The Therapist Gamer

Until Dawn was originally going to be a motion-controlled game on PS3, and when it was "re-announced" for PS4 it had some of the outward signs of being a crappy game with a troubled development.  Well, it isn't.  It's pretty awesome, actually!

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It's a game in the same vein as Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead - that is, the main attraction is making crucial decisions that can drastically change the outcome of the story.  You play as a number of different characters and they'll live or die based on what you do.  Exploring the environment is also encouraged and beneficial as you may find valuable clues to determine if someone is dangerous, if they're lying, etc.

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Since so much of the appeal of the game is the story, I'll give you an introduction: the game starts with a group of friends at a cabin.  They play a prank on one of the girls where they're all hiding in a room where a boy she likes is pretending to be interested in her.  She ends up extremely embarrassed and runs outside into the night.  Her sister chases after her.  It's not really clear what exactly happens, but the girls are cornered at the edge of a cliff and end up falling to their deaths.

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One year later the brother of the dead sisters asks all of the friends to come back up to the cabin to memorialize the events of last year, pay their respects, and process what happened.  Most of the friends feel uncomfortable about it but go up out of respect to their friend; some of them also feel guilt about the role they played in the death of his sisters.  They're getting situated in the cabin (getting the heat and electricity turned on, etc) when, well, bad things start to happen - it seems there is a crazed murderer on the mountain with them!

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I would love to share more but I think it would spoil the game.  Suffice it to say that the story is actually much more complex than it appears, and the story-telling is much better than average for a video game.  I was seriously impressed by how engaging the story was, how many twists and turns it took, and how none of it really felt too forced.  They could have taken certain ideas and used them as a crutch for the majority of the game, but they didn't - they had several fresh ideas and the story moves along at a good pace.

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The first couple of hours of the game seem like a classic 80s horror movie - clichéd teenagers acting is stereotypical ways, saying dirty jokes, fighting over perceived disrespect, and generally acting like the idiots I avoided in high school.  It might actually be off-putting to certain gamers.  But I encourage you to press on because they all act that way for a reason that serves the story well.  It's not just a game about idiot teenagers - it get much more interesting!

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The developers put in some interesting gameplay mechanics that I haven't seen before.  For example, you can find "totems" throughout the game that foretell a possible future event.  For example, you might catch a one-second glimpse of one of the characters getting their finger chopped off.  You'll think to yourself "Okay, with John I should make sure to avoid any table saws."  So as you explore the environment and you're trying to solve a mystery, you're also thinking "Okay, pet the dog.  Climb up next to the water wheel.  Don't go near any cliffs with Jan . . ." It added an interesting layer to the "choose your own adventure genre" to be able to see into the future.  And it doesn't ruin the game, either.  The clips are brief and vague enough that it's difficult to make out what exactly is going on - it's not like there's a clip of someone pushing a red butting instead of a green button and then smiling at the camera.  They're mostly of people yelling in pain and you have to re-watch it to get clues about what's going on, but even that isn't foolproof - I still got my finger cut off despite having known it would happen!  And after it happened I looked at the video again and, yup, I technically could have worked it out ahead of time but I missed some important clues.

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The game features something called "The Butterfly Effect," a game mechanic that basically boils down to "yes, the decisions you make have consequences."  It's fun to look at, especially retroactively.  For example, one character might be getting chased through the woods and his girlfriend won't let him into the cabin, which ultimately leads to his death - if you think "What the crap!  Why wouldn't she let me in!" you can look through the Butterfly Effect screen and trace the sequence of events that led that character to do what she did (pro-tip: don't do anything that implies you value your life more than hers!).

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All in all, a fantastic game.  The developers took something that could have easily been campy, dorky, predictable, and low-quality but delivered something engaging and memorable.  Do yourself a favor and play Until Dawn with the lights off - and avoid spoilers!  And on that note, I should point out that while the screenshots here don't have any explicit spoilers, you'll probably want to avoid looking beyond the first several screenshots if you want to get the full impact from the game itself.