If you loved Until Dawn and have been disappointed by the titles released since, you're not alone. Thankfully, Devil in Me is the strongest game in the Dark Pictures anthology series to date and lives up to Until Dawn's standards. I am only writing this review because I feel that this game deserves a much higher score. I saw Steam's "Mixed" reviews and was afraid this one would be another Man of Medan, but kept finding myself pleasantly surprised. I have played all of Supermassive Games' titles except for Rush of Blood and The Quarry and personally feel that this one is a comfortable second to Until Dawn. It's the return to form that we've been missing.
I found myself liking the characters pretty quickly, this is definitely one of the best casts and stories presented. It was engaging, exciting and struck that same chord as Until Dawn. It's hard not to reference the first breakout game, they definitely have a lot of parallels. It's a modern day slasher with an emphasis on building atmospheric horror. There is a return to the plot-heavy twists and turns that made the mystery of Until Dawn fun and exciting. The plot is a tangled puzzle that is deepened on collectibles. The terror, or feeling of dread building up to something scary, is also really well done here.
This one was hard. I picked the hardest difficulty and the QTEs were really fast. I played on PC with a GTX 1070, 1440p graphics and Ultra texture qualities. I capped the framerate to 30fps but I'm okay with that. My hardware is showing its age but you definitely need the best performance when playing. If you get choppy framerates you can definitely miss crucial time on a lightning-fast QTE. I did save-scum a couple times on that front, but it did always feel like it was my fault for failing them. I liked the challenge, and surviving through particularly difficult scenes feel rewarding again.
There are a lot of improvements here too. The item inventory mechanic was great, and the running has improved significantly. The running animation is a little bit janky because it blends realism with comfortable stop-and-go video game control, but it's a good fit. There are a lot of items, decisions, collectibles, and choices to be made. Even some of the items in a character's inventory can be equipped and used. Depending on how you use them they can definitely pay off, but I was disappointed that some of them were more-or-less useless and relied on the illusion of importance.
Nitpicking here, those "dark picture" collectibles you find (the short clips of potential future outcomes) are as obtuse and enigmatic as ever. Some of them were especially useful and gave advice on what you should/shouldn't do. Others are really hard to interpret anything useful from them.
Overall, don't skip Devil in Me. It's a fun journey that sticks the landing at the end. Not perfect, but it's the biggest step in the right direction that Supermassive Games has had in years.
