Until Dawn (PS4)

Until Dawn released in 2015 as a PlayStation exclusive. It's your classic teen slasher/horror movie, where you make all the decisions instead of screaming at the TV, "Why did she go in there?!". Not many people survive slasher movies, will you save anyone, or no one?

First things first, even though they're made by different developers, the gameplay is identical to Heavy Rain. This is more of a cinematic experience. Very little gameplay and it's all about the story and your decisions. The characters are real actors, and you may even recognise a couple. The game stars Rami Malek (Mr Robot), Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Peter Stormare (Prison Break) among others. There are eight characters and throughout the story you will play as all of them. Initially, you can save everyone and they can also all die, for me, only three survived my first playthrough and I tried to save them all.

Josh and his twin sisters, Beth and Hannah invite all they're friends to the 'cabin in the woods'. Most of their friends play an embarrassing prank on Hannah, causing her to (stupidly) run out of the cabin at night, alone. Beth gives chase to find her, and ultimately leads to their deaths, falling off the cliff together. A year after the twins disappearance (none of their friends know they're dead) Josh invites the same friends back to the cabin, to party and remember his sisters. Everyone returns and events start to take place.

In between each chapter, you're in an office with a therapist. He asks you questions and you're given choices. Things like what scares you most or which of the characters you like better after getting to know them. It makes you think carefully about your choices. Will you encounter spiders if you say you're more afraid of them? Will this character die if I say I prefer them? You're too scared to pick an answer and too busy thinking what could ultimately happen. After all, choice matters here.

The acting is fantastic, Peter Stormare in particular is brilliant. The characters are very likeable, some are a lot harder to like than others. A character I thought would annoy me, ended up being my favourite, that was Mike. He seemed to be one of the more favoured characters, as he was given a lot of time. Another favourite of mine was Chris. He was funny and very likable. The dialogue is good, but there are certainly a lot of poor lines. Seeing as it's a game full of horn teenagers, there's a lot of cringey sexual innuendos. "Sex-capade", that's all I'll say. As I said earlier, you get to play as all the characters, some were a lot more involved, which I found disappointing because I'd like to have seen more of some others.

It's a very intense game, you're always on your toes that something will happen or your choice will have a drastic consequence. My issue was that the game hounded you with jump scares right at the beginning. Honestly it just frustrated me and made me not want to play. They throw far too many so soon as nothing's really happening. Once the games takes a more frightening turn, the jump scares slow down. It's a fantastic story, it goes a completely different direction than what you'd originally expect. It's not the only twist either, but there is one twist most players would expect. The game plays heavily on 'The Butterfly Effect' and there's a table that shows your decisions and what ultimately happens for that choice. It's really helpful to see why something happened if it doesn't seem like it should've.

There were also collectables that helped with choices in the story. There were clues about the mystery man and other things that helped influence your choices. There were also totems, some showed dangerous activities and even characters deaths, seeing these put you on edge and made you fully aware of what could happen and want to look out for. You could pick up and inspect items, most gave more information to the story, but weren't needed to be picked up if you weren't interested in the extra story.

Most gameplay was just quick time events, but the standout for me was the 'stay still', literally put your controller the fuck down and down move a muscle. These moments were amazing! They were so tense and absolutely terrifying if you fucked up. I literally froze, my hands stuck in the air, my breathing was on hold. I was terrified! There's some great camera angles, they let you see you character and vast spaces of the area you're in. The flashlight was great, you used it to look around and the light pointed where ever you aimed the camera with the right analog stick.

There were also character stats, they showed how strong or weak the relationship was between each character. I didn't see the point of it really, I don't think it really influenced much. It's got all the classic horror tropes, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me want to watch all those classic 80s slasher movies.

If you liked Heavy Rain and Telltale's story based games, you'll love this, unless you scare easy and aren't fan of horror and gore. I'm not huge horror fan, but I'm a massive story and choice game fan. This was my kinda shit. Now excuse me while I go watch Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.

7.9/10