Another year and another Dark Pictures game. I’ve been fortunate enough to have sampled every game in Supermassive’s divisive horror anthology and even more fortunate to experience bits and pieces of them before they’re released. But, having done so with all their games so far, I can safely say that none have grabbed me as much as this. Playing through The Dark Pictures with my friends has become a yearly tradition, so I’m always looking out for what Supermassive does next. Now, we have a new one and the supposed end of the first season of games. It’s called The Devil In Me, and it’s undoubtedly the first Dark Pictures game I am actively excited to play and a killer season finale.
Much like other horror anthologies like American Horror Story and Channel Zero, The Devil In Me takes inspiration from a particular genre of horror. This time, it looks to be drawing from films like SAW, and Psycho, and I even felt a little bit of The Shining come through. You play a TV production crew desperate to reinvigorate their ailing television series. It’s a reality series about famous serial killers. They’ve been invited to a hotel renovated to resemble the murder hotel that real-life serial killer H.H. Holmes used to murder people in the late 1800s.
It’s the same hotel that served as an inspiration to American Horror Story’s controversial fifth season, Hotel, and it’s the same vibe here too. The crew arrives at the hotel, only to find its reclusive owner missing, but of course, not until after they’ve handed over their phones. You see, the hotel isn’t open yet, and the owner wants to “show off” the hotel to this crew before it’s opened to the general public. You can probably guess the rest of what happens.
While Kieron was privy to a hands-off preview almost three months ago, I was able to get my hands on the game proper with this preview. It appears to be from an early section of the game, just as the crew finds their footing. The first sequence is simple enough – find somewhere to buy cigarettes – but the only place to do so is in a bar manned by a seemingly defective animatronic.
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It’s here that I’m treated to The Devil In Me’s almost masterful execution of tension. I know it’s just an animatronic standing at the bar. But is it? That pervasive sense of doubt and dread fills me as I explore the bar. It feels like the bar from The Shining, too – whether that’s intentional or not is unclear – but Devil In Me’s great use of tension during simple moments like these that really separate it from its predecessors.
I’ll keep details slim in the interest of spoilers, but the next section I played had me exploring the rest of the hotel as two other characters. It’s here that the way The Devil In Me plays differently from the previous games becomes clear. It’s not quite as open as a game like Resident Evil. But there’s a degree of freedom to your approach that it certainly feels that way. You are almost always trying to solve a puzzle rather than just moving through a corridor until something scary happens. The game feels a lot more open in this regard.
More so as I continued into the chapters. The hotel itself looks to be a location all the different characters will explore at some point, and this is where things start to really feel like a Resident Evil game. Every character has their own unique inventory now, and each item has specific uses in the world. Much like the mansion in Resident Evil, I found a locked drawer as one character and I made a mental note to return to it later with Charlie, who has a credit card he can use to unlock it. Whether the degree of openness works in this way has yet to be seen, but if it does, it means that Devil In Me could easily be one of the better playing games of the Dark Pictures games.
Fast forward a bit, and the crew has made peace with the fact that they’re probably not escaping this hotel, so make the effort to explore it in an attempt to escape. It doesn’t make much sense, but I’m willing to suspend disbelief because this is a horror game, after all. Here, I’m introduced to a few more interesting mechanics – one of the characters is asthmatic and has limited uses for her puffer. Where and how the game changes if I use them all up too early or too late has yet to be seen, but it’s a fantastic way to add tension to the proceedings and connect with the character more.
This little aspect of the character was used to great effect in a sequence following where I was trapped in a room, seemingly during an asthma attack but without my puffer. Then, a secret door opens in the room, and a masked figure appears and offers it to me. In one of the now-trademark choice sequences, I was given a choice to take the puffer or leave it. Too scared to take any risks, I took the puffer, but not before the masked figure cut something – I think it was my hair – from me and took it, leaving me alone.
This same sequence, involving Erin, the sound engineer of the crew, has her walking through the hallways of the hotel as she points her directional microphone at the walls. As I slowly walked through the hallways, I realized that some of the noises I heard probably weren’t of this realm and could be supernatural. I don’t know for sure, obviously, as The Dark Pictures is well renowned for subverting all your expectations, but it was a simple yet chilling sequence that was bereft of jump scares and yet still scary.
After this sequence, I found myself in yet another situation involving two of the characters as they came across a body set up in a SAW-like trap chair. My character, Charles, stepped onto a panel that, when stepped off, would kill the man sitting in the chair. At that point, I had to make a choice, as the same masked figure from before held a knife at me, almost daring me to step off the panel to kill the man in the chair. It was simple, and once again, I had to make a choice, but it seemed my choice was wrong. I stood my ground but still faltered after the killer nicked my character, killing the faceless man in the chair anyway.
We’re given a chance to run away before iron bars crash in front of the exit to the hotel, and it dawns on my characters that we’re really stuck here for the rest of the night, or maybe even less.
As the trailer plays for the rest of the game, I can’t help but come away highly excited for The Devil In Me. The central premise is terrifying – not only is the mysterious masked figure a serial killer, but he turns his victims into macabre animatronics. The gameplay is markedly improved to the point where it feels closer to a game than an interactive drama. The visuals are stunning. Most importantly, the scares are there, and they’re not cheap or grating in the same way Little Hope’s were.
The beauty of The Dark Pictures games is that if you didn’t like any of them before, there’s still a chance you’ll enjoy whatever the team has next. And with The Devil In Me, given how strong it appears to start off, it’s shaping up to be, without a doubt, Supermassive’s best.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me launches on November 18th 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.
