A promising start

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man Of Medan
Xbox One

THERE’S A huge lack of scary titles currently out on the market. Aside from the release of a few choice offerings such as the remake of Resident Evil 2 last year, the gaming landscape seems to have largely eschewed the genre; not many developers appear willing to try their hand at creating the next horror classic. Thankfully, Supermassive Games is not among them. From its humble beginnings making downloadable add-ons for the Sony PlayStation 3 platformer Little Big Planet in 2009, the independent company based in Surrey, England has come a long way; now, it’s recognized as an award-winning creator of content that pushes the envelope.

Indeed, Supermassive Games has continually sought to challenge itself. In 2015, it came up with the surprise hit Until Dawn. The gaming equivalent of a slasher film gained critical praise for a unique capacity to combine engrossing storytelling with immersive gameplay. The product likewise spurred the developer to take the concept further, partnering with Bandai Namco in its intent to explore the boundaries of interactive horror. The result of the collaboration: a collection of eight standalone installments slated for release six months from the last.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan is the first of the eight titles to hit store shelves. Released on the PS4, the Microsoft Xbox One, and the personal computer via Steam last August, it’s a grim tale focusing on the legend of the missing Indonesian ghost ship Ourang Medan, and of the five adventurous divers forced to survive within after having been taken captive by pirates in search of treasure. Throughout the interactive narrative, gamers are compelled to take control of the characters and make choices based on logic or emotion, or both, with the consequences of the choices accordingly changing the flow of the story.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan relies on a simple premise to push forward, but structures the plot as to produce multiple endings based on the gamers’ decisions. The characters themselves evolve based on the aforesaid decisions, with developments then affecting interpersonal ties. Once in a while, it employs formulaic elements and comes up with stilted dialogue. For the most part, however, it succeeds in building up tension and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty critical to immersive survival horror. For all its cliched beats, it invariably feels in touch with what its audience wants, and manages to hammer home the point that all actions have reactions with aplomb.

As with Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, there is causality to every single choice. From the outset, the story takes shape in accordance with the decisions of gamers, down to what words they opt to have their characters say in a given conversation. Some decisions can prove beneficial as a whole, while others may be fatal. An untimely (and sometimes unfair) demise isn’t uncommon, and the story doesn’t stop with the death. Rather, the loss is acknowledged, and the narrative continues to be shaped — until, that is, all characters are dead, or the mystery of Ourang Medan is solved.

Standard quick-time events and exploration segments pad the gameplay, and while they feel a bit intrusive at times, they admittedly help frame the story. In this regard, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan benefits from its excellent rendering on the Xbox One. It runs crisply and smoothly, with little to no stuttering — a technical feat considering that the environments look unnervingly lifelike. The music and voice tracks are likewise spot on, helping provide an appropriately suffocating atmosphere, especially as it ramps up to its climax.

To be sure, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan isn’t without its flaws. Along with good points, it has also borrowed some of Until Dawn’s bad ones. For instance, it forces gamers to empathize with largely unlikable characters; the investment of time and effort can be undervalued given the borderline-abhorrent personalities involved. Moreover, occasionally stiff and awkward motion-capture movements — while amounting to nitpicks in the grand scheme of things — draw gamers out of the otherwise-immersive experience.

Given the narrative structure, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan works best with cooperative play, which has gamers spending much of it separately in the leadup to the denouement. In this regard, the destination becomes less important compared to the journey. Of the various endings, the worst ones reveal nothing of value about the overarching story, while the best one comes off more like a sucker-punch twist than a truly satisfying payoff to five hours or so of gameplay. Admittedly, its replay elements — repeating it to make different choices and see different outcomes — form part of the main attraction. Because it fails to give a satisfying conclusion even at its finest, though, it winds up being betrayed by the extremely high expectations it had set for itself.

On the whole, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan gives the series a promising start. It offers a superior multiple-player run-through, its flawed story notwithstanding. It could have been much, much better, however, were its endings, and its characters, a little more fun, a little more interesting, and a little less random. Which, in a nutshell, makes it more of a promise than a fulfillment of one. Knowing Supermassive Games, better titles lie ahead.

THE GOOD:

• Good premise with great buildup and great atmosphere

• Choose Your Own Adventure type of survival horror, with the story integrating gamer actions well

• Outstanding cooperative gameplay

THE BAD:

• Unsatisfying endings

• Unlikable characters.

• Occasionally stiff movements

• Quick-Time Events feel like padding sometimes

RATING: 7.5/10

POSTSCRIPT: Italian videogame artist Chris Darril wore many hats in bringing Remothered: Tormented Fathers to fruition, and his labor of love paid dividends by way of critical and commercial success following its release on the personal computer (via Steam) in early January 2018. In creating, writing, and directing Stormind Games’ entry to the survival horror genre, he set out to pay homage to Clock Tower, industry veteran Hifumi Kono’s highly acclaimed classic adventure series. And, for the most part, he managed to do so with aplomb. Positive reviews, even from his peers, became the norm, leading to the eventual release of ports on the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4.

Not coincidentally, Stormind Games likewise ventured to put out a Nintendo Switch version of Remothered: Tormented Fathers. Collaborating with Tokyo-based publisher DICO, it managed to find its creation on the Japanese eShop in the middle of last year, well before its scheduled release for the hybrid console’s North American, European, and Australian markets. The availability was sudden and met with little fanfare, but those who looked forward to it wasted no time purchasing it at its affordable ¥2,400 price point.

As things turned out, there was ample reason for the delay in the release of Remothered: Tormented Fathers beyond the Land of the Rising Sun. For all the enthusiasm that greeted its arrival on digital retail, it proved far from ready. Suffering from optimization problems, it was quickly pulled from the Japanese eShop and subjected to technical fine-tuning in order to, per Stormind Games itself, “meet the developer’s award-winning pedigree… We are committed to providing an immersive and gripping experience for the player. The extra time for the project will help us reach that goal.”

Significantly, Remothered: Tormented Fathers would have another false start, so to speak. Stormind Games moved the official release date yet anew to early September, although only after it issued a patch close to two months after did it feel like the product was truly ready for public consumption. And, in retrospect, it was right to think the way it did. Not for nothing are there essentially two sets of reviews of and for it: one before the patch was available for download, and one after the application of said patch addressed programming missteps.

The storied past notwithstanding, Remothered: Tormented Fathers — or, to be more precise, its latest iteration — cannot but be deemed worthy of gamers’ time. It certainly sets up its much-improved gameplay well with a story designed to get gray cells working overtime. Even the title prompts introspection; the official website discloses it to be an amalgamation of “REM” (for rapid eye movement), “moth,” “mother,” “other,” and “red” in obvious reference to its survival horror predilections. And the narrative, which starts with 35-year-old Rosemary Reed visiting the home of Dr. Richard Felton under false pretenses in order to investigate the disappearance of Celeste, the latter’s daughter, is chockful of twists and turns reminiscent of Silent Hill offerings.

Darril has envivioned Remothered to be a trilogy, so it’s no shock to find Tormented Fathers replete with unanswered questions. That said, the manner in which the story develops, and the puzzles gamers have to solve en route to unfolding it, figures to keep them engrossed from the get-go. Unfortunately, it remains technically challenged on the Switch, unable to keep steady frame rates and susceptible to stuttering. It’s passable at best whether played with the console docked or in handheld mode, suffering from soft tones and occasional artifacting, as well as from input lags.

The good news is that Remothered: Tormented Fathers rewards patient gamers with a satisfying denouement, the inevitable sequel notwithstanding. Make no mistake; it’s a challenge to negotiate on the Switch — and the excellent rendition of cutscenes serve only to underscore the wanting visuals. Parenthetically, the audio mix is lacking at best; spatial feedback and aural fidelity and balance are poor to nonexistent. No doubt, hardware limitations contribute to the hurdles Stormind Games had to go through in porting it. That said, it winds up riding too much on its haunting atmosphere to deliver a gripping narrative worthy of the time of even jaded gamers.

All things considered, Remothered: Tormented Fathers can fairly be adjudged a good release that had the potential to be much, much better. For fans of the genre, the hope is that Stormind Games learns from its missteps and delivers on a superior sequel. Meanwhile, those not able to play on any platform but the Switch are left to look at the bright side and consider it positively in its entirety. The rest may want to look elsewhere. (7/10)

THE LAST WORD: The one-and-a-half-hour preview of Baldur’s Gate 3 that developer Larian Studios gave at PAX East in Seattle, Washington over the weekend has gamers pursing their lips in anticipation. The two decades of silence from the intellectual property certainly adds to the hype, but the demo has proven nothing short of spectacular. Even as the role-playing game will keep familiar Dungeons & Dragons elements, it figures to likewise benefit from the Ghent, Belgium-based company’s previous works, among them the Divinity series.