I have to admit Supermassive games They are great storytellers. The Dark Pictures anthology is proof of that, and that year after year they come up with a new installment as diverse in theme and character as they have is is cause for praise. But also, perhaps due to production times or perhaps a lack of engineering or resources, technical advances in the base formula take much longer to be noticed. As I pointed out in the final print, The Devil in Me is more of The Dark Pictures, for better or for worse. But as Jack the Ripper said: “Let’s Go for Parts”.
As I said, The dark images It is notable for touching all subgenres of terror in its games. Whether stories of ghosts and haunted ships (Man of Medan), black magic, the occult and deep America (Little Hope) or war and monster stories (House of Ahses). The irritating point is made by The Devil in Me, not because it strays from the horror story genre, but because this time it is based on real and documented facts, as is the story of HH Holmes, considered the first (and also “most prolific”) serial killer in the United States. The bloodthirsty man is said to be able to kill more than 200 people nationwide at the end of the 19th century. A character who has created equal parts fear and fascination throughout the story, inspiring the lead group to embark on an adventure.
We play the role of the members of the team of Lonnit Entertainment, a small production company in weak hours that intends to save its business by recording the last episode of its series of serial killers with the character of HH Holmes. A mysterious person, Charles Du’Met, invites her to spend the weekend at his old house on an island off the east coast where he apparently lives. The building is a fairly faithful replica of the Castle of Murders, a hotel that Holmes used as a cover for his crimes and which he modified to fill with traps and deadly instruments for guests. Getting the episode there can mean the difference between keeping the job or not, so everyone agrees to go on the mysterious date.
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Already in the hotel they gradually discover that a disturbing fascination is becoming reality and that blood and murder are taking place. Little by little they discover that this deadly game in which they are trapped has many levels and that it has been meticulously prepared for them. If we want our characters to survive the night, we have to make decisions that in turn open or close butterfly effects and trigger various possible outcomes (and most of them aren’t exactly good). That’s the premise the series is based on, and it’s still just as present in The Devil in Me. They also introduce the factor of relationships between characters and they intend that this is an important variable for the story, but the truth is that most of the decisions regarding them are made naturally and except for a few critical moments with each , you don’t have to worry too much about it either.
But survival doesn’t just depend on our teammates, because we’ll also have to take the initiative and solve puzzles, perform Quick Time Events (QTE) and get all sorts of clues from the environment. Even the smallest clue we miss could mean a teammate lives or dies, so stay calm… as long as there’s no scare to have you dangling from the ceiling light.
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One of the novelties that The Devil in Me introduces to the series is the vertical scan of settings and the use of items to reach otherwise inaccessible places. are the classics Puzzles for moving boxes So if you’ve ever played The Last of Us or Uncharted, you already know how they work. None of them are particularly difficult, and the times I felt slightly stuck were because I wasn’t looking carefully that the solution was in a hole in the wall or somewhere I didn’t know was I could climb through Now the areas we advance through are larger and in this case more complex as the hotel’s corridors and rooms rotate at the will of our mysterious kidnapper.
This changing scenario also always makes us tense, alert to any shadow or light that emerges and guides the way. We don’t know what’s behind the next door, but we have to be prepared, and that’s where the second great addition to the title comes in: character inventory. It’s very simple and only allows a maximum of four objects at a time, one of which is a light source like a lighter or flashlight. Another of the slots is almost always assigned to a key that opens a specific door in the same area, and the others oscillate between temporary consumables, or the signature object, as I’ve called it. Each character has one of these and they’re enormously useful, like the map to force drawers, the pole to reach high objects, or the multimeter to check voltage and restore electrical current.
When I played the preview, I only got to enjoy a small portion of the game, and I assumed that those puzzle and inventory dynamics would carry more weight in the storyline. But now that I’ve seen the game’s credits, I feel like none of them were really exploited, and that they carry less weight than they should in the story. They ended up being isolated moments rather than a new twist in the game loop, and I’m a little disappointed.
The story of The Devil in Me is perhaps the best of the four seen so far. Taking inspiration from such important cinematic sagas as Saw and being able to recreate a real historical figure sets it apart from the previous ones (although there’s always the supernatural element, of course). But until A great story loses power if the technical possibilities are not right. And there are countless bugs in the technical part: teleportation and levitation of characters, lighting bugs, the bug that doesn’t mark an inspected object as unlocked (this bug apparently persists throughout the series), not to mention the awful sound section. I’ve tried playing with the original voice acting in English and the localization in Spanish and I’d almost say it’s the first time I’ve found the dubbing of a video game better than the work of the original actors.
And these bugs aren’t the ones fixed in the Day 1 patch (although some were marked as such), I have to admit that I didn’t notice any frame or performance drops and that the game runs great on both the computer and the Computer works perfectly consoles and that my PC is gradually becoming obsolete (an Intel i5 processor with an Nvidia 1070). Just in case some of the issues I mentioned are related to my hardware, I was playing on a PC and a PlayStation 5 console at the same time and the bugs I’m referring to were present on both.
I hope and pray that Supermassive Games will continue to work to bring us experiences as immersive and exciting as The Devil in Me. It’s striking that they have very few competitors in the industry in terms of visual narrative , but perhaps it is appropriate, now that this first season of the anthology has concluded, to put aside the introduction of annual installments and sit down to assess how it can solve the problems that arise Repeat over and over again. There In the end, even a great story, no matter how good, cannot save you from mediocre gameplay.
