The Dark Pictures Anthology hasn't been stellar with its release up to this point. Not that it's terrible. Man of Medan and Little Hope were a fine way to kill a few hours. House of Ashes is definitely better than the previous two. There are still some of the weaknesses of the series. It still doesn't feel particularly interactive since sometimes you switch to a character to watch a cutscene with one QTE or dialogue choice in it. Ashes is a bit more action focused so you do feel a bit more active with a lot more of those segments where you have to aim at a target. The characters are still pretty underdeveloped but Ashes has the advantage of having one really likeable character in Salim. Seeing him forced to partner with these jingoisitic American soldiers to survive the horrifying depths they've fallen into is interesting. It's fun to see the distrust between them fall away as the game goes on. Of course, some of that was me directing the story that way. It has a solid setup with the Iraq War setting and the Akkadian history backdrop. The story takes some turns I really didn't see coming that were pretty cool. Perhaps they wouldn't be so surprising if you've seen some of the nonsense programming on the History Channel these days. Overall, I had a good time with this. I should probably stop wishing for these games to be more interactive at this point. They're a known quantity and Supermassive Games have been very successful with them.