The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me Preview - Looks Promising

Already next month, the last part of the first season of the horror anthology The Dark Pictures Anthology from Friv2Online will be released. We managed to spend over an hour in the preview version of the game, and we are ready to tell you what awaits you in this game, which looks like it will be the best in the line.

So, The Devil In Me will close the first season of The Dark Pictures Anthology with three more games available: Man of Medan, Little Hope and House of Ashes. Each of them is an interactive movie, but the new part seems to be striving to transcend the genre and enter the territory of such franchises as Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

That is, now we have before us not just a walking simulator with QTE and dialogues, but almost a survival horror in which we move furniture, collect items in inventory and solve puzzles. One of the puzzles that I came across in the preview build is an almost exact copy of a similar challenge from Resident Evil 2 Remake. Another made me spend several minutes looking for the door code, while giving me false clues.

This is all much more interesting than just wandering around the location, looking at rare items of interest and reading notes, as before. I mean, I definitely like the previous releases of The Dark Pictures Anthology, but The Devil In Me feels fresher and more exciting than its predecessors. However, if you enjoy fiddling with knick-knacks and reading documents, don't worry - there's plenty of that stuff in the game too.

Starting with Man of Medan and moving to each subsequent part of the anthology, the developers have improved the interactive horror formula. All games in the series received gameplay improvements, and The Devil In Me was no exception. First of all, attention is attracted by the opportunity to jog. This greatly improves the gaming experience, given how slow characters have been in past installments.

The heroes also acquired unique features, and now they differ from each other not only in their characters, but also in the actions they can perform. For example, one of them has a business card with which he can unlock locked drawers, while the other has sound equipment that allows him to hear through walls. Not to say that these features had to be used often, but there is some sense in them.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me will send gamers into a copy of the "Murder Castle" of the first US serial killer G.G. Holmes. The main characters are a film crew that is preparing to shoot a documentary about the hotel, where Holmes dealt with his victims. The atmosphere in the team is tense, which will certainly affect the development of the plot. The tension intensifies with the realization that the characters are trapped by a mysterious masked killer who is setting up a test in the spirit of "Saw".

As before, the game allows you to participate in dialogues, choosing answer options (you can remain silent, which is sometimes the right decision), which, in turn, affects the relationship between the characters. And, as before, you can not bring all the characters to the final. There are also familiar artifacts that shed light on a possible development of events. But the coins that can be picked up in the corridors of the hotel have never been seen in the series before. They accumulate regardless of the character we play as, and it is not yet clear what they serve for.

The preview version scared me with a couple of screamers, intrigued me with the scenario, pleased me with new gameplay mechanics and a much faster pace. The final conclusions can be drawn by playing the release version, but even now The Devil In Me looks like the best part of the anthology. Let's hope that this impression is not misleading.