Until Dawn: Modern horror Caged on PlayStation 4
Teens go into cabin. Cabin is in the woods. Slashers are in the cabin. Seems simple, no? Until Dawn, Supermassive Games' exclusive new horror game for the PlayStation 4, is a little unclear with its intentions, though. Are the slashers within its cabin original freaks that are more than they appear to be or just impressions of the classics?
Dawn doesn't just borrow the scenery from myriad horror flicks like Evil Dead and Cabin Fever. It wears its influences and references so brazenly on its sleeve that you'd almost expect to be a post-modern genre riff a la Joss Whedon's Cabin in the Woods. The 20 minute demo Sony brought to New York this month just wasn't enough to determine what it's driving at one way or another, but Until Dawn certainly trades in some extreme situations. Whether those situations will actually be scary depends first on how the game plays out in full, and second on whether Supermassive clears up some troublesome bugs.
Ashley (Galadriel Stineman of The Middle and True Blood) and Josh (Rami Malek of Need For Speed) are apparently having a rough night. The demo opens with these teen lovebirds trapped in the basement of an old friend's cabin one year after a tragic accident wrecked their group of friends. A burly psychotic, with the stringy hair plus bodybuilder physique combo of Rob Zombie's Michael Meyers and a fright mask straight out of Saw, is hunting the pair. Ashley's also seeing a ghostly woman disappearing down hallways. Josh, meanwhile, insists that the power outage and other freaky happenings in the house aren't supernatural but just a crazy prank of some kind.
Dawn is written to type. Ashley and Josh sound every bit as incredulous, and unfortunately dim-witted, as every other teenager trapped inside a horror movie. Josh tells Ashley to ignore the crazy things happening right in front of both of them, while Ashley slowly repeats everything that's happening around them and talking about "last year" in that infuriating expository tone that compels audiences to yell at the screen, "Yes! The killer's real! Stop wasting time, you damn kids!" That the dialogue's up to par with contemporary flicks like Sinister will be either good or bad depending on what you want in your horror.
If it seems surprising to compare a game to a range of horror movies rather than horror video games, that should tip you off to how Until Dawn plays. More than two years ago, Sony explicitly pitched it as "just like your favorite teen horror movies" back when it was a PS3 game with PS Move controls. Reborn on PlayStation 4, Dawn looks superficially like survival horror games such as The Evil Within. In your hands, Ashley's steered around in third-person and can pick up stray items like a key that unlocks a creepy dollhouse that's set up to recreate that sinister incident one year ago.
With the exception of tilting the Dualshock 4 controller up and down to direct her flashlight, though, Until Dawn gives you very little control of Ashley. Even walking around the dank basement is awkward. I had to fight against the controls as I tried to steer her into corners of the room to explore as the game constantly tried to redirect her down the path towards the next jump scare or story prompt. Direct action was limited to odd motion control gimmicks (i.e. jerking the controller to the left to tear the label off a mysterious package) or making binary choices.
Should Ash confidently tell Josh that they have a responsibility to search for their friend Sam or should she express doubt and fear? Should she follow Josh into the dark room with the heavy door that may close behind them or walk into the side room where she saw some shadowy figure walk by? More than anything else, Until Dawn resembles David Cage's games like Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls albeit with even more limited influence on what's happening in the game.
The demo does culminate in a jarringly violent scene, placing you in control of Josh rather than Ashley. No matter what choice you make in the demo, the two are captured by the burly killer in the mask and tied up under a pair of descending saw blades. The killer gives Josh a choice straight out of Saw: pick up the loaded pistol between the duo and either shoot yourself, shoot Ashley, or let the saws kill both of you. I chose to shoot myself, thinking the game would stop me in time. Sony's staring down a capital M for Mature from the ESRB as it didn't stop me at all.
Shocking violence doesn't make for a good or even attention-grabbing game on its own, though. Neither do jump scares with monster faces suddenly appearing behind doors, campy dialogue, or a self-aware run through of horror tropes straight out of Scream. At this point, Until Dawn is an undeniably gorgeous game with characters and lighting that set the PS4 game about anything that could have been done on the PlayStation 3, but even flashy graphics can't carry a game. Right now, Sony and Supermassive have demonstrated their knack for mimicking modern horror movies and simplifying Quantic Dreams' cinematic style of gameplay. But can they scare you? We'll see next year.
[Images: SCEA]
