There are spoilers in this, but I put them all at the bottom so I didn't bother tagging it so beware! Also don't read this if the mention of animal abuse will make you very upset!

For reference, I played this on challenging difficulty and I have never played any of these games before with the conceit of just not having to. I watched someone else play Until Dawn a loooooong time ago, and I watched someone play Man of Medan and that game seemed OK.

I've seen a lot of horror movies. I've seen a lot of bad horror movies. This is a bad horror movie, but not in the fun way. Do you like... Slasher films with little to no slashing? Do you like... bad Saw movies? So just most of Saw, don't answer that regardless because you won't like this either way. I really don't have anything against these vaguely interactive cinematic type games, they seem pretty cool honestly, I hope there are better examples than this one. I very rarely feel like I've had my time wasted playing a game or watching a movie. Watching bad horror movies that take themselves too seriously is fun! It's not fun when it's a 7-8 hour long game with literally no payoff! Every time characters are running around, hiding, unlocking doors, climbing walls, running from man, it's for nothing. I literally every time some character getting split from the gang and then scene resolves said out loud, "you didn't do anything you didn't learn anything you did nothing", and they continued to do nothing.

Also the conceit of this guy just being down on his luck and having someone randomly call him that can seemingly fix all of his problems that this RANDOM guy couldn't have possibly known about, is very funny in hindsight. There is nothing supernatural afoot here, at least they never say so. They sure make you want to think there is early on, but they don't really care. This killer is just a guy. He's not an animatronic, he's not a ghost or a "Devil", he's just a guy. He gets fucked up a lot and never seems to care, he fell off a fucking roof and did a literal slapstick family guy broken limbs pose and just stood up immediately, he gets his face cut open in a boat that crashes into a rock and explodes, totally fine. I assume the conceit is that it's something supernatural but they don't fucking TELL YOU THAT.

Again hackish horror stories like this can be fun but this overstays it's welcome badly and half of this cast is just insufferable. Also they aren't people. Director CEO guy who is CEO pilled and treats everyone like shit, guy who's scared of heights and also dumped his girlfriend that's pretty much it, girl who got dumped, girl who likes audio, girl that can hack things. These things don't even dominate their personalities it's just all they have going on. Their personalities are hating on each other insufferably for no reason, except audio girl and hacker girl who are lesbians and carry this game on their back until the very end when they are the product of one of the worst scenes in the game.

I guess I'll get into the spoilery stuff now. This fucking bozo is literally teleporting across the entire island constantly and they never explain how. "Oh well he had that sci-fi maintenance tunnel that he toooootally built himself" how did he get out of the wall he got trapped behind LITERALLY IMMEDIATELY. For the longest time playing this I just assumed there were multiple people involved, one of the characters even brings up that possibility at one point and is immediately shut down. So are there multiple people involved? I don't know, they don't fucking tell you anything ever! He even completely whiffs the boat they escape on and misses them and is SOMEHOW on the boat when they're in the middle of the lake, gets his face cut open, crashes into a big rock and explodes, and is still alive. Is there something supernatural afoot? Idk didn't seem like it don't ask me. Also I don't care if you don't have to do it but them giving you the option to kill the dog to make it stop barking is fucking gross. Especially when if decisions are already made so that both of the normal people will survive the scenario it literally doesn't change anything. I didn't do it obviously but I was still upset that I even had the option in the first place, feels fucking gross.

Bottom line, if this were a bad horror movie that took itself way too seriously for like an hour and a half it'd be fun! But it's an 8 hour long 40 dollar game! It's not fun and the few moments of gameplay that were literally just find a door to open move a thing and jump on it was fucking boring I would have rather they'd just not been there. Also I had a bug where one of my decisions I made got a character killed EVEN THOUGH I did exactly what I needed to do for them to live, so I restarted the scene from the beginning, did it again, still died, restarted, tried another method that lets them survive, still died, tried the last possible one, still died, fuck you. Fuck you especially because that specific scene is so overly gross out gross. Maybe this is a PC thing but I looked it up and other people also had this happen at this exact scene so seems like a pretty fuckin big oversight.