House of Ashes, the third part of Supermassive Games’ Dark Pictures Anthology came to scare us after Halloween. We tell you what it’s all about, in this note!
The Dark Pictures Anthology, the horror game saga of Supermassive games and Bandai namco, finally completed his trilogy with the release of House of Ashes. This third installment in the anthology far from reinventing the wheel is rather the final twist to this saga that went from low to high with its horror stories. This time, the backdrop of the narrative adventure with decision making and action moments is the Iraqi desert where we will control American soldiers, local rebels, and more as we try to survive with as many characters as we can and it does surprisingly well.
The whole saga The Dark Pictures Anthology seeks to recreate the atmosphere of the classic horror movie you see with friends, so if you expected a harsh political criticism of the American regime and its intervention in Iraq, forget it. Against the background of the war started by George Bush, we took control of our characters in 2003 after the fall of the regime of Saddam hussein. There we meet Eric King of the air force, who claims to have found what appear to be chemical weapons so his squad embarks on an expedition only to have the floor literally collapse under their feet, and they end up in the lost temple of an ancient god, where some kind of he crosses between vampires and djinni hunts them down. Of course, as this is a horror game, bullets alone are not enough to kill you.
On House of Ashes we have control of five characters, and the idea is that you play by making decisions and performing quick-time events (wave events “touch square at the right time!”) so they all make it to the end alive … or see how quickly you can kill them if you’re a sadist. As in previous installments, you can play it alone or passing the control with a friend and that each one makes their decisions at all times. The idea is that the parts of the story work on their own and you never really know who of the characters may or may not die in each sequence.
The grace of the game is that the characters have relationships with each other member of the cast, which are more rational or emotional, and depending on the way they get along, you can try at times to save another character, or see him die horribly in front of your eyes. . The uncomfortable thing is that this game takes the Iraq war as a background, so the character of Salim, an Iraqi native, he is treated quite badly and although it is understandable for the first scenes, the mechanics wear out very quickly and he ends up having quite superficial relationships – he is the only character that you do not have the option to treat him well, even though he is the best character in the game. A cosmic injustice.
House of Ashes It is relatively short in duration, the idea is that you finish it in an afternoon or a night with friends as if it were a very long miniseries or movie, but this works well for the story format you want to tell. It is similar to what we saw in the previous installments, Man of medan and Little Hope. Thus, we have members of different branches of the army, the INC, and other elements of the government from whom we learn things from their pasts before the inevitable appearance of some creature willing to spread our entrails in a glorious bloodbath, to the horror of those present.
The great technical novelty in House of Ashes is that it feels much more freedom than in previous instances, and for example when you explore the dark corridors of the temple where almost all the game takes place, you will be able to rotate the analog camera as if it were of an action game. Yes, there are a couple of moments where an NPC can hit a wall, but in general nothing that breaks your immersion much, and the control feels better that way, with less static characters and fewer fixed cameras.
In conclusion
With each delivery of The Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive did not stop growing, and with House of Ashes present the game with more endings, more possibilities, and better technical level from the great Until Dawn that they will release in 2015 exclusively for Playstation 4. What’s more, about the ending, we are given to understand that there will be more games in the anthology, and given the road ahead, we love the idea of seeing where else they are going to take us with future installments.
RELEASE DATE | October 22, 2021 |
DEVELOPER | Supermassive games |
DISTRIBUTOR | Bandai namco |
PLATAFORMS | PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S |