39. The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan || PlayStation 4 || 11.17.21
As a planned eight-entry anthology series, The Dark Pictures is Supermassive Games' follow-up to their well-received title Until Dawn. Adopting familiar gameplay and tones as its predecessor, the collection offers more stories to be shared and decided upon by the player's involvement but in a shorter format while also allowing for a shared two-player experience. The anthology begins with Man of Medan, which, honestly, left me feeling more like I had played Man of Meh-dan.
As previously mentioned, each entry in The Dark Pictures allows for a solo or two-player experience, with my playthrough adopting for the former. Having just played Until Dawn within the past month, a lot of mechanics and details felt the same, which is something I enjoyed. However, the execution was not. As an interactive adventure title, its success is reliant upon the weight of player-input. Unfortunately, it felt that moments of critical decision made little difference to the unfolding story; additionally, these moments felt far and few between.
Critical to every adventure title, well-defined characters are key to a promising game. Again, Man of Medan struggled with this aspect too. At the end of the game, I understood who the characters were just as much as I had within the first hour of playing. While playing, there is almost zero character development. At the same time, there is almost zero character interaction between themselves. Even during free-roaming moments with characters in the vicinity, there is not even the option to speak to others. Just as Until Dawn, decisions determine characters' traits and relationships, yet this crucial element to the series felt the least developed. In the end, it felt as if my decisions had no effect on how characters interacted with others or, at the very least, responded to situations.
Relying upon quick-time events, this aspect generally did well. However, the lack of variety in them was a little disappointing. Unlike Until Dawn, which required more aim-and-respond type inputs, Man of Medan now offered only one or two of these moments. I personally enjoy the more action-oriented responses, so seeing this mechanic become largely diminished was disappointing. However, a new type of player response was added in the form of heartbeat control. While not a quick-time event, it does relay on timed button presses, and I did find this aspect to be successful. At times, the meter's tempo may change more than once, which turns a stressful moment even more so.
Lastly, and, quite frankly, I found the story to be underwhelming and, surprisingly, not scary. Perhaps this is in part to the characters, but, even on its own, the story did not feel as strong as what Until Dawn offered. With a weak cast and half-length story compared to its predecessor, Man of Medan suffers from needing more detail and world-building.
As each of the subsequent entries in the anthology follow a shorter narrative experience, I can only hope that these entries address these shortcomings. Until Dawn exceeded well with more of an expanded story and developed characters, so perhaps follow-up anthology entries can somehow find a means to lean more in to what made Until Dawn exceed so well.