"Until Dawn" is Sony's new scary game, and let me tell you, it's not all that scary (unless you jump scare easily, which I do) so I found it set off my anxiety pretty easily. Other than that, the game is very story driven. It starts off with a group of friends pulling a really crappy (and I mean "Mean Girls" crappy) prank on the "innocent" girl in their group. She runs into the woods with her sister and they are never seen again. One year later, the group gets back together in the place where the sisters disappeared and all hell breaks loose. A wendigo appears to eat the group of people and there is maniac running around also trying to kill the group, and you have to make quick decisions for all the characters and many choices lead to different gameplay, endings, and who lives and dies. Here are a couple of things I discovered while watching my boyfriend, as well as Markiplier and the Scary Game Squad run by Jesse Cox on YouTube. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Chris is bae.
Oh my god I am in love with Chris. To those who ended up killing Chris in the game by making the wrong choices, shame on you! How could you kill an innocent soul such as his?! I had two anxiety attacks while watching YouTube videos to make sure that Chris didn't die, and let me tell you, I buried myself in my blankets with my boyfriend hugging me to help me calm down until Chris survived. It was not a good time, and there was an incredible headache afterwards from all the tension in my body, but I got extremely attached to these characters. They are very strong independently and you can always tell them apart.
Emily is a witch with a capital B, if you catch my drift.
She can only die, like, once, and even then you usually can't bring yourself to shoot her in the head point blank because who knows if the wendigo's bite acts like a werewolf bite and you turn into a wendigo or not. It's crazy. But I hate her. She's rude to her boyfriend Matt, and because of her, there are about four different ways for him to die. And die he does in Markiplier's and the SGS's videos. I cried a little on the inside, but Matt was the weakest character developed, mainly because he can die so much.
If you watch people play the game online, Markiplier is always a good choice.
He is interesting in his choices and lets people know why he made the choices he did, as well as calling out the game on it's bad writing and use of scary movie tropes: don't go alone, never have sex, never take a bath, never celebrate the anniversary of a tragedy in a scary or remote place, don't follow voices, and please be aware of your surroundings. This game gives you the option to either do the tropes, or ignore them, and the outcome of the game is different because of it.
My personal favorite of the playthroughs is the Scary Game Squad, because it's four loud guys in a studio that get drunk and play scary games.
The screamer of the group, Davis, (the guy cradled in the arms of another man) is me. I got scared so many times during the game. A freaking wolverine came out from under the sink and I jumped and partially screamed into my boyfriend's ear. He laughed, I didn't.
Overall, the game is alright. The first half is freaking awesome with getting to know the characters, trying to figure out who the maniac is, and if the legend of the wendigo is real. During the second half, one of the group members is the maniac, the wendigo is real and is a sister that was thought to be dead, and the game collapses on itself.
Why do these things happen? What the hell is going on? I can't even begin to explain the rage I felt when i discovered what was going on faster than the characters, and that makes me mad. I like to know what everyone knows, but when I discovered so early into the game what the ending would be, I wanted to turn it off, after making sure that Chris would be alright, obviously.
My rating is a 3/5. The graphics are cinematic, the characters are individual, the the writing is decent, and I had fun while watching it. My boyfriend, on the other hand, has the exact opposite feelings that I do. What side are you on?
