The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan - PS4 Horror Game | Multiplayer Story-Driven Adventure | Perfect for Game Nights & Thrill Seekers

Great graphics, story was lackluster compared to the others. Also short game. Took less than 4 hours to completeThe case was dented and the disc is damaged, it won't let me play the game. Please send me a new copy, I want to play this game so bad.I'm Giving Man of Medan 5 stars simply because for the price I paid for the game ($13.99) it delivers a solid experience although it wasn't as long or as scary as I had hoped. Until dawn is the brilliant game by supermassive games that got me hooked on the anthology series but Man of Medan isn't bad especially when you consider that theirs co-op gameplay with multiple endings.I can't wait to play new hope, house of ashes and The Quarry from what I've seen and read about them they're supposed to be much better than Man of Medan. Hope this review helps, happy gaming!Made by the same developers who made the brilliant game “Until Dawn” this game definitely followed in the footsteps of the interactive horror genre brilliantly, following the basic outlines of a branching story and how player choices can ultimately change the outcome of what happens and how this will all end.The plot:The plot takes you first to a short prologue in 1947 in Manchuria where the ‘Man of Medan’, an army ship transporting an unknown cargo, has been stationed, and we’re introduced to two drunk army grunts who start off the story and begin the narrative for what quickly reveals to us a ship that seems to be haunted.The rest of the game is played in the present, a group of friends, a medical student, Alex, his nerdy brother Brad, Alex’s trust-fund girlfriend Julia and her arrogant older brother Conrad head off on a scuba diving adventure to look for wreckages. The group is headed by Fliss, a serious and straightforward boat captain.Without giving too much of the plot away, while on open waters, the group are thrown into a storm and a dangerous situation which leads them to the ‘Man of Medan’, which they are forced to board. The ship is completely deserted except from the corpses of army officers from 1947 strewn all over the place. From there, they are separated and must try to find each other and find a way to escape the ship, all while being hunted by a small group of pirates and being terrorised by visions of ghosts that seem all too real.Gameplay:So, like ‘Until Dawn’ (which isn’t a prequel to the game so it’s not necessary to play) this is an adventure game and it runs incredibly similarly to it so if you’ve played that game, you’ll roughly know what to expect. If you’ve never played that, I recommend putting that next on your list, but I’ll give a quick rundown.So at each point in the game you’ll be given a character to control and you’ll navigate through the areas looking for a way out or be given a task to accomplish, and while doing this, you’ll be able to interact with various items throughout the area which will either be useful (such as knives or wrenches, etc) or be finding clues which will either help you in the future, or give you a bit of backstory as to what happened on the ship seventy years previous. When exploring the game you can find various paintings on the walls of rooms which, when interacted with, can provide you a premonition as to what could happen in the future of the game. These premonitions aren’t exceptionally explanative - they’ll give you a vague outline (lets say, for instance a glimpse of a character struggling to breathe or having heart problems) and then you’ll have to figure out what you’re meant to do to prevent that from occurring when the situation comes up. This foresight is only occasionally helpful depending on whether you made a smart choice or not - the game doesn’t always tell you at what point that choice needs to be made, so it makes you really think but also teaches you to make quick decisions.In this game, every little choice you make can affect how characters feel about each other, and if your relationship with the character falls or the character you’re playing may have angered another character, it can affect their decisions to help you or not if you’re struggling later. For instance, if you anger one of the pirates in the wrong way, they might not be so willing to save one of the character’s lives later when the situation arises. Even dialogue can change how your characters might later interact with each other so it’s important to really pay attention to what’s going on and what the other characters attitudes are in order to try and maintain a relationship. But then again, as this is a game with multiple outcomes and endings, you can completely and deliberately choose every decision that will anger other characters to get the worst outcomes possible just for entertainment value. It’s really up to you how you play. A lot of the character’s lives a lot of the time can be dependent on how you’ll handle QuickTime events (button mashing, hitting buttons at the right moment, moving the right direction, etc) so pay attention and try to master this as quickly as you can, it’s important.Every now and then in the game, a ‘Bearing’ meter will pop up depending on a sentence you’ve had your character say, a thing you’ve had them do or an item you’ve had them interact with. What this indicates is that your interactions have changed the course of how the story will run, such as you’ve picked up a knife, and now, the story will alter itself to give you a different situation because you have that knife (such as you’ll be able to defend yourself during an attack).If you like happy games where no one ever gets hurt and the characters always make it out alive, this is NOT the game for you, as your characters can die any time during a number of situations, all it takes is you missing a button, or doing the wrong thing, making the wrong decision and that’s it...there’s no rewind to try again if the character dies IF the game saves immediately after it occurs (however if you quit the game and reload it you can try again but the issue is it’ll make you play a large segment of the chapter to get there, so it’s not always worth it). If you get to the end and half the characters died, you always have the option to replay and try to do better again. What could be better than a game where you actually can change an ending? Even replaying this and knowing the outcome it’s not always easy to prevent something from happening as the game often throws a curveball to you or your reflexes aren’t quick enough and it makes for a really challenging replay.My ThoughtsThe backdrop of the game is interesting but I felt it got a little too ‘Samey’. I was used to a lot of diverse areas to explore That kept me from getting too bored in previous games but this isn’t like that. There’s not much to explore here that isn’t actually the ship, and a lot of the ship looks similar other than a few different set pieces. A lot of the ship’s exploration involves your character traversing down narrow claustrophobic hallways leading to cabin doors that aren’t always visible because the angle is straight on so I know I missed a lot of collectibles and clues along the way. It makes a more diverse playthrough for next time but it gives you a lot of opportunity to miss areas because a lot of it all looks the same, doors aren’t always obvious and the corridors are so winding that you can quickly get lost if you don’t have other characters nearby to show where you’re meant to be heading. The only thing I really disliked about this game was very repetitive corridors and awkward corners that made movement a bit clunky, feeling like you were stuck at times, parts where you can’t even see your character behind a wall.The graphics are superb and beautiful and the atmosphere is stunning and creepy. There’s a real tense feeling about the ship and you get that just from how the characters move from place to place, their expressions and reactions to sounds and sights. It really pulls you in visually. The facial animations are nice but not too hyper realistic but you can definitely see the actors behind them (Shawn Ashmore for instance, who many will recognise).The storyline is really good but the characters aren’t too special (I feel like the game doesn’t let you get into the characters enough though and it hurts their likability - I’d have preferred an extra chapter to let us get to really know them as it all feels a wee bit rushed). As it’s a horror game, you can expect a lot of unexpected jumpscares, scary visuals, blood and gore in places, quick time events and fights...it’s definitely not for the weak of heart. The game is meant to be played in the dark and it’s definitely a better experience if you wear headphones so you can get the full ambience of being in the dark with the sounds moving around you.For this price point, I expected a game that was far shorter than it actually is, it’s quite a long game and there’s a lot of parts where you can actually take a decent amount of time to just explore without anything scary happening which I like, especially as the game is full of collectibles to find and premonitions to hunt for. If you like interactive horror, definitely get it, especially if you’re into the kind of horror that’s more like an interactive movie than a game. Definitely worth the asking price.Oh and I feel like I should mention, you can play this with other people (although I haven’t tried it yet), so that could be good for you and a few friends for a few nights in! There’s two methods of playing with others, which is you can play online with a friend or you can play by passing along your dual shock controller to them (this is specified in the option for shared play but I won’t bother trying since I feel like interactive horror is a solo journey, lol).Edit: I’ve completed this game three times now and I’m dropping a star because a lot of the outcomes have no explanation or are a bit vague - sometimes you’d find a character dead but didn’t know why. Your characters would be promised a rescue but didn’t actually get it and it’s never explained. I feel like there’s weird sort of inconsistent disjointed jumps and that as much attention wasn’t taken with this as there should have been. It COULD have been definitely as good as ‘Until Dawn’ but the characters being mostly quite unlikable took me out of caring if any died or not. I didn’t actually care about ANY of them enough to think ‘wow, I’m sad that character died’. It was ‘Oh well, that character died. They were a jerk anyway’. I hope that the developers have a good look at reviews and try to update the game accordingly so it’s less disjointed, makes a bit more sense and doesn’t feel like you’re ‘missing information’.It’s still worth getting but it’s definitely not a masterpiece in interactive horror like I initially thought it was going to be. It still needs work. A lot of work. I’m still looking forward to the next instalments of the dark anthology series (I’ve read there’s going to be somewhere between six and eight in total) and ther’s a trailer for the next game (‘Little Hope’) at the end of this game’s credits.Until Dawn was great with a steady build up of tension and a good development of the story. You also started to care for the characters and wanted at least a few of them to get out of their nightmare. It was all well done and warrented multiple play throughs.Man of Medan has zero tension, little narrative development and you couldn't care less for the characters. In short, a bloody awful game/story. I might play through it a 2nd time as it's a pretty short game, but I really am very disappointed with it.The game then has the cheek to trailer the next game in this anthology..................I played Until Dawn until I’d completed every path, got every trophy etc. It was a *good* story.Man of Medan is a very short story, and I’d say 50% of the time is spent getting to the location where the main event is to take place. The clunky control system which just about worked in Until Dawn, does not work well traversing narrow ship’s corridors. I know I missed many clues because it’s not always apparent, due to annoyingly forced camera angles, where exactly you can go.There was also one location in particular where I really wanted to rummage around and see if there were any other points of interest, but the game wouldn’t allow me to advance to the other side of the open plan room!The game relies heavily on jump scares — a blast of music + something visual to make you jump. This grew repeatedly tiresome. There were a couple of set-pieces which were nicely done I suppose, but nothing to get enthused over. This is a worthy £15 game though, so bear that in mind when the price inevitably drops.By the end — and the end was sudden, far too abrupt — I still wasn’t sure exactly what had been going on. Of course, the intention is that I will play it again, but sadly I’m not sure I can find the enthusiasm for such a limp narrative.The best I can say about Man of Medan is that it is no Until Dawn. A darn shame; an opportunity wasted.I loved Until Dawn and this works the same way....... without the tension, storyline or playability. I don’t like to say it but the game is awful and I’ve requested a refund. A truly terrible gameThe latest offering from Supermassive Games follows in much the same vein as Until Dawn and as a disclaimer I feel I should say that if this game had come first, my rating would probably have been Ia bit higher.Pros:-Sound & Voice acting: The cast do a great job, particularly Pip Torrens as the Curator. The sound is very well constructed and helps induce the unsettled atmosphere throughout.-Graphics: This looks utterly fantastic and I had no performance issues.-Jump scares: Very effective, albeit a bit too heavy.Cons-Story & Characters: The premise seems to be pulled quite heavily from the 2002 movie 'Ghost Ship', tied in with some urban myth stuff about the Ourang Medan. The story is not terrible by any means but just seems a bit contrived and predicable. There are ALOT of jump scares which can be a plus, however here it comes at the detriment of the story itself.-Characters: Unlike Until Dawn I didn't find any of the protagonists' background engaging. The actors did a good job with what was there but I felt as though almost all the characters lacked depth.-Length and pacing: I finished Man of Medan in <5 hours. This is not wildly out of the ordinary for horror titles but not at this price point; £15-£20 is more appropriate. I couldn't believe it when the credits rolled; the story abruptly seemed to end and I was left expecting more. Particularly frustrating as the there is a trailer for the next game in the series during credits, essentially leaving me feeling as though Supermassive's decision to go episodic shows that there will be less content in each game than there should be and at a higher price than it should be.-Replay value: The developers have tried to push replay value in that different choices can effect the story. For someone who is unhappy with their choices first time around this works, but I essentially made largely right choices and was happy with the resolution, so I have no motivation to play it again at all.All in all, I would recommend the game as one you should try, but perhaps wait until it is on sale at £15. It has the scares, it is engaging and will keep you entertained for a evening or two. It's just not quite up to the same lofty standards as its predecessor. 3.5/5