{"id":19527,"date":"2016-03-23T21:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19527"},"modified":"2016-03-23T21:00:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T11:00:43","slug":"until-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19527","title":{"rendered":"Until Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"untildawnposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Developer: \u00a0<\/strong>Super Massive Games
\nPublisher: \u00a0<\/strong>Sony Computer\u00a0Entertainment
\nPlatform: \u00a0<\/strong>Playstation 4<\/p>\nA<\/span>t the remote and secluded Blackwood Pines holiday lodge, ten teenagers get together for their annual winter getaway.\u00a0 During the night, a humiliating prank upsets one of the girls, Hannah, who runs into the woods in tears.\u00a0 She is chased by her twin sister Beth who wants to console her.\u00a0 Neither of the girls are seen again.<\/p>\n

A year later, the eight surviving teenagers reunite at Blackwood.\u00a0 They plan to commemorate the twins and reconnect with one another. \u00a0But something sinister is lurking in the shadows at Blackwood and is looking to enact a terrible vengeance for the sins of the past.<\/p>\n

Until Dawn<\/em>, made by Super Massive Games is a narrative-driven horror title that is an absolute must for horror movie fans.\u00a0 From the various winks and nods in the game to the making-of videos that unlock as you progress through the game, Until Dawn<\/em> is clearly a labour of love made by horror aficionados who not only love the genre, but understand how to mine the material for interactive entertainment.\u00a0 There are aspects of Until Dawn<\/em> that are occasionally clunky (the game is graphically gorgeous but has pretty iffy lip syncing) but the final product is thoroughly enjoyable, greater than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

Like the best (or worst?) films in the teen slasher genre, Until Dawn<\/em> is best enjoyed as a social experience with everyone yelling at the characters on screen as they wilfully endanger themselves by wandering off alone to check out that noise in the dark.<\/p>\n

What makes Until Dawn<\/em> so much fun to play is that the eight characters \u2013 each a classic teen movie archetype \u2013 are vividly brought to life by the talented voice acting cast.\u00a0 The gangs all here:\u00a0 the jock, the prom queen, the nerd, the alternative chick, the trust fund brat.\u00a0 They\u2019re one dimensional to be sure, but the game does a fine job bringing the personalities to life and bouncing them off one another.<\/p>\n

Within the opening half hour of the game I had definitely picked out the characters that I hoped would survive to the very end and others who grated on my nerves who I was purposefully trying to endanger.<\/p>\n

And what dangers they face!\u00a0 Super Massive Games have gone for broke and have crammed Until Dawn<\/em> with pretty much every horror movie device you could think of.\u00a0 Masked killers, Saw<\/em>-inspired torture contraptions, creepy psychiatrists, monsters, dangerous animals\u2026you name it.\u00a0 Should you will it, there are some very gruesome endings in store for the kids at Blackwood.<\/p>\n

Mechanically, there aren\u2019t many games that have attempted something like Until Dawn<\/em> and yet the game feels instantly familiar.\u00a0 The in-game movement and navigation is similar to Alone in the <\/em>Dark and Resident <\/em>Evil, with players moving through environments that have a fixed camera perspective.\u00a0 This allows for the designers to create some visually striking environments that use lighting and limited visibility to crank up the tension.<\/p>\n

\"untildawn\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The dialogue trees and quick time events will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played a Telltale game before.\u00a0 The game lets the player take control of each of the eight teenagers and make decisions both big and small.\u00a0 Until Dawn<\/em> has a \u2018butterfly effect\u2019 theme that runs throughout the game which means that some innocuous decision making could directly lead to the death of a character.\u00a0 In a couple of instances, this might seem a tad abrupt or unfair to anyone hoping to make it to the end with every teenager alive but to those people I\u2019d suggest that they\u2019re probably not experiencing Until Dawn<\/em> in the way it was intended to be enjoyed.<\/p>\n

The history of videogames aspiring to make an interactive cinematic experience is littered with disastrous and expensive flops.\u00a0 Some are too light on actual gaming content.\u00a0 Others have laughably poor production values.\u00a0 Until Dawn<\/em> is the rare game that gets it \u2018just right\u2019.\u00a0 A minor complaint I have would be that the optional collectables in the game are a little too overbearing with their presence but otherwise, this is a fine framework for any other developer looking to make a game of this type.\u00a0 Until Dawn<\/em> is goofy, popcorn entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eight teenagers are terrorized at a remote holiday lodge in this survival horror game from Super Massive Games<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1702,2481,2482],"class_list":["post-19527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaming","tag-playstation-4","tag-super-massive-games","tag-until-dawn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19527"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19531,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19527\/revisions\/19531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}