After finishing Until Dawn, I became eagerly excited for what Supermassive Games' next outing is. Although an anthology franchise isn't exactly what I wanted or needed, I was still pretty hooked with it. It's a shame though that playing the game was just as boring as being stuck in the middle of the ocean.
First, before all of the terrible flaws that this game has, I want to point out all of what it does good, even if it may only be quite a few. For starters, I felt more encouraged to experiment with the characters' traits this time around compared to their previous game, instead of just trying to be kind all the time because of the surprisingly good dialogue system.
It also also looks so much better than Until Dawn in some areas, although, the facial animation just looks way too uncanny for my liking. The characters have these soulless stares that are very off putting even hours into the game.
One thing I hated though was the constant and immersion breaking loading screen in-between camera changes. There's nothing more annoying than enjoying a scene, only for it to be ruined by a sudden black loading screen for the next camera angle. Despite this though, I found the initial hour of the game to be completely enjoyable, albeit a bit slow, and I never wanted to drop it.
The longer I played the game though, the more flaws started to arise, and it really hampered the immersion. Weird bugs started to appear, the constant loading started to become longer, and the story just never managed to grab my attention once the action started.
It felt more like a PG-13 supernatural story, with not a single ounce of self awareness or originality in its plot. It just pretty much gives all of its scares right in the middle of the story and then just as you know, the game is abruptly at the 3rd act. The plot twist was also delivered in such a casual manner that makes it come across as anti climactic.
What's worse is that most of the gameplay section through the main setting of the game just consists of you doing brain dead QTEs and walking from a straight corridor of point A to B with little in the way of exploration. And when there is an exploration segment, there seems to be an invisible timer running in the background that makes exploration very discouraging and makes other characters react as if you're very incompetent if you don't reach the intended area in time. Because of this constraint to the gameplay, Man of Medan felt more like an interactive movie, and a bad one at that.
Despite how bad the game was I still wanted to try out the second campaign from another character's point of view, hoping that this could help save it, only to find out that this mode is completely missing from my game despite doing every single requirements and even checking if it was installed. It could probably be the result of a bug, and one that seems to not have any solution available online, so as of today, I can't play the other half of this mediocre horror game and I think I might even be better for it.
First, before all of the terrible flaws that this game has, I want to point out all of what it does good, even if it may only be quite a few. For starters, I felt more encouraged to experiment with the characters' traits this time around compared to their previous game, instead of just trying to be kind all the time because of the surprisingly good dialogue system.
It also also looks so much better than Until Dawn in some areas, although, the facial animation just looks way too uncanny for my liking. The characters have these soulless stares that are very off putting even hours into the game.
One thing I hated though was the constant and immersion breaking loading screen in-between camera changes. There's nothing more annoying than enjoying a scene, only for it to be ruined by a sudden black loading screen for the next camera angle. Despite this though, I found the initial hour of the game to be completely enjoyable, albeit a bit slow, and I never wanted to drop it.
The longer I played the game though, the more flaws started to arise, and it really hampered the immersion. Weird bugs started to appear, the constant loading started to become longer, and the story just never managed to grab my attention once the action started.
It felt more like a PG-13 supernatural story, with not a single ounce of self awareness or originality in its plot. It just pretty much gives all of its scares right in the middle of the story and then just as you know, the game is abruptly at the 3rd act. The plot twist was also delivered in such a casual manner that makes it come across as anti climactic.
What's worse is that most of the gameplay section through the main setting of the game just consists of you doing brain dead QTEs and walking from a straight corridor of point A to B with little in the way of exploration. And when there is an exploration segment, there seems to be an invisible timer running in the background that makes exploration very discouraging and makes other characters react as if you're very incompetent if you don't reach the intended area in time. Because of this constraint to the gameplay, Man of Medan felt more like an interactive movie, and a bad one at that.
Despite how bad the game was I still wanted to try out the second campaign from another character's point of view, hoping that this could help save it, only to find out that this mode is completely missing from my game despite doing every single requirements and even checking if it was installed. It could probably be the result of a bug, and one that seems to not have any solution available online, so as of today, I can't play the other half of this mediocre horror game and I think I might even be better for it.