I’ll be the first to say that I am a horror game fanatic. Yeah, I love Resident Evil and Fatal Frame, we all do, but I also love indie titles, RPG Maker horror games like iB and Witch’s House. Despite this love of the genre, a series that mainly had flown under my radar was The Dark Pictures Anthology series by Supermassive Games.
I played Until Dawn and liked it well enough, but that was ages ago and I didn’t hear much about their newer titles until The Quarry came out. When I was shot over a preview code for The Devil in Me, I figured it wouldn’t be proper to the series if I didn’t play through the other three games first. So I did just that to prepare for my “opening hour” with The Devil in Me, and I’m glad I did.
Before we get started, the quick and dirty is that if you like Dark Pictures Anthology games, The Devil in Me is more of that. I can’t say if the formula is getting stale for people yet because I binged these games over the course of a weekend, but if quick-time events and split-second decision-making are your cup of tea, then this offers all of that, just in a new, and much more intriguing, environment.
The premise is based heavily on the actual, real-life murderer and habitual liar H. H. Holmes, whose propensity for lying made it nearly impossible to verify what murders he had actually committed. While the infamous “murder castle,” a hotel that was alleged to have secret rooms, traps, and torture devices with the goal of killing victims in gruesome ways, likely never existed, the myth of it is interesting — and has persisted throughout the years as an urban legend.
The mocap for The Devil in Me is more of the same as the other games, although one of the characters, Charlie, has this weird default expression that the rest of his facial animations seem to revolve around. All of the characters have this blank, uncanny valley-style feel that takes me out of the experience heavily, but Charlie is the worst offender by far. It’s hard to tell when Charlie is serious or joking with his mouth agape in 90% of the shots.
A similar control scheme to Little Hope and House of Ashes returns, with characters shuffling around during exploration mode, alongside a button that makes them walk slightly faster. You will pick up objects, search for clues, and find premonitions like always. The new feature in this game is the unique “tools” that each character has. For example, Charlie can slide a card in gaps to force locks open, while Mark has an extending monopod that he can use to reach objects in high places. Whether or not this mechanic will actually make or break the survival of certain characters is unknown, as the opening hour only featured one real choice, but the idea is sound.
The preview did feature one extremely creepy section — and to explain it, I have to confess something else: I hate mannequins in horror games. Dolls, creepy faceless posable bodies, and others like that — I can’t stand it. The Devil in Me features a lot of these dolls as animatronics, such as a bartender that seems helpful at first, but acts quite sinister when your main characters aren’t looking.
Another excellent section involved some stellar audio design. You have to navigate one of the characters through a constantly shifting set of hallways that make good use of impossible space, all while listening to your environment using a directional microphone. Heavy footsteps, sliding noises, random crying and more are beamed directly into your ears without ambience, making for an extremely chilling haunted house walk.
Finally, I suppose the information returning fans will likely care about the most: yes, we do see the return of the Curator, who is totally, absolutely not Death himself. Pip Torrens once again slams it out of the park with a very sinister, and yet oddly friendly, performance — or as friendly as the manifestation of the Grim Reaper can be. Seeing as The Devil in Me is the final chapter of Season 1 of the Anthology, it’s a safe bet that we’ll see some additional tidbits of lore about our mysterious benefactor.
As far as I played, The Devil in Me is a wonderful capstone to The Dark Pictures Anthology. Holding an extremely interesting premise of surviving a murderous house full of traps, this game has the potential to really hammer home the feeling of dread and despair that these games are supposed to offer. While the previous games were effective in some ways, and not as effective in others, The Devil in Me looks to be much more promising in delivering a true horror experience — if the strange mocap and facial animations don’t break your immersion.
The Devil in Me launches worldwide on Nov. 18, 2022, for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.
Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.
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