The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me
Platform: PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox
Developer: Supermassive Games
Publisher: Namco Bandai
The latest and possibly best edition of their continuing survival horror anthology is presented by the writers of Until Dawn and The Quarry.
The first time we learned that The Dark Pictures Anthology had a season one was during the buildup to the release of this fourth season of the series and the leaks about what will come after. We may have missed the message. It doesn’t matter because each edition is essentially a solo story, but playing a franchise where the most recent edition is now the greatest is enjoyable.
Suppose the previous game, House of Ashes, felt vaguely inspired by Tomb Raider, albeit with the horror quotient ramped up. In that case, it’s possible to discern subtle tributes to games like Alone in The Dark and the first Resident Evil in The Devil In Me – even if its core subject matter is very much serial killers rather than zombies.
A prologue to the story is presented in which a newlywed couple checks into the World’s Fair Hotel in Chicago in 1893. Unfortunately for them, the moustachioed H. H. Holmes, one of America’s first serial killers, conceived, constructed, and operated this. Today, a hapless camera crew is attempting to make a TV program about the case when Holmes is caught and hanged.
The TV crew represents the cast of characters that you must try to keep alive until the game’s conclusion in true Dark Pictures fashion. This time, they are reasonably well thought out and portrayed, including the somewhat neurotic sound engineer and general factotum Erin, the feisty lighting engineer Jamie, the earnest and excessively devoted cameraman Mark, the vivacious presenter Kate, and the director Charlie, who is, to put it bluntly, a total ass.
The Chant
Platform: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X
Developer: Brass Token
Publisher: Prime Matter
A bang-average title isn’t going to cut it anymore, with The Callisto Protocol and Dead Space looming on the horizon with the horror genre seeing an unexpected but welcome rebirth. The Chant is regrettably just that. It’s a good game, but it will vanish as quickly as it appeared.
In this third-person game, the protagonist Jess has chosen to go on a spiritual retreat, which manages to go wrong in under 15 minutes. The game is about fending off psychedelic threats rather than running from them. The game eliminates any opportunity for tension to build by throwing you into a battle with another dimension after a ritual goes wrong. Not nearly as intriguing as what comes next.
The game, which has a cinematic edge, takes you through relatively straight environments while you battle enemies and solve puzzles. Heavy-handed animations frequently lock you into assaults in the fighting system, and the absence of a lock-on makes it more challenging to assess distance. You get some pretty cool powers, but you can only use them so much because of a meter whose capacity you never feel is quite total enough.
There are a few good puzzles between encounters, but they never progress far enough to be truly spectacular. The Chant has the impression of having been created solely for practical purposes. When the Jared Leto impersonation of a cult leader appeared on television, we sometimes really liked the five to six-hour title; other times, not so much.
But it’s crucial to remember that this isn’t a AAA game; thus, some of its aesthetics seem very abundant. When the sun is up, there are some beautiful images to appreciate, with vistas of the entire island and the surrounding seas. No matter how fierce the action becomes, everything goes smoothly thanks to a rock-solid 60 frames per second.
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