Game #1329: The Dark Pictures Anthology - The Devil in Me

  Devil's in the detail... and the bugs.

 Here it is, the Season Finale, The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me. I'd like to say that it was a fun ride... but it wasn't, it's been plagued with all sorts of issues and bugs since the very first game, and I can't say that the games only got better, because they didn't. The Dark Pictures Anthology was a brilliant concept, having stand-alone interactive horror movies sounded too good to be true, and it was. And now it's over.... for now.

 I'll give The Devil in Me this, it's a lot less buggy than the previous game. Midway through out playthrough the Inventory icons went away, we went through a soft-lock and a hard-crash and had to deal with heads that would bug-out trying to look behind them.... but at least every texture loaded on every scene. It's a mess, but at least it's not as bad as House of Ashes.

 The plot is probably the most interesting out of every game in the series, using the rumors and tall stories behind Holmes, America's first serial killer as the theme. And it uses it to great effect, I felt. The new cast of characters was alright, definitely more likeable that the ones in House of Ashes, but not as endearingly cheesy as the ones from The Quarry. It also felt like their most cinematic game yet, using some rather interesting camera angles and scene cuts. It felt like a step above the games that came before it.

 For this game, a lot of hoopla has been made about new actions, such as jumping and crawling. They are just glorified doors. No, really. You'll come across gaps, and you'll have to press X, only that instead of opening a door the character will jump. Or crawl, if needed. You'll climb ladders too. Still, it adds more variety to how you move about, but in essence, nothing has changed in this regard. There are more puzzles than ever before, so all the collectibles you can find around? You'd better start reading them. There's a new Inventory system, but this only means that you can now press a button every now and then to do something, it feels very context-sensitive all in all.

 For as harsh as I was at first... this one was probably one of the better entries in the series, if not the best, but it's not quite as good as what they did with The Quarry or even Until Dawn, and I get it, smaller budget, but c'mon, these games all run on the same premise and engine, at least they can make sure that the games are less buggy at release. Still, if this game was the new standard for the rest of the series... I'd think they'd be OK.

 5.5