Until Dawn: Pick your own horrible adventure.

Wednesday, 2 September 2015, 9:48 am
Article: Francis Cook

Supermassive Games’ Until Dawn sees a group of dumb sexy teenagers take a trip to a spooky mansion atop a mountain. It is, obviously, a horror game. However, the game is so ridiculous it turns out to be more of a comedy.

Until Dawn begins with a prank on a girl which results in her running into the woods with her sister and falling off a cliff to their presumable deaths. One year later, the teens somehow think it’s a good idea to go back sans sisters. Enter spooky horror time.

The game’s biggest draw is that it lets you pick your own adventure (remember those Goosebumbs books?) Decisions you make will have a strong effect on the proceeding plot. This can be as mundane as choosing to be a dick, or as serious as deciding between sacrificing yourself or saving others. A “Butterfly Effect” symbol lets you know when you’ve made a decision of importance which will deviate the plot and it is possible to go back to parts of the game to see how it might play out differently.

There are also a number of action packed quick-time-event sequences in which missing a button can have grave results.

Visually, the game looks great. Sometimes the faces of the characters are a little odd, but the environments are gorgeous. Fantastic lighting and excellent use of camera angles heighten the suspense of the action.

The story in the first half of the game is good, although the dialogue occasionally suffers from clunky writing. The plot plays on genre tropes and, at times, is genuinely funny or scary. The teens spend much of the early game talking about how excited they are to have sex. One sequences sees two of the kids taking a long walk talking about all the sex they are going to do – by God they are going to be having the sex. Well they would if they weren’t interrupted by psychotic clowns.

The early chapters are broken up by interviews with an unhinged psychiatrist who asks how you felt about what happened, what scares you, and so on. I thought this would be genius – like a Funny Games twist which makes the player complicit in the action, unfortunately it peters out and loses relevance.

It’s fun trying to guess what’s going on, and the twist comes off really well. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end here. There is a whole second half of the game which is thoroughly explained and makes much of the first half redundant. It also kind of sucks plot wise.

The game is still fun right up until the last moments, or Until Dawn if you will, and begs you to revisit to see if you can save/kill more of the kids. I replayed the last chapter to alter some decisions and it made a very marked effect on the ending which was rather satisfying.

Until Dawn is a success in the way it plays on, and subverts, horror tropes. But this is no Funny Games or Cabin in the Woods. The game is severely devalued by its second half. However, the gameplay itself remains fun and interesting right through till dawn.

ENDS

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Francis Cook

Reporter

Francis studied History, gaining a first class honours in 2014. He is interested in politics, music and popular culture. His thesis looked at nuclear themes in Japanese film history.

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