Just when I started to truly believe that Supermassive Games was making progress in their series, they released a game that has The Dark Pictures Anthology take a step backward. While they did have Bandai Namco publish a good game, it has some flaws that I know the developers had surpassed before. As much as I did enjoy their one-off game The Quarry, which was released earlier this year, it seems that developing a game on the side - in the same genre no less - has put some hindrance on the quality behind The Devil In Me.

Even with that said, I would argue that this game had some of the harder choices to make and has a very entertaining story premise behind it. So, if you can overlook the flaws I will point out below, then this is yet another challenging thrill ride through a series of your own choices.

Story

Looking to finally catch their breakthrough episode of a docu-series they have been working on, the Lonnit Entertainment crew accepts an invitation to visit, film, and stay at a replica hotel of H.H.Holmes’ infamous Murder Castle. It isn’t long after they get their luggage to their rooms that things begin to go amiss.

Even so, the group continues with their plan to meet up for dinner where they learn that their host has completely fled the island on which this replica hotel resides. From here, despite their efforts to make the best of the situation, they learn that they are being watched and even manipulated by a madman!

No longer focused on getting the perfect episode shot at the perfect location, the crew begins working on how they can escape the hotel and survive the night. But with more and more of the rumors of Holmes work coming true, it won’t be an easy task.

Gameplay

Much like every other game from The Dark Pictures Anthology, you will be traversing a map where you play as a specific character for each scene and through the events that play out in the area you will find clues, secrets, premonitions, quick-time events, and a variety of choices that will either get the cast and crew out alive or get them killed. All the choices and interactions are left up to you, so weigh the odds of what is best for the crew and what it will take to get them out alive.

You can play the game in solo, shared story, and movie night modes. Solo will take you through the standard version of the game’s story and after you beat the game unlocks the Director’s version which will take you through the other side of the story. Shared story is a two-player setting where both the standard and Director sides of the story are being played by the two players. Movie night is much like solo, except it will have a pause moment for the controller to be passed to the correct player who is controlling their chosen character.

As I mentioned, you will also be finding secrets and premonitions. Secrets and notes are lore bits that can be found, sometimes triggering a small cutscene to give more details on the back story or even a piece of evidence that helps formulate the truth. Premonitions, in this game, are framed medical images - much like the ones you would see in poster form at a doctor’s office. When you find one of the premonitions, it will give you a glimpse into how a character dies which will ultimately give you a better chance to avoid it from happening. Along with these, you can also find coins in this game. When you find enough coins, the narrator will be willing to give you a hint during chapter breaks, but there are a lot of coins, some with different values, to find and not a lot of chapter breaks, so keep vigilant.

Something I mentioned before is that this game offers some of the hardest choices in the series. So many of the situations you will be put in will make you feel like there is no correct answer and even when you get the answer right, you aren’t convinced until you see them alive in another scene. Despite landing so many correct answers in touch situations, I only managed to get two survivors out on my first run - plus a dog that shows up later. Honestly, only one of the characters’ deaths felt like I was robbed as that isn’t what I thought would happen. The other two, yeah, I messed up and it is what it is.

I really liked that they added unique items for each character in this game though. This isn’t something that they have had before, but each character had a specific item that they could use for the various situations they ended up in. This was a solid addition to the game and made their path in the story feel more naturally fitting for them. Plus, I liked how there was even a time that you could switch who had a specific item, and then that specific item played a role I honestly wasn’t expecting yet it is the reason I almost saved a third character (escape one fate, fall to another).

Audio and Visuals

Here we are at the section that will take up the complaints. Graphically, this game was so subpar! What happened? It was like I was trying to run a PS2 game on higher graphics or something. Natural flowing stuff, like the wine in the wine glasses, was stiff and didn’t move - one even remained hard-slanted while sitting on the table from when the character holding it was giving a toast. Worst of all, the eye movement was just terrible… this was never a problem for me in their games, even back in the early titles from this series, but something about the way the character’s eyes moved and looked around was giving off an ‘uncanny valley’ feeling. It at least made the mannequins not seem so bad…

Sound effects, voice work, and music-wise, this game was on point like they usually are. I like the soundtracks they used through the game and the lines they used - pulling straight from actual words H.H.Holmes said at his own execution - was just a powerfully dark move. Even the game itself is named after his infamous final words.

Replayability

This title probably holds the most replayability to it than the others in the anthology. Despite the graphical issues and occasional gameplay control annoyances, the premise itself isn’t less scary because you know it’s a serial killer. Even knowing who it is that is doing the killing doesn’t change anything as far as the experience goes. While I might not play through it again on solo, I will gladly play through the game with a friend once they release the usual friend’s pass option later on.

What It Could Have Done Better

I almost feel like I am downplaying how bad the graphical errors were in this game. I was thoroughly disappointed with the lack of special touch that went into this game. Likely one of their best premises in the series to date and they dropped the ball on something as important as the visuals. Sure, they delivered some comical moments and did great work with the more gruesome designs, but the flaws were prominent and annoying.

It could fall under more graphical issues or possibly gameplay issues, but there were times that the camera didn’t pan right, zoomed in far too much, or just simply didn’t work how it was supposed to. The number of times I went through a small hallway looking at almost nothing but my character’s shoulder and the number of times that I went into a segment of the game that clearly had the camera doing something specific to drive the moment but the camera simply didn’t do what it was supposed to do (like zoom in slightly and give me a reticle for the sound device Erin is holding in the hallway that I was supposed to follow the crying - which is a segment that worked fine in the preview, funny enough). It just simply doesn’t make sense that these types of errors were happening and pulling away from the overall immersion.

Verdict

The Devil In Me has an entertaining story and is one of the toughest choice-based titles in the series! Unfortunately, it is also one of the most problematic ones in terms of graphical quality and general gameplay bugs. Sure, they can fix some of these issues moving forward with updates, but they honestly should have caught so many of these issues while play-testing the game prior to release. The good news is, the ball wasn’t dropped so far that this game isn’t worth experiencing and to that, I will say that I do still recommend this game to horror fans.

The Devil In Me is now available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.