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The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan

29 August 2019
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan - cover art
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2.48 / 5.0
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252 Ratings / 6 Reviews
#4,574 All-time
#221 for 2019
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Expecting this to just be Until Dawn 2 was probably too much to ask, but I cannot help but be extremely disappointed anyway. The set-up is great, and the middle section comes together to suck you into the ghost ship setting, but so much of Medan outside of that segment is stilted and technically flawed to hell. The dialogue and pacing are just rough, feeling unnaturally jury-rigged to fit the 'branching path' set-up of the game, and while the hook of the game has some sense of creeping dread that provide some nice elusive scares, the A-plot ultimately falls flat due to poor delivery. The sound design is obnoxious, although most of the cinematography is nice, and while the game looks nice, its numerous glitches and prevalent hitching fail to make the experience truly immersive, more important in this genre than most others.

Moreover, the game just lacks a lot of the cleverness of Until Dawn. The anthology set-up might be intriguing down the road, but here it's just a lame attempt to recapture the meta-commentary of an overseer character talking to the player. And there's just plain less of everything: less characters, less plot, probably less choices and consequences, all of which would be okay if the script were up to snuff, but the dialogue's stilted nature was Medan's one true flaw, and the one I sadly expect to stick around for the whole Dark Pictures anthology. Only recommended for people out of these kind of adventure games and really need their next fix.
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Lowlander2 2019-09-06T15:08:32Z
2019-09-06T15:08:32Z
2.5
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The very concept of a horror anthology in video games is interesting and I enjoyed the game a bit, but not because it's particularly good.
Man of Medan provides a decent level of non-linearity in the plot, which is not an easy task for a developer. But because of this complexity, the narrative seemed too incoherent. The quality of the scenes and situations vary as well.
I'm definitely interested in continuing to play The Dark Pictures Anthology - it's like a marathon of bad horror movies for me. But I can't quite recommend it to everyone.
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5thDayAfterDeath 2023-03-24T00:18:35Z
2023-03-24T00:18:35Z
2.0
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Mediocre
"Man of Medan" is a short but pleasant experience to share with friends as an alternative to the movie night. It takes less than four hours to complete, but the runtime felt just right as there was really nothing more to say. The mystery was a bit too obvious from the beginning, and everything gets resolved relatively quickly and with no surprises. It wasn't as entertaining as "Until Dawn", but felt better balanced overall. They added a new feature where you have to hit buttons in time with the character's heartbeat and an interesting co-op mode where each play can play either side of the dialogues. They also did some fine work with the character models, the atmosphere of the indoor environments, and the camera angles. On the other hand, voice acting and writing are a bit too mediocre for a game that is 100% plot. They are lucky that there are no competitors, otherwise "Man of Medan" wouldn't have gotten much attention. Still, I am mildly looking forward to playing the next installments as I kind of liked the Curator.
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manicure 2021-08-06T17:26:29Z
2021-08-06T17:26:29Z
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fuck you
one of the worst games I've ever played. just an absolute waste
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OnlyCosmia 2021-05-07T17:24:29Z
2021-05-07T17:24:29Z
1.0 /10
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This is kind of lame coming from the guy who made Until Dawn. I actually enjoyed this for the first 2 or 3 hours, but it quickly goes downhill during the final hour or 2. Its basically part one of a multiple part anthology and it is a group of 2 families with their siblings going on a sea cruise to dive exploring abandoned ship wrecks while the captain, a younger female ends up joining them on their adventure. They end up getting hijacked by a group of pirates and then end up coming across a supposed haunted ship they must survive while also dealing with escaping the group of pirates with them. Now the idea of this is kind of cool, you are on an abandoned World War II ship and on the ship you encounter bizarre creatures and haunting imagery and often you are found exploring the ship and finding old journal articles and papers similar to Until Dawn that lets you piece together the mystery, and then you have the annoying quick time events and action sequences.

Now my problem with this is the story is just so dull and unoriginal. Basically when you are on the ship, you encounter strange things and you find out near the end that there is a chemical that is making people on the ship hallucinate monsters and that's why all the soldiers killed each other. Well the game basically has you confront these monsters a few times and if you fight back, you end up killing your friend, but if you don't you save them. The game has some annoying quick times where if you fail one you can end up permanently killing off one of the characters which is just stupid, I mean sure Until Dawn had some of these, but I feel this has more. The other thing is the plot is just silly, that the monsters aren't real and everyone is just hallucinating on some chemical, it just takes a lot of the horror out of this for me. The other thing is this game was kind of designed for co-op and playing this in single players feels a bit awkward and I felt like the dialog didn't flow proper and it was hard to follow all the characters and some scenes just felt like they didn't flow right. I saw people on youtube play this on 2 player and it made more sense because different players got to see different scenarios then work them together when they made decisions when they regrouped. Now this does have more endings and outcomes than Until Dawn and there are multiple scenarios you can encounter and not encounter depending what character you are controlling and what past choices you made, which is a bit more in depth than Until Dawn. But really the game concludes really lame where you confront your friend and hallucinate them as a monster, then you choose not to attack them and you end up realizing its your friend and then you end up escaping on the rescue boat and everyone is happy. Its a really cheesy and cliche ending and even though I didn't like the direction Until Dawn went after the huge plot twist, I still enjoyed it much more than this. .

Now this is an okay game to play around Halloween and is a quick game than can be finished in less than 5 hours, but it just lacks the depth or horror Until Dawn had and the story of this is pretty awful, and the characters in this are really bland and unlikable, the only 2 characters in this I liked were the captain and the sarcastic brother. Actually the captain is kind of lame too, she hardly gets much character development, but I guess I like her because she can romance the awkward, funny guy and he deserves it being the only decent character in this game. The villains in this are just lame generic pirates who are just evil and have no character development or personality other than look how mean and evil we are. I didn't really find much to enjoy. This is a game where you really only play one time and get everyone to survive, I guess play it 2 times if you want to be a dick and kill everyone off, but even doing that is kind of boring in this, unlike Until Dawn where I had fun killing everyone off in my evil run. The quick times in this also drag this down a lot because they are a lot faster and require less error than Until Dawn. I mean why the hell do we still have quick times in games when they are a cheap mechanic only meant to have the player pretty buttons during cutscenes rather than actually focusing on the plot they are looking for cues.
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jweber14 2020-09-19T07:31:24Z
2020-09-19T07:31:24Z
3.0
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There is an interesting surge of new games in the obscure genre called 'interactive drama'. Where its not quite a video game as you know, but more a movie that you can partake in and have choices which impact the story in a profound way. The story can be played co op, and most of the game is watching very high graphic appealing 'cutscenes' with thrilling quicktimes thrown in, and just one mistake of these can drastically change the course of the game. People can die and entire sequences can be skipped.
When playing co op, frequently you both will be experiencing completely different parts of the game. It is constantly swapping out which characters you and your friend are playing as, and they can be in a totally different forced part of the game than you, only to end up routing back around to meet up with you through some twist or series of events. So really it's all about the story, presentation, and writing here.

There is a simple dialogue option system where you get 2-4 options at any given time. You get a real sense that you are drastically changing the game with these, and a lot of the writing is witty and funny.

Well the premise is rather simple, you're a group on a boat(s) trying to discover some secret about a mysterious 'gold'. It's a minimal but effective setup. The majority of the game is spent listening to dialogue and watching scripted scenes, which is not a bad thing in this scenario. You need to change your mindset less like you're playing a video game, but more like you're 'watching' a movie with your friend that you can both manipulate and affect the outcome of. With this in mind its pretty entertaining.

There are sections where it takes you out of the 'movie' where it goes third person with fixed camera angles and you have to walk around to progress. These moments are ok, and this is where the real 'gameplay' is. For the most part, these segments consist of simply walking forward in a narrow line to progress to the next cutscene, albeit extremely slowly and clunky to give a more cinematic vibe. It can work against its self though, and start to feel dull and monotonous just because of the movement speed. There are usually some optional rooms you can enter to look at some objects, most of which are notes with flavor text about the circumstance.

So I would say its a top experience to have with a co op partner in the sense of sharing a thrilling horror movie. I will complain a bit in that all of the horror moments really are just cheap jump scares. There is no combat or anything like that, or any really threatening moments of gameplay.

It's all about choices and their outcome, dialogue, and quicktime events. Most of the quicktime events are extremely short 0.5ms ~ 1second; so you can easily mess them up if you're not hyper focused, which in turn drastically changes the outcome of the game, so this can be frustrating if you have the mindset of just relaxing and watching. You need to be on the edge of your seat ready to hyper press QTE if you want good outcomes.
It can be really bullshit though. For example there was a moment where I briefly lost connection to my partner, in the middle of a quick time event, I regained connection, but I failed the quicktime event - And a character was permanently dead. Could not revert, could not undo. Just like that the campaign is 'ruined'. Was quite a bummer especially because it wasn't my fault.

For sure the strong point of this game is its graphics / presentation. I don't really need to explain this in writing, just one look at the facial animations or graphics should be enough to impress. This really makes you immersed in the campaign so turn off the lights and jump in type feeling.

Lastly, I will note the game ended rather awkwardly and abruptly, it kind of gives many hints to whats actually going on, but then ends without really detailing anything. You can play through the game again to get different endings, and there is an additional mode that was added after the game came out called 'Curators mode' which has additional scenes, characters, and outcomes, but after 1 playthrough the ending feels awkward and abrupt. It does seem like a perfect game to play through again, with a new friend just as a cool cooperative cinematic experience to have even with people who don't like video games. It can be beaten in just one evening at only 3 hours long, so why not.

7/10
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darkrecollections 2020-09-03T23:34:51Z
2020-09-03T23:34:51Z
3.5
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Catalog

Nergal997 The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-03-22T21:33:54Z
2024-03-22T21:33:54Z
1.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
locomotic The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-03-03T14:20:57Z
2024-03-03T14:20:57Z
1.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Lorexio16 The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-02-05T23:16:16Z
Windows
2024-02-05T23:16:16Z
0.5
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Froot The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-02-05T23:05:56Z
Windows
2024-02-05T23:05:56Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
SNAFreddies The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-21T14:31:33Z
2024-01-21T14:31:33Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
playitfucknloud The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-21T01:26:40Z
2024-01-21T01:26:40Z
3.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
ArcanaNoctis The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-19T19:52:22Z
2024-01-19T19:52:22Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Moonlight_Shiori The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-18T04:57:13Z
2024-01-18T04:57:13Z
F
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
austin_draycott The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-15T20:56:43Z
2024-01-15T20:56:43Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
guyroo The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-11T10:48:13Z
2024-01-11T10:48:13Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
MusicalMonke The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-07T18:13:07Z
2024-01-07T18:13:07Z
3.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
shadeyy6 The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 2024-01-07T01:00:59Z
2024-01-07T01:00:59Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Player modes
1-5 players
Media
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Multiplayer modes
Cooperative
Multiplayer options
Local, Online

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  • Illogic93 2021-10-22 09:17:18.5243+00
    Why is Sheldon from Big Bang Theory on the cover?
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  • DippoMagoo 2021-10-26 17:46:31.293205+00
    It's funny you'd say that, because it literally is a big name actor on the cover, but it's not who you're talking about, lol
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  • Miry 2022-11-06 01:08:03.411227+00
    hide Removed by mod
    This post was removed by a site moderator.
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  • Innerexperience 2023-09-25 17:38:00.112275+00
    The follow up "Little Hope" was much better at least.
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