Developer: Supermassive Games
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Release Date: 18th November 2022
Platforms: PlayStation, Xbox & PC
Reviewed on: Xbox Series S
▫️ Code provided by the publisher ▫️
There are certain occasions that are marked clearly on the calendar and monitored with anticipation. Birthdays, Christmas, payday, vacations … and the next Supermassive Games release. After Until Dawn, The Quarry and a whole string of Dark Pictures titles, it’s clear that the developer is a no-brainer for a damn good narrative horror. I’ve never met one I didn’t like and the Anthology games just get better and better and … better? Enter The Devil in Me.
Who doesn’t love a serial killer? Well, the victims perhaps, but for the rest of us they are a source of endless fascination. Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Jigsaw, the more twisted the better. Part of us wants to be hunted, wants to feel what it would be like to truly fear imminent death and the more painful and violent the better. The Devil in Me like its predecessors takes our innocent hands in its clawed ones and leads us to that veil. That’s my poetic way of saying it scared the shite out of me. The most important aspect of a horror game, film or book is the fright factor. While the scenario of “group gets picked off” is nothing new, The Devil in Me presents it in a delightfully dark and terrifying fashion.
There are a few early sections while the game was getting into first gear that felt a little tedious. For example having to walk all the way to the house where everything is clearly going to kick off. Could have done without that. But once things do get going expect proceedings to take a dark turn. Most horror games will make me jump once or twice. I lost count of the jump scares in The Devil in Me. I felt a huge amount of tension as I crept around wondering if the next scare would be the one to loosen my bowels.
The game has great pacing. Put that next to a beautifully creepy environment and a gleefully violent set of possible deaths and The Devil in Me becomes a worthy way to spend seven hours. That may sound short to some people, but I honestly wish more games were in that 7-10 hour range. It’s just enough for an intense blast and an experience that doesn’t drag but instead lingers in memory.
As usual, you are presented with a wide variety of choices to make and paths to go down. There’s nothing better than a terrible nail-biting choice that works out to your advantage but of course sometimes things go south with very little warning. There are some choices which feel quite random, meaning there’s no way to take an educated guess; it’s just A or B. One time I got it wrong and felt rather hard done by that I’d lost a character through chance. I was quite cross and certain words were said. But the next time I had a random A or B choice a character lived, and I felt like a god.
Characters can also die through your own incompetence in the QTE’s. I love to hate a QTE and I’m sad to say I lost a character through forgetting I was on Xbox and not PlayStation and mixing up where the X button was. Doh! I can hereby confirm that immediately switching off the console and hoping it didn’t autosave will not pull you back from death. That autosave is a quick-fingered son of a gun. There are plenty of Accessibility options to help ease the way if you’re not a QTE fan or you need more time etc. Kinda wish I’d gone for that myself.
No complaints about the story. It’s an interesting and fun premise that had me hooked from the start. Honestly, it would have made a great film, better perhaps than some of the trash from over the years. But as a video game the story really shines and by shines I mean drips with blood. The story, the environment, the tension, the jump scares, it all adds up to one of the best titles in The Dark Pictures Anthology so far.
Very important to most genres is a good character or two but perhaps unique to horror is the hope of an annoying character who you spend the entire film or game hoping will come to a nasty end. Take my character lost to the X button mix-up; I was gutted that I screwed up but also a little bit pleased because haha serves ya right. I’m sure the actors are all lovely though and the performances were all faultless.
Graphically The Devil in Me holds up against its predecessors and improves on some titles. I found Man of Medan a rather unexciting and bleak environment but this time there was plenty of scope for details and ambient lighting. It’s very rarely too dark but rather just dark enough to produce that uncomfortable and claustrophobic feeling that the walls are closing in – especially when they literally do just that.
The Devil in Me is a success. If you’re a Supermassive fan you’re not going to be disappointed. It’s more of the same format but this time with a premise and story that’s double the fun and deliciously gory.
-S.J. Hollis