The DTV sequel to Until Dawn's feature film, but as long as u keep that in mind and lower your expectations a bit it's not a bad time. HIGHLY recommend at least a few friends to play along with tho.

One thing I will give it over Until Dawn tho is that your choices do feel like they genuinely impact the story more beyond just who lives or dies, even tho that's still the big gimmick. It comes at the cost of less compelling characters and some serious jank (the game has a BAD pop up problem even by Unreal Engine standards) but it did make playing the game through twice more interesting.

Also also I am a complete baby with jump scares and this game got me BAD on a regular basis with them lmao.

If Resident Evil: Revelations was gaming’s Deep Rising, then this is the interactive equivalent of Ghost Ship. In other words, it’s a clichéd jump scare fest with attractive but uninteresting protagonists that is partially redeemed by the spooky vessel at the center of it. Much of the gameplay resembles a Resident Evil imitator from the late 90s, with awkward character movement and frequently unhelpful camera angles. The major mechanical innovation is the replacement of combat sequences with quick time events, which unsurprisingly ends up being a step backwards. The branching story paths are a neat idea (leading to a large number of distinct endings), but they don’t add a ton of replayability when the central twist is rather unsatisfying and the game is about 40% unskippable cutscenes. Still, as with its cinematic counterpart, sequences of characters sneaking around the rusting ship are just engaging enough to keep the whole endeavor from feeling like a waste of time.

Overall: A disappointing follow-up to Supermassive games breakout hit Until Dawn thanks to an incredibly short campaign and lack of new ideas, but fans of B movie horror might find it enjoyable enough.

Pros: If you were a huge fan of Until Dawn, this is largely the same just with weaker components, soundtrack and voice acting are solid, has that B movie horror charm, promise of better things to come with more games to follow.

Cons: Incredibly short, story is confusing and lacks cohesion, gameplay is repetitive and even sometimes downright boring when exploring.

Spirit Halloween has a tendency to be seen as a hokey gimmick pop-up store. Every product, while useful last minute for a costume, would likely break under gravity's force before even hitting the ground, if dropped. The cheapest most rudimentary plastic caricatures of whatever it may be that is under a hilariously generic alternative name to avoid copyright. The stores often find themselves propped up in a building no longer in use, & likely far too small to utilize the dimensions of said building, often taking up only 2/3rds of the space said building provides,. The only barrier that separates the products from the back-storage is a flimsy, inch thick cardboard that is just as pathetic as the decorations & costumes being sold there in the first place.

INTERMISSION

Once upon a time, I used to build these magnificent castles out of a series of toys that would be universally compatible with previous bundles from the same company. The packages would often include various walls, doors, ramparts, etc, enough variety & similarities to warrant no two castles looking the same between any amount of kids building them. One structure I had built was a very long wall of these plastic panels - the perimeter of a presumably much larger masterpiece that never was - it was just a linear husk that was barely able to be kept upright due to a lack of any foundation. I was quite proud of how it looked, at times, but as soon as I had looked at it from any angle that wasn't face-on, I would realize that I had created a sham.