The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes - PlayStation 4

The best in the Dark Pictures Anthology yet.After a decent first entry with Man of Medan, Supermassive put out the much more interesting-looking Little Hope, which started off very strong but left an unfortunate impression and aftertaste by the finale for succumbing to THE most cliched twist in fiction (which wasn’t even set up very well, to make matters worse). Man of Medan may not have been amazing, but I enjoyed it enough to play through it multiple times; Little Hope, on the other hand, I have little interest to play again after what was learned from the big reveal, which felt like it invalidated everything that happened during the game.House Of Ashes, however, very much restores faith in the franchise. It has an interesting setting, creepy and impressive atmosphere (mostly during the second half, but it’s great), many exciting action-packed moments, and a decent cast (with 2 fan favorites who particularly shine). While the writing and characters are still not on par with spiritual predecessor Until Dawn, I daresay Ashes surpasses in gameplay, scene variety and replayability. It easily matches or surpasses both Medan and Little Hope in almost every way, and the finale is fantastic and succeeds excellently where Little Hope failed. There IS a “twist” towards the end, but it is neither pretentiously presented nor heavily relied upon and left as your last image of the story. On a final note, the characters do delve into political stuff on occasion if you’re sensitive to that, and there is a “love triangle” of sorts that is focused on perhaps too much given the dire circumstances, but neither is the main focus of the story and both are arguably natural considering the setup.The game has multiple audio languages, various settings to make it harder or easier in various ways, and can be played with friends! Overall a great game, I’d like to give it a 4.5 for some minor issues if I could, but since that’s not an option AND I’m grateful they learned from Little Hope, I’m okay giving it a 5. Definitely consider buying it if you’re into these types of games! If you liked either Medan or Hope, this one should impress you.

Great game with a good story. I enjoy studying history, especially Middle Eastern history and even though the game didn't go into depth in these areas, they did touch on them which I appreciated.The creators of this game focused on creating a good horror game experience and in my opinion, they delivered.Once you make a "bad" decision in the game...that's it, you pay for it but the game developers added a cool new feature that once you beat the game you can go back and replay the level or levels you made a mistake on and play it again. I don't think this feature was on their previous game, "Until Dawn," but I may be wrong.In terms of horror games, I would rate this a solid 8.5/10.The characters were well developed and had great voice actors. I felt like I got to know them throughout duration of the game. I played the game a couple of times because I made some poor game altering choices towards the beginning levels of the story. This was to my benefit because I realized there was specific dialogue for certain characters in specific moments of the game depending on what choices you made which was a really cool experience.Have a great day everyone!

I love this game so much and its so fun to play!

Just a few problems.. sometimes when I go to move my character, the screen will just go in circles and I have to close out the game and go back in. When I go to pick a choice, it picks for me sometimes, even though I never moved the button towards that choice, which can ruin relationships within the game and affect outcomes. A lot of the graphics don’t load in, making some characters look like they’re made of clay and it looks kinda bad but at least I can laugh at that.Update: despite all of these problems, this game is amazing. Best of the series for sure. 👍🏼👍🏼 bumped it up to 4 stars. I’ll try not to kill off Rachel next play through, oops! 😬

Thanks

I love this series even though they aren't connected the pick your own path games make it fun to see the different ending. These game are best played in a dark room at night

Love it completed the anthology for my husband came in sealed new

What makes this one stand out more then the others. You actually have a lot of game choices that affect outcomes and how events can play out. The others kind of just push the story along no matter what. This game has way more Gameplay in it then the previous entries. And has more replay value.