stef

February Update!

 
Hey guys! February is the shortest month and my birthday month, so I tried celebrating by completing as many games as I could. It’s not much (since most of the games were 30 minutes) but it was fun to knock out a bunch of games like the good ol days before I had a job and adult responsibilities :)

Supermassive Games:

Man of Medan

6 hours, 7 of 30 achievements

Man of Medan is the first game in the Dark Pictures Anthology. These games are interactive choice based games from the developers of Until Dawn. They play similarity to games developed by Telltale Games or Quantic Dreams. I really enjoy these types of games a lot, and The Dark Picture games are online and local co-op! I'm going to detail my love and struggle for these games a bit, especially when I get to the review of Little Hope.

Man of Medan is the first game in this series. There is a group of characters in the story and you wil switch to different ones throughout. The game will randomly assign you to one of the characters and you will then adapt your choices and personality to fit that character.

The story follows a group of friends who are eager to go on a diving trip. This excitement turns to horror when things go wrong and they land themselves on a presumed ghost ship. Similarly to Until Dawn, the choices you make will decide if the characters will live or die. You can get all the characters killed, none of them, or somewhere in between. This will lead to different endings. There are also a lot of Qtes that will decide your characters fate. If you are not quick on your quick time events you may get some characters killed.

On co-op, you and your partner will play different characters that will sometimes be together or apart. A lot of the time you get separated, which is by far the scariest part. This is really cool though because you and your co-op partner are usually watching different cutscenes and going through a totally different experience then eachother. I have not played on single player, so I can only really review the co-op side of this game.

Man of Medan is a little rough around the edges. It feels like a semi expensive indie game a lot of the time. The graphics are definitely a downgrade from Until Dawn. It looks like they are using a different engine all together. The faces and movement are often jarring and uncanny. I did get used to it though! The cuts in scenes are also jarring, like a awkwardly edited movie. These things don't really bother me much but its worth mentioning.

Back to some pros about the game. I absolutely loved the mystery and scares. I'm a giant baby and these games give me so much anxiety. There are a lot of jumpscares and some pretty clever scares as well. Solving the mystery of the story is probably my favorite part of the games so far.

Now that I got the pros and cons out of the way, let me get to the nail in the coffin. The games in this series (at least the first two) are broken. There are multiple game breaking bugs you could get if you are unlucky like me. Although if you google the game, its more common then it should be. We did have to restart the game half-way through to properly beat it because we got an infinite loading screen that can not be fixed. There are other bugs throughout, but that is the goliath of bugs. I will definitely touch up on the bugs on my review for Little Hope below, because oh boy did that game give my boyfriend and I grey hairs. Buuuut, just reviewing this game, it wasn't that bad (unless of course you get that game breaking bug.)

Overall, I enjoyed Man of Medan. It did feel like the first entry in the series. It was rough around the edges and still finding its barrings, but It's such a fun interesting concept and it fills that horror co-op void. I adore a good choice game, so I had fun with this overall. Do I recommend this game? Maybe not right now. I will talk about my recommendations of the games in my review of Little Hope. I bought the trilogy on sale but I would not recommend it full price at this moment.


Little Hope

8 hours, 10 of 30 achievements

Warning: This is less of a review and more of me complaining for multiple paragraphs. I sound bitter but I had a lot of fun getting my frustrations out in the most dramatic way possible. Also major spoilers (But I will tag them.)

Oh boy oh boy. So my boyfriend and I finished Man of Medan, and we were like, "let's hop into the next one!" That would lead us to this game. The second game in the Dark Picture anthology: Little Hope. What a fitting title. This game gave me little hope for the future of this series.

It all started when I loaded the game up for the first time. Instant crash. Let me preface this by saying that we both have desktops that have had no issues with any game thrown at it. none of these bugs are the fault of our computers.
"Weird." I thought. So I loaded up the game again. We get started and explore the differences between Little Hope and Man of Medan.

I played on Keyboard and mouse, and he played on controller. In Man of Medan keyboard uses WASD to move, and controller is analog stick. Normal stuff. In Little Hope, the keyboard is not used at all and its all point and click with the mouse. Controller is still the same. Use analog to move. I don't hate the choice, but I thought it was kind of interesting. The Qte's were no longer keyboard and mouse, and were just mouse. So instead of hitting "W" or "D" at the right time you now just line up your mouse to the circle and click. It makes the Qte's less diverse but much easier. You also get a little warning that a QTE is about to pop up, which is fantastic. In the previous game you had to keep your hands on the keyboard at ALL times. It could be a chill cut scene and you would miss a QTE and die because your fingers were not on the keyboard. In Little Hope, you get a little pop up warning where the QTE is going to be. So, thank you for that change! The point and click feature was a lot harder to deal with though because it made the characters move awkardly and It was hard to look behind or around me. So maybe play this game on controller.

They also added a new feature for co-op. I forgot what its called, but it's a local multiplayer feature that lets you pass the controller to your friends as you play. I only played online co-op but I appreciate the feature regardless.

As we started to play Little Hope, I instantly connected to this game. I liked the voice acting better, the characters were interesting and it had such an intriguing opening. The mystery was amplified in this game. You spend most of the game going "what?" and "how?!" I loved the mystery. I spent every scene connecting the clues and trying to solve the story. I felt like a mediocre Sherlock Holmes.
The story follows 4 college students and their professor who are trapped in a town called Little Hope. The town shows you visions of the Salem Witch trials along with other creepy and captivating events. Just like the last game, you play as each character while your choices shape their personality and their chances of survival.

So moving on. We are enjoying the heck out of the game when it happens. Our worst enemy. The bane of our existence. The infamous infinite loading screen that plagued our enjoyment in Man of Medan. It was back, with a vengeance. To explain our frustrations, one minute we are in an intense thrilling scene with life or death hanging on the balance… The next moment the game is loading up the next screen. It's still loading… loading… loading… any minute now… we leave to get a pizza… were back….. still loading. We leave the game and load up the chapter again… still loading… we go online and troubleshoot all the ways we can. Nothing works. We try loading it back three times with no success. We decide to go a chapter back and load it that way.. Nope. Now that chapter is also bugged. Every chapter we load back is bugged. We give up for the day and I politely email the developer hoping to get some help.

Meanwhile, if you search online, there are plenty of people who encountered this bug on many different chapters and there is still no fix to it all. They have encountered this bug for both games just like we have. Nothing has worked for anybody. The developers never responded to them or me (it's been four days.) I wouldn't mind so much if they didn't HEAVILY promote these games on their website. They are so proud of them, but they won't try to fix them.

We try ONE MORE time two days later and somehow, it works! We are now two chapters back but the game has loaded. We had to play like an hour to catch up, but we do it. We then decide that we will finish the entire game in one sitting to not risk this happening again. At this point my anxiety was through the roof. Both from the brokenness of the game, but also the fact that I have to play like 4 hours of it without stopping and I'm a giant baby. This game was tense! We encounter two more infinite loading screens on the way. We had to back out of the chapter and continue to fix them, but we were just honestly happy that they fixed and continued.

Finally, we get to the end of the game on the last chapter. its a scene in a house with so many things to click on and explore. As we were playing we noticed, we can't click on anything. It says its interactive but its not allowing us to click on it. We tried heading to our destination, but we couldn't continue going that way. Basically it was bugged. No big deal we'll load it AGAIN. So we did, and same issue. That specific location was very bugged. So we start the chapter over. This fixes it.

We are back and we can click on things now. We are exploring the previously unobtainable objects when boom, frozen game. We load in again. The game freezes again. We try it again. The game freezes, then CRASHES MY COMPUTER. I'm not tech savvy, so I can't even tell you how or why that happened. But it happened two times. We loaded in again after the crashes and then it froze and crashed my computer again. At this point I'm scared to play. I can play Elden Ring on this computer but not Little Hope! This particular last chapter is the buggiest of them all. We cannot get through this section. We had to agree to skip every single interactible item and story part and just head to our destination as quickly as possible. It was really sad to rush the ending. It worked though, and we were quickly able to get to the end.

Now were at the end, we have been trying to beat this 5 hour game for days. We get to the end, and… it sucks. All that mystery build up for a really dumb ending. Spoilers below.

So the game introduces multiple timelines, death loops, infinite possibilities of multiple realities or time manipulation, ghosts, demons, witches etc. It could not be more intriguing! But in the end it turns out that none of that was real. Nope. None of the characters are real. None of the situations were real. The witch trial scenes weren't real. The only thing that was real was the first five minutes of the game. Nothing you did in this whole game was real. You are playing a crazy guy with a lot of guilt. He banged up his head and went into a psychotic break. I have no problem with the unreliable narrator twist, but it was such a horrible ending compared to the set up. It's like being promised a million dollars and receiving it in monopoly money. Not to mention we saved every single character in the whole game which was really hard for us. No one died! then at the last cut scene they kill two of the characters for some obscure choices that we were supposed to know to make. Like not to ask for help when you were being murdered. Not that it should have mattered because the characters werent real anyway. I'm being dramatic for the laughs, but I honestly feel like they had an amazing story going, and they really flunked it for a cheap twist. So yeah..

Do I recommend Little Hope, noooo. I am still going to play the third game because we already bought the trilogy. But I'm going to hold my breath the whole way through. I hope they fix the games and put some more love into them,


Randumb Studios:

These next games I completed were all from the developers of Randumb Studios. I bought “The Test.” because it had good reviews. Then I decided to get all of their games because it was only fifteen dollars for every game. I didn’t realize that they were all the same game really, but It was still fun to beat all of them in two days. I’m just going to give an overall review here and then a short sentence for each game. All of these games are basically personality quizzes. You answer yes/no and situational questions and they give you a little scenario at the end that best fits your answers. Kind of like those pointless but fun buzzfeed quizzes (you know what I’m talking about!).

“The Test” series is probably their biggest. The rest are very low effort. I’m not trying to be mean because I myself cannot make a game and I know they have low price tags. Its just that they copy the same game each time and paste a different scenario. Most of the games share a lot of the same questions and every game has the same humor. Personally, I feel like the humor doesn’t always land. A lot of sexual jokes or edgy jokes that don’t have enough of a punchline to land. When you complete a game you get a secret word that you can put in your review or comments. The devs say that they incorporate the word and your name in future games, so that’s a neat interaction with the audience. Overall, each game is the same. You answer questions. Now that you are aware of that, let me go into each game.

  • The Test

    18 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Test: Hypothesis Rising

    30 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Confession

    18 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Horrorscope

    18 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Horrorscope: Fatal Awakening

    30 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Test: Final Revelation

    47 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • Gobby McGobblenutz Presents: The Art of the Dad Joke: Chapter 1

    17 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Advisor - Episode 1: Royal Pain

    52 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • Medieval Fantasy Survival Simulator

    26 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • Survivor Dieland

    19 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Journey - Episode 1: Whatever This Is

    22 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • Naked News

    14 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • The Questionably Quirky Quiz Show - Episode 1

    24 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • Survive or Thrive

    33 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • WTF is wrong with you?

    34 minutes playtime

    no achievements

 
The Test: The first game I played and definetely the strongest. The Test asks you “yes or no” questions about yourself and gives you a deep analysis of yourself at the end. Its simplistic like the rest, but it has some nice details. The ambiance is unnerving and it balances creepy and heartfelt pretty well. Secret Word: Fantasy

The Test: Hypothesis Rising: This is a sequel to The Test and it’s pretty much the same. They added situational questions to make it a little more interesting, but its no longer mysterious so it loses some intrigue. Secret Word: Talented

The Test: Final Revelations: Same as the other two but with some more interesting questions. They have “yes or no” questions, situational questions, and pictures in which you have to describe how they make you feel. The ending has a nice message and this is an overall nice trilogy, worth the 6 dollars. Secret Word: Greed

The Confession: I guess the fans dared them to make a game with only sexual questions, so they did. At first I thought it would be a mix of different dark secrets like, did you commit a crime or something like that. But no, its all sexual questions, and the middle schooler humor is strong in this one. I didn’t gain or lose much with this game, but I would not recommend it. Secret Word: Condom

The Horrorscope: This is just like The Test but with less effort. I would just get “The Test” instead. Secret Word: Cursed

The Horrorscope: Fatal Awakening. For only 10 percent of your life, this game promises to tell you how you’re going to die and how to avoid it. This is much like their other games with many shared questions like the others. It did get creepy though since my death prediction is a big fear of mine. It also told me not to go outside around a time that I had to go outside to walk to work O.O but spooks aside, these games are almost all the same and I’d still recommend The Test over this. Secret Word: Dirt

Gobby McGobblenutz Presents: The Art of the Dad Joke: A goblin tells you puns and dad jokes and you click yes or no if it made you laugh. The puns are nice but it went on for very long and I was speed running through dad jokes about half way through. I dont even remember my secret word.

The Advisor episode one: This one was a little bit different. It’s like a visual novel where you play a magician who has to answer questions to become the advisor for the king. Depending on your answers, it will determine the fate of the kingdom. Each time you answer a question your character has a line of dialogue, which adds some life to the game. The game ends on a cliffhanger and the players get to decide how they want the story to proceed. The only gameplay is answering questions like the other games, but its got some charm.

Medieval Fantasy Survival: You are in medieval times and you are asked questions to determine if you would survive the times. I had a 85.7 percent chance of survival and my Secret Word was Morale.

Survivor Dieland: You are in a made up place called Dieland and you are asked questions to determine if you would survive in Dieland. I forgot my Secret Word :/

The Journey ep 1: Whatever this is: This game was made for people who are suffering from depression or are just stuck in life and want to find new hobbies to help them break free of the rut they are in. It has a more serious tone then the others. It didn’t provide much for me but it may be helpful to others. Secret Word: Meditate

Naked News: There is no answering questions in this one. It’s a kinetic novel that takes place at a news station. It aims for offensive humor, but it just doesn’t land well.

The Questionably Quirky Quiz Show: Gobby McGobblenutz is back. This time he’s hosting a quiz show. He will ask you would you rather style questions and you have to answer truthfully. Such as “eat chicken or eat steak.” Then he will tell you if its a common answer that people answered or uncommon. The more uncommon answers, the more points you get. It’s actually kind of fun and I enjoyed playing it. My score was 431 and my Secret Word: is Beautiful.

Survive or Thrive: Another questionnare that tells you how well you’d survive in the wild. At the end it will give you a situation in which it thinks you would survive/escape in. Secret Word: Asylum.

WTF is wrong with you? A game that asks, would you do this dirty or offensive thing for a million dollars? You have to decide if you would do each scenario for a million dollars. Its a lot of gross out humor and I realized I dont need a million dollars that badly. Secret Word: Strange.

I did not play The Twins or the Summoning because both require you to have certain items and perform ritual stuff and I’m way to lazy to grab all of that. But that concludes the rest of the games. Thank you all for reading this giant giant post of mine!

Upcoming Games:

I’m looking forward to playing these games next!

  • Okami HD

    33 minutes playtime

    0 of 51 achievements

  • The Purring Quest

    68 minutes playtime

    2 of 23 achievements

  • Heavy Rain

    64 minutes playtime

    0 of 56 achievements

  • The Banner Saga 3

    10 minutes playtime

    0 of 101 achievements

  • Life is Strange: True Colors

    20 minutes playtime

    0 of 40 achievements

devonrv

I forgot my Secret Word :/

Secret secret, I've gotta secret!

adil

I also played the first two games of the Dark Pictures Anthology. So I was curious to see what you thought about them. And I must say, I’m happy to see we shared almost the same experience! Outside of the bugs luckily for me! xD

Anyway, my friend and I got really hooked on Man of Medan’s intro. The game felt a bit underwhelming sometimes but I still had fun and it was a nice experience overall.

And then we got into Little Hope full of expectation. But this game felt even more underwhelming sadly. Especially because of that ending as you said. It was really saddening, but I guess that’s what you get when you expect too much?

The only good point was we never encountered any bug or crash. We managed to beat both games without any technical trouble at all. I guess we got lucky on this point!

By the way, I felt like Heavy Rain was a bit hard to get started. It’s quite the old game now and it shows. I’m not a big fan on QTE either. But I enjoyed the story.

And happy birthday. (It’s never too late, right? xD)

stef

Thanks :) I’m hoping the more games they make the better they get. House of Ashes has some pretty good reviews. Maybe I’ll have a bug free experience this time :P.
I forgot to mention the intro! The intro is great and it makes the curator such a fascinating character!

Yeah I started Heavy Rain and it was definetely dated, but i’m excited to beat it since I have played Beyond Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human. Thanks for the birthday wishes, I hope you are having a good week!