimes it's a bit artificially forced. I don't want to go into the basement in my underwear, but it's the only open door. But once you start on the roller coaster, the decisions come at you fast, and they're all on timers, so you're instincts come in more than you'd imagine. There's plenty of down time to build tension. It makes those fast moment all the more exhilarating. There seems to be three stories happening at once. Evidence piles up about the mountains history, and about the history of the family, along with questions about who this nutjob is who's on the prowl now.

In addition to the character statuses, you have clue screens that apply to each of the concurrent mysteries, and there's a really nice thing they do with totems. You find various colored totems that give you very short visions into the future. Some show the characters death, some show advice for future events, some the eventual loss of a friend. You can use these short 3-5 second clips as clues to allow you to act accordingly and change the future, but they're tricky to read into. Also each one reveals a different small clip of a whole movie that will expose the history of the mountain.

The last feature that stands out is the Butterfly Effect. Some decisions will show a butterfly effect when you make them, meaning they have a direct impact on a future event. They're logged in your menu as well. There's maybe 25 of them on the screen, but I've discovered that some events can beget others, and the butterfly can have his wings turned like pages, so doing A leads to B, and then B may lead to C or D, depending on a second choice, so there may be even more outcomes than I can see on the log page.

The graphics are stunning. The music is spot on. The script is a perfect blend of tense and still funny. And the art direction is incredible. Cameras change perspective as you move, and different chapters may use different cameras in the same spot, exposing things you couldn't see before. It feels a little like the old Resident Evil games, but it also has the feel of a real movie production. And part of that is the performances. I'm not sure this would work without the super high end performances this game has. They're spot on horror character archetypes, and they're going through all the genre tropes, but doing it in a way where it doesn't feel stale. Hayden Penetierre plays one character. Mr. Robot's Remi Mallick. Peter Storemore, who's a classic that guy. And a few of the other actors you may notice from one spot or another, and even if you don't, they're at least real actors.

It's scary. It's genuinely scary. There's some cheap pop scares, but that doesn't mean they're not scary. And the editing adds all manner of classic horror scares, like flashes of villains in the foreground and background.


Just a really interesting game. I've had a few people sit down to watch me play. I'm sure I'll play through at least a second time. I know there's a few decisions I'd like to play through a second way. I went into it trying to maintain the highest relationship status possible between everyone, but that seems impossible. If you're super into action and shooting, this may not be for you, but if you have a fondness for horror, this thing is great. And it's so well done, that even people who feel this may run outside their usual tastes should still enjoy the hell out of it. The short run time invites multiple playthroughs, but it also means if it's not your thing you're not committed to it for a month the get the payoff. You can press through it, not explore quite as much and just go straight to the directed doors to kick off the rail experiences, and at least get a fairly complete cool story.

[Timmy D for MVP]

I'm watching an LP of it. It looks insanely interesting. I'm not entirely sure how my top would run it but maybe one day I'll get my hands on it. But these type of games I have a hard time spending more than x amount of money on.

Games like this I am fine with watching someone else run through it, as long as I find someone good. Same with Heavy Rain, Life is Strange, D4, and all the other visual novel-esque games. The cool thing about this one is the absurd amount of relevant decisions, although I wonder if all those branching paths have a relatively small outcome pool? Just different paths to them.

And yes, I'm not even playing it, and I can confirm the game is legit scary. It sets atmosphere beautifully. Thorp mentioned cheap jump scares, but those (at least so far I've seen) act as red herrings, and are used quite effectively.

I find horror works by building tension. Usually this is done through atmosphere. When a scare occurs that tension explodes and then you have a winding down period. So... basically like blowing a load.

They use this well in this game by throwing these out, almost like a boxer's jab. If this was the only type of scare it'd get boring. But this game uses it just to keep you on your toes, and to upset your rhythm. It gets to a point where you have that familiar feeling that something is going to happen, but you have no idea what time of surprise is coming. Is it going to be a scary mask in your face? Or is it going to be an atmospheric terror in the background? (I also wonder if a certain set of choices the players I watched made effect the later type of horror the game presents... holy shit this game is nuts if that's true).

Brilliant.

This may be the exception to the rule for what I'm willing to pay for these games.

[Thorpesaurous]

I'm watching an LP of it. It looks insanely interesting. I'm not entirely sure how my top would run it but maybe one day I'll get my hands on it. But these type of games I have a hard time spending more than x amount of money on.

Games like this I am fine with watching someone else run through it, as long as I find someone good. Same with Heavy Rain, Life is Strange, D4, and all the other visual novel-esque games. The cool thing about this one is the absurd amount of relevant decisions, although I wonder if all those branching paths have a relatively small outcome pool? Just different paths to them.

And yes, I'm not even playing it, and I can confirm the game is legit scary. It sets atmosphere beautifully. Thorp mentioned cheap jump scares, but those (at least so far I've seen) act as red herrings, and are used quite effectively.

I find horror works by building tension. Usually this is done through atmosphere. When a scare occurs that tension explodes and then you have a winding down period. So... basically like blowing a load.

They use this well in this game by throwing these out, almost like a boxer's jab. If this was the only type of scare it'd get boring. But this game uses it just to keep you on your toes, and to upset your rhythm. It gets to a point where you have that familiar feeling that something is going to happen, but you have no idea what time of surprise is coming. Is it going to be a scary mask in your face? Or is it going to be an atmospheric terror in the background? (I also wonder if a certain set of choices the players I watched made effect the later type of horror the game presents... holy shit this game is nuts if that's true).

Brilliant.

This may be the exception to the rule for what I'm willing to pay for these games.

I can say I've played Heavy Rain, and I've played the Telltale Walking Dead games, and this is the best of those games that I've played.

You're right, it is really watchable.

And you're spot on about the way they build atmosphere. It really loads up the tension. And they use all the tricks. Even the camera angles have a weird voyeuristic feel to them.

I'm already looking forward to playing through it again.

[glidedrxlr22]

I really enjoyed Heavy Rain. I am in agreement about what you said regarding some painfully slow parts. I don't have time for Until Dawn. I too have Witcher 3 and Phantom Pain. I'll do Phantom Pain first....I'm about 5 hours into it. I'll go back to the Witcher 3 right after.....it's just too good to let it go by the wayside.

[Timmy D for MVP]

I really enjoyed Heavy Rain. I am in agreement about what you said regarding some painfully slow parts. I don't have time for Until Dawn. I too have Witcher 3 and Phantom Pain. I'll do Phantom Pain first....I'm about 5 hours into it. I'll go back to the Witcher 3 right after.....it's just too good to let it go by the wayside.

Yeah. They've been releasing in a way that you finish one and another time consuming game comes out. A lot of smaller games falling through the cracks for me because there just isn't enough time.

Then Rocket League became free. Rising Thunder. Battlefront is coming. Soon Tekken releases here... shit.

[Thorpesaurous]

I really enjoyed Heavy Rain. I am in agreement about what you said regarding some painfully slow parts. I don't have time for Until Dawn. I too have Witcher 3 and Phantom Pain. I'll do Phantom Pain first....I'm about 5 hours into it. I'll go back to the Witcher 3 right after.....it's just too good to let it go by the wayside.

If you really enjoyed Heavy Rain I'd say you owe it to yourself to try this, because it feels like a much better version of a similar thing, and the story is pitch perfect for the gameplay mechanism.

[outbreak]

I'll get this just want to wait until the price drops I think.

[Wally450]

I don't even have a PS4 and I've been hooked on this game.

Watching gameplay from different Youtubers. Game seems very interesting.

[Thorpesaurous]

Beat it last night. One of the most unique and enjoyable gaming experiences I can recall. I'm still missing a fair amount of clues and totems, and two Butterfly Effects I missed altogether. Probably because I lost characters before I had a chance to get them.

The game now lets me go directly to chapters, so I can probably just go in and make different choices now. A second playthrough is a distinct possibility.

I lost three playable characters of the nine. Matt, Chris, and Ashley.

[outbreak]

Started playing last night. I think I'm on the fourth episode. It's ok so far, some parts are interesting but there's A LOT of walk from one point to another real slow and stop for conversations with characters I just want to punch in the face. I can't wait to let half the cast die they are that annoying.

They also screwed up on the characters facial animations, everything else looks really nice but when characters are talking their faces look really odd and robot like, I guess it's a remnant of originally being a ps3 move game.

Anyway I'm still enjoying the game, I can see how it'll get good when more action starts taking place I just wish they'd toned down some of the characters as they are a bit too extremely focused on being certain cliched type characters.

[Thorpesaurous]

Started playing last night. I think I'm on the fourth episode. It's ok so far, some parts are interesting but there's A LOT of walk from one point to another real slow and stop for conversations with characters I just want to punch in the face. I can't wait to let half the cast die they are that annoying.

They also screwed up on the characters facial animations, everything else looks really nice but when characters are talking their faces look really odd and robot like, I guess it's a remnant of originally being a ps3 move game.

Anyway I'm still enjoying the game, I can see how it'll get good when more action starts taking place I just wish they'd toned down some of the characters as they are a bit too extremely focused on being certain cliched type characters.

Did you play Heavy Rain by chance? Because the slowly walking around stuff really killed me in Heavy Rain, but I didn't mind it as much here. I felt like they really cut back on it, and improved the pacing, but if I hadn't played Heavy Rain, I may have been more bothered by it here. It also didn't bother me much because I found the setting tense enough that I really felt like the slowly walking often was a refractory period before the next jump scare. They don't always come, but they left me tense enough that it worked for me.

[outbreak]

Only a little of heavy rain and thought it sucked.

Now that stuffs happening in until dawn the walking is ok. On chapter 7. The first reveal was obvious though which was a let down and i think i know whatll happen in the end too but I'm really liking the game now especially since so much is happening that there's less awkward dialogue. Game really hooks you once things start happening didn't want to stop last night

[outbreak]

Just finished it. Really liked it.