Review for Man of Medan. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 30/08/2019
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, produced by Bandai Namco and developed by Supermassive Games, is the first chapter of a 'video game anthology which will be published with every six months. This title represents a new experiment that arises halfway between a film production and a video game. The guys from Supermassive Games have achieved this thanks to the hard work done with previous titles: with Until Dawn we were catapulted into a narrative video game with noteworthy cinematic ideas and then with Hidden Agenda we tested the interactive-decision-making experience in a videogame.
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan represents the natural evolution of these two titles, but with a strong vocation towards auteur cinema. The diving level is very high to the point that sometimes it is not clear when the narrated sequence ends and when the interactive one begins.
Well, we just have to leave for this journey that will lead you to discover theimportance of choices and how they, most of the time, can lead to completely unexpected consequences and repercussions.
History or legend?
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan is inspired by a episode that occurred in 1948, with a story that is halfway between history and legend. The facts, reported in a Albany Times article, tell of a cursed ship, the SS Ourang Medan, whose entire crew was found lifeless and in inhumane conditions: someone or something took away the souls of the unfortunate sailors. History, buried in the depths of the abyss, is about to return to the surface, waiting for a new chapter of a book called Death.
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan has like protagonists four boys who decide to venture in search of wrecks and treasures, buried in the depths of the abyss. Captain Fliss, aboard the Duke of Milan, will accompany them in this adventure which unfortunately will prove to be a dead end nightmare.
A group of pirates unscrupulous will take the five hostage with the sole intention of asking for a ransom for their freedom. THEDestiny has another ending in store for them and a storm of biblical proportions will bring this cheerful crew to to cross the navigation route with that of a rusty wreck.
Obviously the imagination is not needed to understand that we are in front of a new episode of "Sometimes they come back". This ghost ship will be the stage for the events of The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, where you should make choices and make decisions that will lead to consequences and repercussions, both on your destiny and that of your friends.
The figure of the Curator deserves an honorable mention, a distinguished man with a grim presence who will often appear throughout the game and, as an omniscient and omnipresent narrator, will dispense advice and make notes in your history book.
The devil is hiding in the details
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan presents a remarkable level of detail, at times impressive. The work done by the guys at Supermassive Games is truly incredible, as they had to not only devising the basic idea but also imagining the whole game context, also because nowadays it is not very easy to find a wreck of a ghost ship to be inspired by.
Starting from initial graphic sketches we arrived at the reconstruction of the architectural elements of the boat, thanks to which it was possible reproduce the infrastructural models of the hull. The final render of the scenography is well done and we are very close to photorealism.
Being a horror and thriller video game, in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan was dedicated a lot of attention to lights, sounds and shots, which provide a good deal of anxiety and fear in one strongly claustrophobic environment.
The lights, in a ghostly ship like the one in our videogame, play a fundamental role and above all serve to provide a visual indicator of the areas of interest and the roads to be traveled. Moreover, the game of contrasts works very well to accentuate the surprise factor and highlight a protagonist's mood, as the manual of the perfect author horror film teaches us.
The aspect that impresses the most, however, is the quality and quantity of sound effects present in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan. Supermassive Games has done an excellent job, managing to sample and collate a number of respectable sound libraries. They decline perfectly both in the game environment but are also functional to the gameplay, further improving the player's immersion factor.
Il insistent footsteps close together, an 'shot under the stairs it's a beam of light that penetrates the cold walls rusty: you are not reading a book, this it's just a taste of what awaits you in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan.
Gameplay or movieplay?
We are facing a crossroads caused by the narrative style present in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan. The video game is divided into two types of sequences, those told and those played. Within the last typology we can further subdivide into decision-making moments (we'll talk about this in the next section) e interactive moments, by moving the character and pressing keys that are proposed on the screen.
The first problem that arises and that between the two types of sequences, the one told and the one played, is the absence of a “deadlift” or an indicator which warns the end of the first and the beginning of the second, so most of the time you are blown away as well as failing to fulfill the duty required by the sequence.
In The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, in our opinion it is more correct to talk about movieplay rather than gameplay. In this title from Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco, you have to abandon the classic mental schemes linked to the traditional video game and observe it all by pretending to be at the cinema, where the joypad from time to time it will transform youalternatively in actor and director.
Merging and making the two genres, the videogame and the cinematographic one, dialogue, is not easy, and this work is made even more complex by the themes dealt with by The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, horror and thriller. An example of this difficulty is given by the choice of shots. A camera that observes the scene from under the stairs, however functional it is in a film, leaves some perplexity in a video game because it risks not making people understand the right path to follow or even creating false expectations.
The gameplay or movieplay, if you prefer, is quite fluid and the loading of the sequences played take place in the background during those told. Most of the time this process is invisible, although sometimes fyear their appearance of freezes, thus ruining a topical and tense moment.
Choices, decisions, consequences and repercussions
“It is said that the slightest flapping of a butterfly's wings is capable of causing a hurricane on the other side of the world”.
This sentence based on the film The Butterfly Effect of 2004, is the one that best represents the basic idea of The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan where, as the Curator is keen to remember, our every choice and decision will always have consequences and repercussions. Throughout the game you will be asked to make choices and to do so you will have to direct the needle of the compass of destiny and formulate your decision. This operation, however simple and trivial it may be, will modify a series of factors that will decide the final outcome of your adventure.
The first aspect that is influenced by these decision-making algorithms is undoubtedly the characterization of the character, both in his behavioral traits but also in ways in which it will relate with the other protagonists throughout history.
The second and perhaps the most important element subject to variation is that of plot, that it will change according to your decisions. The flow of events is not always linear and obvious and in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan you will notice it from the very first moments of the game.
The compass mechanism is just one of the many decision-making systems that the video game features. Another method is given by interactions with the elements of the scenario: for example, if you approach a painting and interact with it, a premonition arises that anticipates a future game sequence. If we fail to react or aim poorly, the consequences and repercussions may be more than obvious.
Keep in mind that in The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, even if there are automatic saves, there is no concept of a checkpoint, so any left over is lost. As happens in real life, every choiceright or wrong, it is unique and unrepeatable and triggers a series of events leading to one of several endings. This is a great incentive to restart the game, once finished, and make new choices.
The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, the new title developed by Supermassive Games and produced by Bandai Namco, is the first chapter of an anthology of short stories that promises to bring the atmosphere of an author's horror into a video game. Mixing cinema with video games has never been easy and few have succeeded so far. The premises are very good and with some filings you can potentially give life to a new videogame narrative genre in episodes, an anthology of stories of terror. Let the nightmare begin.
► Man of Medan is a Simulation type game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 30/08/2019
