The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes

After two installments that did not convince, House of Ashes makes the anthology start to get interesting, since it makes its story, characters, location, script and gameplay the main component of its good opinions. What I liked is that this time the threat is real, and not "it's all in your head", and with this he even manages to pay tribute to Until Dawn. This will be for me and for all the first game in the series going forward. Surely thanks to all this you will be able to calmly enjoy the previous two with another opportunity, as here everything is real and the previous ones are not, it is not to complain. I already hope next year the fourth game "The Devil in Me" because it will be very brutal and bloody.

House Of Ashes is personally my favourite installment to derive from the Dark Pictures Anthology. It cleverly crafts its daunting antagonists, but also offers its five central characters depth and exploration. Like previous installments from the franchise, choices and actions determine your story, which the game extends on remarkibly, adding bigger want for replayibility. On the other hand, due to these decisions, some characters will never equally recieve the same likeability as others in one playthrough, resulting in desinterest for few players. As for the story, it has vastly inproved and contains great engagement into its chilling atmosphere even despite the odd campy dialogue scattered throughout. There is area for improvement, which I hope the next installment, 'The Devil In Me', follows through with. Either way, House Of Ashes is an 8/10 from me.

Pros:

-Visual -Characters more well written than the others games of Supermassive Games

• Various QTE

-An interesting love story between Rachel, Eric and Kay -some of the characters have a real personnalities and make them lovable

• Some interesting secrets

-can be funny (most funny in the beginning when the scare is not there yet) -Dialogue (Fun, dramatic, opinion, build relationship) -some scenes in the cave can be quite anxious and have some tense moments (due to the proximity of the camera and a very close point of view of the character) -simple gameplay -Randolph Story -some memorables deaths that make us wonder the fair decision of our choices

Cons:

-An end that feel a little bit rushed and precipitated in the writing i mean

• too much actions (can be boring during these scenes)

-Some choices make us wonder of their real impact in the game (the impactful choices are just for to survive with a character thats all and not make him die)

• a beginning without scare or any mysterious ambience that make us wonder of the genre of this Video game

-Short -The story is not very complex and lack of depth -Characters well written but way too simple and already seen in other movies -simple gameplay: no new mechanics

• i found the story of the monsters not very interesting and the sci fi that their bring are not the most thrilling part in my opinion

The game also remember me a lot of the Descent, the movie. Can be entertaining but lack of complexity and should be more long.

I loved it, I thought it was a lot better than Little Hope and Man of Maiden. Definitely gonna be playing this one a lot more. Can't wait for The Devil in Me to come out, that one looks like it'll be good.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes is a survival horror interactive drama video game developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It is the third of eight planned instalments in The Dark Pictures Anthology series, following 2019's Man of Medan and 2020's Little Hope.

After playing the first game in this series, Man of Medan, despite some issues I enjoyed the game and was looking forward to where the story would go next. Little Hope, however, was rather disappointing, taking an interesting turn in the series but a rather dull result overall.

House of Ashes however has restored my hope in the series, the story is better, the characters are more fleshed out and interesting and there is a lot more action in an interesting and creepy environment. Visually the game is stunning, with detailed creatures and a realistic setting. Paired with great voice acting and a stellar performance from Ashley Tisdale.

Overall, I found this game to be the best so far in the series. And the next game looks promising too. Hopefully, it's onwards and upwards for this horror anthology.