Halloween may be over but the spooks keep coming and Bandai Namco brought it with their latest installment in their The Dark Pictures Anthology series with the fourth story in the series The Devil In Me. I want to thank Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco for allowing me to continue checking out this series for our readers! Let us take a look at The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me.
The Devil In Me takes an interesting turn in the series where the game’s story is not inspired by historical events with supernatural undertones (A rumored ghost ship, The Salem Witch Trials, and the curse of Naram-Sin) but by something very real, Serial Killers. The serial killer that the game focuses on is non-other than the infamous H.H. Holmes. The plot of The Devil In Me follows a documentary group who are in the middle of making a documentary about Holmes and were given the opportunity of a lifetime, to be invited to a reproduction of Holme’s Murder Castle. Shortly after arriving, its soon clear that the film crew is next on a killer’s list.
Now onto the game itself! Pretty much any returning players to the game series will have no issue adjusting to the controls. There are some new mechanics not yet seen before in the previous games such as climbing, and the use of items. Each character has items unique to them that they can use or manipulate the environment such as picking locks. The sound design is pretty good with nice ambient sounds and music to help you feel the suspense building up. The graphics are decent for the most part, I’ll admit that there’s still the issue with character models being a bit… Toothy? It’s hard to explain but in past installments, some characters seemed to have their lips curled back too much as they talk.
The gameplay is pretty much the same as the other titles in the series where exploring is rewarded with finding lore but this time they added finding Obols to buy dioramas at the main menu. The dioramas are pretty much character models and set up of scenes in the game you unlock depending on what you do. When it comes to the scares, what was lacking in House of Ashes was made up for in this game where plenty of well-placed jump scares actually got me good.
Now when it comes to the negatives, my only gripe is the story. There’s nothing really new when it comes to The Devil In Me in terms of characters and plot. It fell into the same formula that we’ve seen since Man Of Medan, In all the games we have the leader of the group who is in over their head and has an idea that eventually puts everyone in danger, and a romantic couple in the middle of a crisis. I just feel that more relatable characters can be created and developed and plots where that can be a little more creative with sending the characters toward their potential doom.
Overall The Devil In Me made up for past mistakes but at the same time fell into monotony. it’s still a fun game to play with plenty of replayability to unlock secrets and buy dioramas. Though I felt more could have been done with the story and characters, I give The Devil In Me an 8 out of 10.
The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me will be coming out Friday, November 18 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
