![]() ![]() False walls that shift around you are intended to disorientate and induce panic, but instead prove to be little more than a minor inconvenience as you saunter from one end of the obstructed hallway to the other looking for the one door that doesn’t have a locked padlock icon floating in front of it. ![]() The mansion itself is rich with ornate detail and atmosphere – every walk down a darkened hallway seems slightly more hair-raising when accompanied by scratchy opera music revolving on an old gramophone – but it too rarely feels particularly dangerous to explore. Read the full The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes review It gives us a tantalizing look at what could be coming in the future. However, the claustrophobic scares work effectively, and the central mystery of House of Ashes signifies a return to what fans loved about Until Dawn. The script could use some polish and the characters could be a little more outside the box. It’s a QTE-filled horrorfest that is often stretching against the limitations of its budget. In many respects, you know exactly what you’re getting with The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes. What We Said About The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes There are certainly secrets to find, like the premonitions that hint at potential character fates, but there’s also boring crate-pushing environmental puzzles and balance-beam walks that do little but pump the brakes on your progress forward. There are significant stretches spent meandering around in the gloom, shimmying along ledges and crawling under fallen trees in the hotel’s island surroundings where you are safe in the knowledge that absolutely nothing can hurt you when you’re outside of an interactive cutscene. Such tension is rarely maintained for long, however, since despite the variety of torture chambers to be found in its sadistic setting, the main thing that The Devil in Me seems hellbent on killing is time. The occasional encounters with him successfully ratchet up the tension even though they each rely on the reused set of run or hide decisions and quicktime events that have long become the standard in Supermassive’s horror template. Holmes who stalks the separated members of your squad from the shadows like a bowler hat-wearing Michael Myers. A more physical threat is the mysterious masked assailant dressed as H.H. There was still a solid serving of scares though, typically delivered via the sudden jolting to life of the warped animatronic hotel workers and residents, first introduced in the form of an ominously silent bartender in the hotel bar and growing increasingly twisted in design as the story progresses through the darkest recesses of the building. There’s just very little warmth to anyone on screen, and thus when three members of the team were snuffed out during my seven-hour playthrough, each of their grisly fates elicited shrugs of apathy instead of shrieks of anguish. Uncovering the clues about the hotel’s disturbing origins and the true identity of its owner remained a gripping endeavour, and I was definitely more preoccupied with piecing its central mystery together than I was with ensuring its five playable leads each remained in one piece by the end.ĭeveloper Supermassive Games did a much better job at adding a believably human spark to its cast via the friendly quips in The Quarry earlier this year, but here any such attempts at playful banter all too frequently fall flat, and it doesn’t help when the lines are often delivered with dead-eyed stares and stilted movements that make it seem like each character is literally scared stiff. ![]() Unlike the previous installments in The Dark Pictures Anthology which were each inspired by supernatural evils, The Devil in Me’s roots in real historical events brings a far more plausible edge to its horror, which I personally find far more compelling than fantastical tales of ghosts and vampires. But the promise of bed and breakfast soon gives way to the threat of bedlam and bloodlust as it becomes clear that Du’Met isn’t just intent on recreating the look and feel of the World’s Fair Hotel, but reenacting the horrifying events that took place within its maze-like structure too. The team is effectively there just to grab footage that will lend some authenticity to its production, and indulge in the lavish hospitality of reclusive hotel owner Granthem Du’Met. Holmes’ house of horrors would seem easier to turn down than the volume on a silent movie, but it proves to be too good to refuse for a small crew of filmmakers struggling to produce a documentary on America’s first serial killer. An unsolicited invitation to spend the night in a remotely located reconstruction of H.H. The Devil in Me's premise is certainly a tantalizing one. ![]()
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