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jp's Man of Medan (PS4)

[May 5, 2023 05:55:40 PM]

I really enjoyed this! (the fact that it was not super long was also a plus, for real!)

I really enjoyed Until Dawn so I was curious to see how this game, which I assumed from what I've read was in the same design lineage as Until Dawn, was like. This game is the first in "The Dark Pictures Anthology" which I take as series of narrative-choice-driven horror games (like Until Dawn). When I wonder "what it's like" I explicitly mean - have they evolved their game design in an interesting direction, which things have been smoother over from Until Dawn (if any), have they come up with some new things?

Until Dawn was not very long - but I'm pretty sure it was longer than Man of Medan. More importantly I recall (dunno if I wrote about this in a gamelog or not) that it suffered a bit in terms of its pacing - there was long interludes of "gameplay" where you wandered around a lot, picking up things,opening doors, etc. So, lots of time "interacting" but not necessarily in interesting ways. For me it was mostly about finding clues and secrets - of which I did poorly.

Man of Medan is much more streamlined in that sense. Yes, there are "wandering around" moments - but they're shorter and much more constrained. I'm not sure if that's because of the location (on a boat) or as a design decision. So, the experience feels a lot more consistent and tighter - in a good way. After all, the main point is to experience the narrative, see what happens to the characters, etc.

Until Dawn had a pretty large cast of (playable) characters - making it a bit harder to learn about them and so on. Man of Medan has 5. Fewer, and it works better as well. I get to spend more time controlling the different characters, hear them talk more and so on. Again, less sense of "downtime" spent on characters you don't care all that much about because they'll die in the next scene.

Characters dying was a big part of Until Dawn, and it comes up again here as well. Curiously I was doing great - no one had died until, the last session I played in which 2 characters died! I failed one QTE event and boom - gone. I was a bit surprised - not enough to re-load and try again, but it was a good moment in that sense and made me appreciate my successes in the rest of the game. Even more interesting I think that one of the characters (Brad) died because of an earlier decision I made + succesfully doing an in-game event. I think that I should feel "cheated", but it actually makes sense narratively and was more interesting (except that I didn't get to play with Brad). Here's what I think happened:

a. I picked up a knife for that Fliss was carrying around.
b. Fliss is in a weird scene in a ballroom when she sees a hooded man who looks like he'll attack here.
c. You get the option to attack the man. I did...and then the game continues...

d. Much later you see Brad is lying dead on the floor (what happened?) and I think it was Fliss who killed him (by stabbing) because you learn later that there's a lot of hallucinating going on.

So, is it "unfair" - uh...maybe...I succeeded at what the game told me (the player) to do. It makes sense with what hallucinating (Fliss) would do. But, I could have played this scene as Brad (having to avoid Fliss' attacks). So, overall I thought it was neat to tie those threads once I knew what was going on story-wise...

My other character death was Connor at the end during a fight in which he's, literally, chopped in half by a falling cargo door.

Until Dawn had these flashbacks/visions that supposedly give you information about stuff in the future.. I never found them particularly useful for making decisions (especially when they're split second QTEs) and a similar system returns here. Because the game is shorter - it was a bit easier to remember the visions (when you get to scenes that are related to them) which was good, but I still didn't feel like I understood how I could use these to guide my choices in the game. I learned later that these visions (represented in the UI via paintings) exist in two types: white frames and black frames. The black frames I think have to do with character death - like, a scene where your characters might die? That little bit of info MIGHT have helped guide my play? But, not really...

Oh, there's a third painting - gold frame - that I think is for the next game in the series. I have no idea how that'll get integrated into the game? Or is it just like those after-credits scenes that people get excited about but then completely forget a few years later when the movie they were teasing is released.

Overall? Fun times - excited for another one, weirdly.