Tag Archives: Supermassive Games

Best of 2015 #5: Until Dawn

Until DawnUntil Dawn seems to attract faint praise, with reviews I’ve read and podcasts I’ve listened to featuring turns of phrase like “best 8/10 game ever” or “Night Trap but not crap”. The thing is, these statements are frequently tempered with a clarification that the game actually is very, very good. It’s what the first wave of ‘interactive movies’ promised to do, minus the bad acting and VCD-quality FMV. And it shows up the games of David Cage as the pretentious nonsense they are, even matching them on the technical level where they admittedly shine.

It’s apparent that I love the same teen slasher movies as the developers, with the films that I came of age watching, like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, clearly represented, along with classics old and new. The slow mechanics even make the dash of The Descent that’s in there less annoying than it has invariably been when action games introduce the late-game mutant enemies.

I’ll be interested to see whether Until Dawn keeps its appeal after a few years, when so much of the fun this time around came from chats with friends about your route through the game, who made it to the end in your playthrough and the horrible deaths of the characters that didn’t. Even completionists didn’t always need to chase that perfect run where everyone survives, the game making your one of several hundred permutations feel like yours alone. It’s a linear, narrative-led adventure without feeling as restricted and like a choose-your-own-adventure game as, say, something from Telltale.

I saw Until Dawn available for as little as £15 in the run-up to Christmas, not far off what you’d pay for a new horror movie on Blu-ray. And I guarantee you this will give you more entertainment.