As the Supermassive Games team has done for the past couple of years, a new chapter in The Dark Pictures Anthology has been released. First, we had Man of Medan which took us on an abandoned boat, then we visited the strange town of Little Hope, and now we are heading over to Iraq to encounter the most unlikely of enemies in House of Ashes. This series has been partnered with Bandai Namco as the publisher and after playing through this insane story, I can't wait for these teams to announce the next chapter!

Story

It’s 2003, in the midst of the search for Saddam Hussein, and the US army sends a unit to check infiltrate and investigate the latest lead they have. During this raid, a nasty gunfight breaks out that ultimately leads to the ground below them swallowing various soldiers on both sides alive. They quickly learn that they didn't just fall into a random cave, but into something much more ancient with creatures still lurking within. To get out alive they will have to work together and make good choices, but can they put their rivalry from the surface behind them long enough to make it out of this ancient death pit?

Gameplay

Much like the previous games from this series, the gameplay controls are very similar. It is suggested to play on a controller, regardless of platform, and it is easy to see why. While a lot of this game is much like watching a movie, there are choices that change how events turn out. As character roles are assigned to the player, choices come up that guide a conversation and can affect the bonding level they have between each character.

Having characters with higher bonding levels is the best route to take, but it isn't always an obvious choice to make. Tough situations, intense moments that require snap decisions, and the classic fight of thinking with your mind versus thinking with your heart are all factors at play. Literally, the choices are labeled with either a heart or a brain icon behind the choice to show their base. Of course, there is always the choice to say nothing, which can sometimes be the best thing to do.

Other than conversation choices, you will have to make decisions with your actions as well. There will be moments that you can choose to interact with something or attack something, but keep in mind that you have the choice not to as well. Always being the aggressor can lead you down a painful pathway, but not taking advantage of your moment could also be costly. This game did a great job at truly offering these options to the player and making every choice costly in some way.

You will also have plenty of quick-time events to succeed if you hope to make it through alive. Dodging, quick attacks, and various other actions will happen suddenly and you will need to be ready for them when they happen. Make sure you don't put the controller down, even when things seem to be relaxing!

Movement in this game is still the same as it always it. While the movement only happens during free roam moments and not during any action scenes, it's okay that they aren't the best, but there is room for improvement with them. Turning around always requires an actual walk around and there isn't a way to just pivot on the spot. There is one specific moment in the game that you need to be careful with your movement though, so if you don't feel fully comfortable with the controls, then I suggest going slow. These same movement controls affect how you control your flashlight as well when it is used. You can toggle the flashlight on and off, so you don't always have it in use, but when you do use it you can expect the same somewhat difficult controls as the movement has.

Just as the previous games offer, you can play this game by yourself, in a shared story where each player controls half of the characters and the characters each player controls is predestined based on which starting character the host chooses (theater or curator essentially), or in movie night style where a group of friends can pass around the same controller when their chosen character comes on the screen.

Visuals and Audio

If you are playing this game on PC or a new-gen platform, then the graphics are going to be pretty outstanding. This game was obviously designed with the latest graphical quality available in mind and geared toward those platforms because when you play on PlayStation 4 (and I would imagine Xbox One), the graphics are rather bare bones and there are performance drops. The quality of these games on the PlayStation 4 has never been very strong, so it is definitely advised to play Supermassive titles on a new-gen platform if possible.

Music, voice acting, and sound effects are all spot on though, regardless of platform! They always do a phenomenal job making these games really feel like you are controlling the main turning points of a movie.

Replayability

Thanks to the Curator mode that is unlocked when you beat the game, the shared story mode, the movie night mode, and all of the secrets and premonitions there are to find, this game has plenty of reason to be replayed! It has at least two playthroughs for any player so that they can experience the story from one side and then the other. This has been a consistent offer for all games in this series.

What Could Be Better

With how obvious it was that the game was practically ported to be playable on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, I just feel like it could have been better. Some secret items were blurry while others weren't, despite them being practically the same design. Characters would sometimes go through material which doesn't happen on the PlayStation 5 version. It just almost seemed like it wasn't worth playing on a current-gen platform and that it would be best experienced solely on something that could handle it better. It's either that or they need to do a much better job making it a better experience for current-gen platforms.

Also, with how long this team has been making these types of games, I really wish they would take some time to fix the movement controls for the free-roaming moments. They feel the same as they did back in Until Dawn and it just seems like they could do so much better. I know it is easy to be consistent, but stronger movement controls are definitely not worth keeping consistent.

Conclusion

House of Ashes shows this team knows how to make a choice-based horror game! After the big issues I had with the previous titles in this series, the only issues I have with this one is that it should be played on a new-gen platform and the movement controls could be improved upon. The story was intense, the choices were effective, they did a great job keeping the entire experience exciting, the mystery of “what's next” was maintained, and the overall game felt more enjoyable to playthrough. They nailed this chapter on the head and now that they have shown that they can truly launch a game like this with such an invigorating experience, I can't wait for what the next chapter will hold!