You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave
Aside from Little Hope, I have reviewed all the Dark Pictures games to date. While I believe Man of Medan and House of Ashes were better outings than Little Hope, I would rate The Devil in Me right in the middle. It has more polish than some games in the series, but I think it still misses the mark when it comes to some titles especially when one considers both Until Dawn and The Quarry.
The Devil in Me takes on the true story of HH Holmes. For those that don’t know, HH Holmes was a real serial killer that created his own hotel where he tortured and killed people in the late 1800s. He was known as the first documented American serial killer. Players take on the roles of a modern-day film crew that is creating a documentary on the killer. They are invited to a remote island where a rich man recreated HH Holmes’ murder hotel and kept a lot of the killer’s memorabilia. Of course, it’s more than just a simple TV shoot because as soon as the crew arrives, they start to suspect that this place isn’t just for show.
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation, PC
MSRP: $39.99
Price I’d pay: $39.99
Taking the same cues as the previous titles in the series, the game has players either solo or via online co-op, take control of different characters as they move around this death trap of an island. Along the way, they will make decisions and choices that will affect the outcome of both the story and the fate of certain characters. The Devil in Me really pushes the whole “every decision has a consequence” theme even if the choice or the outcome is small.
On rare occasions, players will be tasked with quick button presses or the returning mechanic of pressing a button in time with a heartbeat. Other than that, there really isn’t a lot of action that I could have screwed up.
What’s new in this entry is the skills and inventory. Each member of the documentary crew has their own skill and items they can use. Mark has a camera he can use to light up a room for a second while Jamie can repair electronics. This allows players to see and do different things. Of course, in the end, most of it feels like it doesn’t matter since the characters are going on their own path. It’s not like I would see something that could be fixed but was playing as a different character than Jamie.
While there were plenty of times, I was intensely being chased by a bowler hat wearing murderer, there were just as many times I was wandering around with nothing really going on. This sort of padding is disguised as slight puzzle solving, but most of it really felt like it was there to add to the run time.
Just like in previous Dark Pictures games, The Devil in Me suffers from those strange scene moments that I have dubbed the “game is thinking” scenes. At least once per scene, I found myself watching a set of quick, one to two second shots of random things. It may be of a wall or doorway, or of a person just staring. These shots served no purpose to what was going on and are there only to fill time while the game is “thinking” of what scene to show me next while weighing what choices I had made. At least, that’s my working theory. The good thing is, aside from Man of Medan, this is the most stable release in the Dark Pictures series. I experienced no bugs or crashes. Both of which happened numerous times in Little Hope and House of Ashes.
At the end of the day, The Devil in Me feels like a safe bet for the series. Sure, it may not be imaginative like House of Ashes or Little Hope, but it serves as a decent choice-driven horror game that I didn’t mind going through the padding to see what was going to happen next. While this is the “season finale” of The Dark Pictures Anthology, I wonder if it will ever really return? I guess we’ll see. In the meantime, The Devil in Me offers a decent experience with little to no issues.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
