Trapping five down-on-their-luck documentary crewmembers in sadistic traps under the guise of a glorious historical hotel, The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me is the fourth and final entry in the first season of the horror smorgasbord from Supermassive Games. It is said that endings often come with either a bang or a whisper, and in this instance, imagine the sound of someone almost slipping over on a wet floor.
Following a dismal showing from their most recent true-crime documentary, Lonnit Entertainment needs to find its footing, and fast. Fortunately, founder and director Charlie gets a call from the overly rich architect Grantham Du’Met who invites them to his faithful recreation of the “World’s Fair Hotel.” To the swots in the audience, they’ll know this is the site where America’s first serial killer H. H. Holmes offed holidayers in horrible ways.
Charlie’s team, consisting of chief grip Jamie, investigative journalist and presenter Kate, director of photography Mark and audio intern Erin have their reservations with the architect’s eccentric requests. Charlie instructs them to not be so pessimistic, and onto the island where the hotel looms they go. But when the sun sets and Du’Met disappears, it soon becomes clear that their host is a little too into his true-crime.
Things go south immediately - fortunately the characters have their own inventory and abilities that allow them to survive. Charlie has a business card and a tie clip that can open locked drawers and cases. Never one to lose out on a lead, Kate uses a pencil to shade over paper to reveal messages, and Mark can collect evidence of Du’Met’s crimes with his camera. Finally, Erin has a microphone that picks up even the softest of sounds and Jamie is able to rewire fuse boxes to restore power. Additionally, characters can run, crouch, shimmy and jump over obstacles to reach areas containing secrets to uncover why Du’Met has lured his victims here.
I would forgive you for assuming that my favourite character is the journalist in need of a haircut. I liked almost all of the characters, aside from Mark who was arguably the wettest wipe, but the person I was most pressed about saving was Charlie. Paul Kaye's performance is recognisable as a cranky director with a vision that no one else understands and isn't good at expressing his appreciation for his employees. I wanted to see his character develop through this and Kaye’s interpretation of his fear, exhaustion, guilt and temper really clicked with me.
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Yet, I was previously worried that The Devil in Me had bitten off a bit more than it could chew with all of these added gameplay mechanics. I wish I’d put a fiver down on that.
The inventory system is an interesting one. I totally see why Supermassive has innovated for the final entry into the first season of The Dark Pictures Anthology. However, it feels not all that necessary as the moments that use an item were few and far between for me, and they could have been condensed into a character trait. For more situational moments, unlocking a door with a key is a button press rather than an uninterrupted animation. I remember that I picked up the key, so I don’t really need to see it shown in the bottom left corner, and I only use it once.
As for the pacing, it’s like someone put me behind the wheel of a Lamborghini. Now I'm sweating hitting QTEs so the character doesn't get mangled! Now I'm walking in a trashed bedroom. Now I'm on the run from the killer! Now I'm looking in a book.
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There are also the times when Du’Met does close in on his prey, which shot my nerves to smithereens. Supermassive is a maestro at suspense, and the stress you feel with these characters’ fates that could swerve out of control as a result of your shoddy reaction times. Suddenly every single muscle is tensed, anticipating the scare and/or the quick time event that could reveal where they are, and you have no idea what that choice will spell out for you. Regrettably, these scenes start to get slightly samey - killer enters area, glares at every wardrobe/cupboard/hidey-hole in the vicinity, there’s a QTE or heartbeat to pass, and then he leaves or finds you - but the terror this villain instilled in me was brilliant.
The other titles in The Dark Pictures Anthology have had monsters whereas this is the first to pit the player against a human being. Strangely, it works to an unsettling effect and to its detriment. Du’Met much more intelligent than the victims, and they’ve literally set up shop in his web of macabre traps, yet he never murmurs a word.
I even chose to say nothing in some encounters for fear that he would react to what the character said - it’s a lot safer to say “f*ck you” to an alien vampire because they likely don’t speak any human languages. Still, I was practically begging one of our crew to have the bright idea to arm themselves against this guy. He’s a guy! One swift and purposeful thwack with a broken pipe on the back of the knees and he’s just as mortal as the rest of us.
Not only is the tension a scattershot between the scenes, exploring the hotel for secrets and bits and bobs slows me down. It's a hotel that shifts at the whims of its evil creator, and all but two doors are ever actually openable. The halls create a claustrophobic hell and I sometimes struggled to work out the way I'd come from, which is what you want from a murder hotel. Yet when I compare these to the more linear levels in the other four titles, I realise I spent some time bumping the character into walls and doors that had no real benefit for me.
Additionally, it wasn't necessarily visible that I was about to exit an area preemptively due to this non-linearity, and I likely missed out on a fair few things. Pour one out for the guides writers.
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While secrets were key to uncovering the history that underpins the story you're playing through, and premonitions suggest what not to do in pressurised situations, we've got another collectible in The Devil in Me. These are Obols - ancient coins used to pay your fare to the ferryman - and they are annoying. You'll stroll through a room, seeing the glint of light and you think, "Cool, this will probably be a helpful item for me to have later down the line."
You would be incorrect. All these Obols do is unlock dioramas of the characters in the main menu. I get it, thematically, as there is a ferry to reach the hotel and that Du'Met has been watching them like little dolls the whole time. They would have been valuable if you could give them to the Curator to unlock a premonition you'd missed in your exploration, similar to Eliza in The Quarry. You'd be shown the title of the premonition, which wouldn't reveal what or who that vision would be about, and then you'd have a better shot at saving the characters.
Thinking about everything that's been added to The Devil in Me, it is a relief that the heartbeat mechanic is not as prominent in this one as it is in others. The fact that I had to do five of those heartbeat sections in a row probably has shortened my life expectancy by a few months. Overall though, it feels like a patchwork of things the team wanted to make work but didn't finalise. It's like the hotel recreation itself - odd, but promising, and then as we delve deeper and deeper we realise that the enigmatic engineering has its weaknesses and its parts that aren't done yet. This isn't to detract from the fear that I felt, nor from the stomach-churning sense of dread whenever Du'Met turned his head like a hawk realising he might have heard someone breathe. I only wish the nausea wasn't from indigestion after an overstuffed and underdone game.
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Pros: superb suspense as per, hair-raising soundtrack, ambitious
Cons: pacing is all over the place, a slippery pastiche of gameplay mechanics, repetitive encounters
For fans of: the previous Dark Pictures titles, Resident Evil, the Saw films
6/10: Good
The Devil in Me is available 18 November on PC (version tested), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Code for review provided by Square Enix. Read a guide to our review scores here.
Featured Image Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment