House Of Ashes treats post-9/11 Iraq like just another B-movie haunted house
The latest installment in Supermassive Games’ The Dark Pictures Anthology gets points for being audaciously weird, at least
Games Features B-movie
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
William Hughes: There are few things you can set your watch to in modern gaming. Outside a handful of franchises—your Maddens and your Call Of Dutys, which roll off the assembly line every year like very expensive clockwork—games are usually too big, and too complicated, to hit any kind of annual schedule. (Especially if the studios in question have any interest in avoiding the horrors of developer burnout and crunch.)
The big exception, in recent years, has been The Dark Pictures Anthology. Developed by Supermassive Games—in an obvious attempt to craft something sustainable in the shadow of its massive, Oscar-winner-starring playable horror movie Until Dawn—the DPA franchise has deployed a new game every October for the last three years, inviting players to spend four or five hours fending off jump scares, moral choices, and quick-time events in order to guide a cast of unlikable assholes through Supermassive’s latest digital haunted house.
My colleague Alex McLevy and I are now veterans of the Dark Pictures beat, having previously played together through 2019’s “spooky boat” adventure Man Of Medan, and last year’s psychological witch-horror title Little Hope. And it says something about the appeal of this series, and the general rarity of those things that it gets really right, that I was genuinely excited at the thought of playing with Alex through the latest game, House Of Ashes, when it came out last week—despite finding both of the previous installments lackluster, and kind of conceptually cowardly.
Which: Say what you like about the near-overwhelming mess that is House Of Ashes, but at least it’s refreshing to see this series take some swings for once. Said dopey ambitions starts with a premise that makes it clear exactly how over-their-heads Supermassive has decided to go with this latest game: Instead of death-prone tourists or hapless college students, this third game sees you take on the role of a team of Marines and intelligence operatives on a mission in Iraq in 2003, attempting to find Saddam’s (wholly fictitious) WMDs.
House Of Ashes doesn’t shy away from the implications of that bizarrely confident choice, either. This a game that plays snippets of George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech. A character sports a hat with a 9/11 memorial scribbled on it, numbering the Iraqis he’s killed in retaliation for their (also wholly fictitious) participation in the attacks. Xenophobia and the cycle of revenge are a major theme. It is, on every level, about as far above this goofy horror franchise’s weight class as you could ever expect to see it punch.
And yet, I have to give it to House Of Ashes: It had the courage of its convictions, something that the previous two Dark Pictures games—which went way out of their way to step back from saying anything about anything—sorely lacked. What did you think, Alex? Does House Of Ashes earn its choices? How far can audacity take you?
Alex McLevy: The phrase “the audacity of nope” comes to mind, simply because every time this game tried to introduce some moral nuance or highlight the sociopolitical error of the scale of the Iraq war, it did so with all the wit and subtlety of… well, the two previous Dark Pictures games.
And yet that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? Just allowing yourself to laugh at the sheer chutzpah of what House Of Ashes attempts to tackle in its own lunkheaded way. When your game begins in 2331 B.C., solely in order to introduce the ravenous supernatural creatures who will soon be feasting upon the innards of your ill-fated soldiers, you have to admire the go-for-broke confidence of a series whose budget seems to dip a little with each passing installment.
Because the scope and scale are larger in every way than the previous iteration, I started to develop a feeling of “fuck it” glee as we descended further into the earth here, William. The game couldn’t stop introducing new wrinkles to its story, each more massive than the last. What initially seemed like it would be something akin to Alien soon turned into Aliens—which should tell any fan of that franchise just how big a shift transpires here. And that’s without even delving into a whole separate part of the mythology that makes the phrase “dead man walking” heartily applicable.
So once again, I find myself endorsing a game whose flaws are almost laughably glaring. But it was fun calling out those flaws with you as we played! And even when I found myself growing annoyed at the sometimes janky mechanics, the fact that any subsequent results fall under the umbrella of “Well, what are you gonna do?” in terms of outcome means my investment is so much less than a game in which I was actually committed to “winning,” in the traditional sense. Is any of this sounding familiar to you, Will? And more importantly: Was the lead character, played with glassy-eyed blankness by ex-High School Musical actor and musician Ashley Tisdale, as much of a charisma black hole as she was to me? (Whether that’s due to shitty budgets for mo-cap or her performance, I leave to the fates to decide.)
WH: If there’s one thing that the Dark Pictures games have legitimately improved on from the Until Dawn formula, it’s in channeling that game’s potent “Laugh at the B-movie” vibes into a playable mechanic. Having an online friend along to crack jokes with as the plot just gets sillier and sillier has become a major part of this series’ appeal.
As to Tisdale—who will always, and forever, be the unfortunate subject of Forrest McNeil’s romantic attentions in an especially cringe-inducing installment of Review to me—I spent significantly less time with her than you did, since the game’s arbitrary split of playable characters favored putting her in your control. That being said: They do not appear to have bothered capturing more than three facial expressions for her character, Rachel: Dull surprise, dull anger, and just plain dull.
But maybe that’s the fault of our choices, Alex, because it turns out we did a terrible job at keeping people alive while playing through House Of Ashes. During play, we assumed the game was a more railroaded affair than previous DPA games, killing characters off indiscriminately. But it turns out that we just suck; it’s totally possible to keep your whole crew alive as they have their underground adventure, provided you don’t do things like, say, ignore the very obvious prompts that dangling over a chasm while someone shoots at you is a bad idea. No wonder horror host The Curator (Pip Torrens, who is probably a very good actor in things that aren’t this) was so bored by our performance.
The worst thing you can say about House Of Ashes, I think—leaving aside its cynicism, its pretentions of deeper meaning, its infuriatingly difficult stealth sections, etc.—is that it goes on long enough to smear every individual scene into a sort of same-y paste. Even as the story goes completely off the rails in the final act, the sheer length of the damn thing starts to drag down the energy. There’s a reason more schlocky horror movies aren’t five hours long.
And yet, damn them and damn me, I’m still excited for the next game, The Devil In Me, which is being touted as the season finale for this Westeros-esque four-year “season.” At the very least, I’ll finally be able to definitively rank these damn things. How about you, Alex? Are you excited to see what final twists this series has in store?
AM: William, your comments here inspired me to go back and take another pass, and damned if you aren’t right—we did a terrible job protecting our folks. And sure, while it’s still very much a winnowing of the branching narrative, akin to last year’s Little Hope (where the roster of characters rarely changed the number of sequences you went through, only the order in which you did them), that’s not nothing.
So yes, I’m looking forward to the finale: In part because these stupid things are an annual Halloween bon mot of so-bad-it’s-good entertainment, but also because I’m curious what the hell they think ties this “season” together. I’m guessing the Curator retires—and by the lackluster enthusiasm he showed our most recent outing, I think he’s excited to claim his pension and get the hell out.
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I’ve heard good things about House of Ashes over the past few hours, but I think I might be past the point of getting excited about playing new horror games. I still absolutely love the first 3 Silent Hill games, and appreciate the rest of the series at least. I got a kick out of RE 4 and 5, I enjoyed Clock Tower 1 and 3, I got bored with Fatal Frame 1 but was thrilled by Crimson Butterfly. Loved how unusual Siren was when it was new, but couldn’t make myself push through it earlier this year.I wish they got me the same way they did when I first played Uninvited for the NES, and the descriptions of my unillustrated deaths were too much for me. I wish anything was felt as scary as the time I got to Alternate Silent Hill for the first time just as city workers felled a tree out in my yard and shook the entire house. It’s not even that I think modern horror games are worse than the ones I played in my teens and 20s. I’ve been watching plenty of people play through horror games on Twitch all year. I guess I just don’t find the gameplay in most horror games satisfying anymore, and I’d rather just watch them for the atmosphere and story.That said, I’m looking forward to watching House of Ashes.My weekend’s largely going to be dominated by a couple of big board game nights. My group’s going to be starting March in Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 Friday night. Part of me wants to plow through and get to the good parts of the story, but only having had 2 sessions over the past 6 weeks, it’s made the times we can get our group together and make progress feel even more satisfying, just for their scarcity. I’d at least like to start averaging a month per week so we can finish the campaign this year, but I guess I don’t mind savoring it, as long as the breaks between don’t start killing our enthusiasm. We got the best possible outcomes in the first couple months so far, due in large part to the group’s willingness to slow down and talk out one turn for half an hour. That’d be boring for a lot of people, but I love that shit. Give me more. If I can win by counting cards, calculating probability, and accounting for multiple strategies, it’s way more fulfilling than winning by chance.For Halloween, I’ve also put together a massive 8-player Tabletop Simulator game of Eldritch Horror for Saturday, and I’m prepared to put in 6 hours or more. I’ve been helping players pick out characters in advance so setup doesn’t take an eternity, and I’m really excited to see how having a full table affects the balance of the game. I’ve mostly played 2-player, but the most fun game – even ending in a crushing loss – was when we had five people to succumb to cosmic horror together with. Eight’s going to be a trip. I’m going to have to teach the rules to half the table, and I’m absolutely going to have to impress on them that it’s a game you have to go into expecting to lose. Even when you win, there’s no victory text, no moral to the story, nothing nearly as interesting as the massive amounts of reading devoted to everything going wrong. We have to approach this as a bonding experience for 8 friends sharing the end of the world together. With the right expectations, the game’s a blast.I expect to dink around in Animal Crossing: New Horizon a little, sell turnips for massive profits, and catch any seasonal fish and bugs before the month ends. The Nintendo Direct a couple weeks ago fueled a conversation between me and my coworker, I sent her half of my turnip fortune, and suddenly I was playing daily again for the first time in 14 months. All the villagers on my island talked about how there were rumors I died. I couldn’t not give this world another chance.And I feel like I’m… halfway through Metroid Dread? I struggled to enjoy the game for the first hour or two, but now that I’m playing on a full screen, the map’s much easier read and I have a much better sense of where to go. I think it’s one of those game’s I’m going to appreciate much more on replay, when I’m not constantly getting lost and running in circles, failing QTEs, and losing progress.
“I’ve been watching plenty of people play through horror games on Twitch all year.”
I’m assuming that means you’ve watched a lot of Visage, but on the off chance you haven’t….check it out! I missed out on the whole P.T. thing so maybe I’m more easily impressed, but Visage scared the shit out of me.
This one was a lot more fun then the other two, but its no Until Dawn. Pip Torrens cannot beat Peter Stormare.
No one can beat Peter Stormare.
Finishing (I think?) Tales of Arise. I think, because it pulled a fast one on me after 40 hours, where I thought I’m finishing up the story, but then it dropped the title card and an entirely new opening movie. What’s more impressive is that I’m not tiring of it – the pacing so far has been pretty good.It’s damn good in general. It’s a surprisingly solid take on the tried and true “fantasy racism” story. It doesn’t veer in too deep into any aspect of it, but it also has some surprisingly subtle writing. I like how the game is almost matter-of-fact about the atrocities of the dominant Renans – it shows slavery at the beginning and admirably, the game seems to think that this is enough to sell them as horrific opressors and they don’t need to be kicking a puppy every now and then to focus on it. Instead, it focuses much more on how their rule warps the psychology of the oppressed Dahnans, like an excellent chapter where the team enters a realm that specifically encourages its citizens to rat on each other.Rinwell, a teenager, is particularly vicious in her hatred of the Renans and the game portrays her development on that front realistically. She is distrustful of everything coming from the two Renan companions and it takes her a long time to accept that they are a bit more multifaceted than assumed; and even when she does, she’s still traumatized enough that she’ll explode at them. And to their credit, the Renans in the party don’t try to “both sides” it or get pissy about it – while they point out that the system is grinding them as well, they acknowledge their privileges and always concur that the trauma of the party’s Dahnans outweighs anything they lived through.Dohalim is also a surprisingly nuanced take on “one of the good ones” – he’s not a monster and he’s actually helping, but the game doesn’t let him off the hook for his bullshit, whether it’s the fact that his motivations aren’t pure or that he can’t shake off the privileged, educated distance.It’s not the deepest take on this particular trope I’ve ever seen, but I admire that while the game points out that the heroes’ crusade will not magically fix any problems, it never lets them waver about that purpose for more than a second – no, holding hands won’t help, you first need to literally kill the system before you can even think about reconciliation. It’s also fun because it’s a fucking dark game, but it doesn’t go out of its way to be edgy. It’s actually incredibly colorful and humorous, which only makes the horrific shit so much more poignant.The combat is fucking great, too. We are living in an era of peak combat where every other game plays like a dream, but no other genre is as exemplary about it as the wave of jRPGs in the past 2 years. Arise is fast, meaty (the duo finishers are so goddamn punchy) and satisfying. My only issue is that the combat is actually VERY deep if you maximize the amount of playtime everyone in your party gets, but the game does very little to actually teach you that. I played those 40 hours largely as Alphen and I had a blast, but that was largely because a) the AI is solid enough that you don’t have to bother with switching and b) the tutorials NEVER explain to you how much you can benefit from jumping between characters. It’s especially odd because Bandai Namco’s previous, Scarlet Nexus, does a very good job of explaining to you exactly how to play within its ruleset.I’ve also played some of Yoko Taro’s new game, Voices of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars. It’s not entirely “his” game since he’s not the main writer, but it’s an interesting side project. It’s not a card game, first of all. It’s very much a classic jRPG, a throwback to old Dragon Quest and other sorts of dungeon crawlers with Taro’s knack for putting in a novel’s worth of tragedy into two sentences of character backstory. The card aesthetic is cool, so is the idea that this story is told by a game master – it already seems like the game is going to do some cutesy fourth wall breaks, and even the demo (which I recommend playing – it’s actually the prologue to the main game) hints at darker shit.Kimihiko Fujisaka is back as character artist after he sat out the last two NieR releases which has me excited – Akihiko Yoshida is a beast and possibly my favorite artist, but if this truly is some sort of prologue to the main Drakengard series, nobody finds themselves as well in Drakengard’s edgy, manic aesthetic as well as the guy who helped Taro realize it. Keichii Okabe is also back and it’s a VERY interesting work of his – a lot of the tracks sound like something straight out of The Witcher series, until Emi Evans pops up and the mood suddenly shifts into much darker, psychotic territory. It’s definitely too easy – I hope there’s a patch tuning some of the numbers, because the combat is almost an afterthought and considering how much of it there is, it really should mean more.
Lately, I’ve gotten back on the Final Fantasy XIV horse again, with my beefy Dragoon boy playing through the start of the Heavensward storyline. I’m level 59, and am trying to level up a bit more (if possible on the free trial mode) before getting ready to find the Gnath Primal.
So I’ve been running a bunch of the Grand Company levequests and as such have gotten promoted to Sergeant Third Class. Here’s my character:Since I typed this, I have played a tiny bit more and got through the sub quest chain that had frustrated me after speaking to this creature:And after that I was actually able to defeat the Gnath Primal in the first confrontation.
I’ve also been playing a lot of Magic The Gathering Arena on my phone, and my mono-white deck has gotten me all the way up to Diamond Tier 3 rank in Constructed playing standard. There’s been some insane wins and losses on the way: Also, I’ve been doing some low key streaming of said Magic Arena games on Twitch, so throw me a follow at https://twitch.tv/lost_limey
Also, if anyone wants to friend me on Magic The Gathering Arena my user name is lost_limey#60442
Jarl Evakazan, meet
As opposed to the B-movie funhouse that was “pre-9/11 Iraq”?
I’m playing Death Loop right now. Last night, I was finally able to progress far enough where I could kill all of the visionaries in a single loop. I did it, and…the game started me on the next loop like nothing ever happened. Despite the game’s insistence that you can effectively ‘play it your way’, it looks like you actually need to complete a series of story tasks, of which I still have a few left. I thought for sure I would’ve at least activated an ending of some sort, even if it wasn’t the best ending. Harumph.
Theres one big thing you have to do after you kill all the visionaries in one day and it’s tied to the bunkers you unlock in the power station.
I liked Until Dawn a lot. The others are diminishing returns for me. I might grab this at some point.Anyway, I finished Deathloop yesterday. I’m still slowly getting through Diablo 2 remake with friends. It’s very slow going. I have a slightly busy weekend so I’ll probably take a nice weekend away from playing anything in big chunks.
This weekend I’ll be playing Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Five hours in, this game has been a real surprise. It could have been a quick cash-grab, a deliberate aping of the MCU films with the serial numbers filed off, but instead it’s a lovingly crafted action-adventure title that very much feels like its own thing. The MCU films are definitely a strong inspiration, but the game feels distinct from them.The game does an excellent job of portraying the core five Guardians. They’re all excellently voiced and animated, and their interactions are fun to witness. It would have been tempting for the writers to just have them sniping at each other all the time, but they didn’t fall into that trap: the Guardians cycle between warmth, quips, aggression, and occasional seriousness. It helps them feel more believable and well-rounded as characters.The game is also genuinely funny, though not in a laugh-out-loud way —- more of a clever, smirky way, to be honest. I won’t spoil anything specific, but the UI is occasionally used to deliver some well-timed jokes. Your squadmates also start making fun of you if you go off the beaten path to search for collectibles and resources; it’s the kind of goofy, quasi-meta joke that could only work in a video game. It also has the dual purpose of cleverly signalling to you that you’re not on the critical path, thereby subtly guiding you to puzzle solutions by process of elimination.Aesthetically the game is top-notch. Music and sound design are both very good, though not especially notable. However, visually, the game is absolutely phenomenal. It’s not just graphical fidelity (if anything, some of the in-game terrain can be distractingly polyhedral); the art direction is just out of this world (pun intended). Environments are gorgeously rendered, like worlds pulled directly from comics pages onto your computer screen. Cutscenes aren’t flat affairs that just cut between characters as they speak; they use cinematic language and conventions to relate the story to the player. This is by far the best-looking game of 2021, and in a year with titles like Psychonauts 2 and Genesis Noir, that’s a damn impressive feat.Combat-wise, I’d describe the game as fun, but clunky and confusing. The combat system was clearly designed around a controller, even though the fact that it’s so shooting-heavy should have necessitated some mouse optimization on PC. (I’ve never gotten used to playing shooters on console and probably never will.) If they make a sequel to this game (and I hope they do!) the combat system is what would need the most work. It doesn’t need to be rebuilt from the ground up —- the basic ideas are sound —- it just needs some tweaks so that it feels a bit less hectic and more like the player is making genuine tactical decisions on the fly. (Halo is the high watermark for forcing players to make split-second strategic decisions during combat; some of those principles could be applied here.)I’m also hoping to get a few more hours into Tales of Arise. I just completed the third realm and learned how to fish. Not much to say on this front. It’s a JRPG. It does JRPG things. I think I’m enjoying it a bit less than the critical consensus, to be honest. I keep wanting it to be a more open experience, but the relatively small maps and lack of meaningful content off the critical path make it feel a bit more claustrophobic than I think was intended.
I dismissed the game early-on, given that it shares the “These are not them…you’ve captured their stunt doubles!” vibes from the Avengers game Square-Enix put out. It’s been genuinely surprising to me to see & hear all the positive comments about the game, forcing me to consider not waiting until the price drops to $20 as I had intended.Are the non-movie Guardians playable? I mean, I know that you play as Quill, but your team consists of Rocket, Groot, Gamora, & Drax, who you get to issue orders to while playing. Without plot spoilers, is it possible to add Nova, Cosmo, Quasar, Mantis, etc. in place of one of the 4 NPCs? Heck, I’d even accept a Jack Flagg option, based on his having shown up in the Abnett & Lanning run on GotG (which heavily inspired the movie that heavily inspired the game).Still running the Genshin Impact treadmill on the daily, plus Overwatch is having their Halloween event. Since it was added to PS+, I’ve played a fair amount of PGA 2k21 as well…and it is surprisingly buggy on my PS5. I’ve had the game crash multiple times when trying a tap-in putt. The commentary also says things which are ridiculously off, like suggesting you have a two-putt par, then chiding you for leaving the first putt within 3-4 feet of the hole, or suggesting you can get into the top x on the leaderboard by making a putt….even when you’re more than 10 strokes off the pace (which will happen, if you don’t go into the training mode to calibrate your swing, but don’t expect the game to suggest it to you). On the whole, I’ve found it to be a lot like real golf: I have no ability to spin the ball on the greens, or to shape my shots….but I can read the break on the greens & can do math, so it mostly works out for me. Unlike real golf, I am way more consistent swinging the right analogue stick than I am swinging my 3-wood. It’s also a little disappointing that they give you a lot of flexibility in choosing the clubs in your bag, unless you want a 7-wood over a hybrid iron. I’m still playing it, so I guess it gets points for being “good enough.”
After a few hours with it, it doesn’t really have a “movie stunt double” vibe. Like I said, it draws a lot of inspiration from the MCU films, but it’s not a deliberate aping.As for your other question, I’m not far enough in the game to know whether you can add other Guardians into your team, but I do know that Mantis appears in the game.
I finished the Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster, the third one I’ve done so far, and man these remasters are a great way to revisit these titles. Each one has taken ~10-12 hours and the auto system works pretty well for fights. – In FF1, once you get armor that can cast spells, the mobs are easy to end in auto
– FF3, every spell is AoE, so you just have to pick one from the right level- FF4 took a little longer because of the rotating cast. Also, the ATB bar covers up where your next attack was listed in the previous games, so it’s easy to get tripped up and use the wrong combo. But eventually a series of physical attacks followed by Rydia mopping up with Mist Dragon gets the job done.