Playing on PC, and when you go in to check on a specific character's status changes toward you, you can't press ESC to go back, have to manually click the prompt (which says to press ESC!).
This is actually in a lot of places. If you pick "Don't play alone" from the main menu, then ESC doesn't work to go back. If you pick "Play alone" it does. Like.. wat.
Another one: If you go to the secrets overview, click a secret to read it and then press ESC, the keypress falls-through ("buffers") and takes you back to the game play, instead of back to the secrets overview. If you however click the back button with the mouse, it works as expected.
After finishing the game scene selection is broken in ways that are hard to explain, but basically you can't scroll the list of scenes with the mouse, and if you highlight something with the mouse you can't use the arrows on the keyboard either, same if you don't highlight anything. So basically, if you enter this menu and move the mouse over a scene, you're screwed.
I've also had two times (so far) when the game transitions to one of those pick A or B options where I end up having no mouse cursor so the only option is to time out. It's like if in a platformer sometimes the jump button just stopped working.
Feel like I'm beta-testing M&K support.
PS. Also some Steam achievement seems broken. None of the pictures/premonitions I found have been counted.
Just finished it and... no, that was a bad one. Until Dawn's storytelling and character work were good enough that the monotonous gameplay wasn't really an issue, but Man of Medan is a boring story, poorly told, with not a single character I had any interest in. This game is on the level of those 90-minute low budget jump-scare-a-thon horror movies that are a dime a dozen on Netflix. There's no real central theme to the horror, just a hodge podge of different tired horror tropes you've seen before dozens of times. And when the story and characters don't catch your interest, that just leaves a game which is 90% molasses-walking with terrible controls (turning the wrong way every time the fixed camera angle changes) and 10% QTEs that sometimes don't register because the framerate can chug (the 'press A in time with your heartbeat' thing is particularly bad for this).
I had 4/5 characters survive, with the one dying so suddenly and so anticlimactically that I was sure it had to be a fakeout. Spoilers:
Junior shot Julia out of the blue in a 'talk down the bad guy with the gun' scene so poorly executed that I didn't even know it was one until it was over. And when she's dead they do an extreme close-up on her face which should have a bullet hole in it, but the 4K graphics make it perfectly clear that she just has a little red smudge on her forehead. Did they run out of budget before they could 3D model an actual bullet hole?
Luckily it only happened like fifteen minutes from the end, and to its credit the game does at least have scene selection (unlike Hidden Agenda), so I went back and finished the game with all five survivors and found that barely anything changed. With Until Dawn I was excited to see every possible permutation of the story, and I really enjoyed getting the Platinum Trophy, but I don't see myself touching this again. At best I might look up some Youtube videos of other endings, but I'm definitely not going to repeat hours of molasses-walking just to get them myself.
I just don't think Supermassive really... knows what they're doing with this genre sometimes. I mean, I know that sounds harsh, but I feel like they don't really design them like video games that you can play well by being diligent, searching areas thoroughly to make sure you're prepared for what comes next. Quantic Dream's games get a lot of deserved flak, but with those games I usually feel like whatever happens, positive or negative, it's because of a choice I made, or a gameplay sequence I could have executed more skilfully. I feel responsible. In Man of Medan it feels like whatever happens happens and I don't really have much control over anything. It'll put you in a room where you can inspect two things, and one thing will be some vital thing that'll change the story, and the other will immediately move you on to the next scene with no chance of coming back, and you won't know which is which until you choose one. They'll put you in conversation scenes where your choices are super important, but they don't give the scene enough gravitas to clue you in, so it just feels like business as usual until something major suddenly happens. It's like their design philosophy is halfway between "be careful, what you do matters" and "hey shit happens lol just have fun".
Aren't we supposed to confront the evil at the very end and beat it? Or, y'know, die trying, but at least learn what's going on before the end of the horror movie? I still don't know if it was ghosts or chemical hallucinations, and not in a clever, purposely ambiguous kind of way, but in an 'it feels like there are scenes missing' kind of way. What was with the locked coffins? Why did all the US soldiers see a little boy? Why does Shawn Ashmore get killed by an old woman? I guess some of this might be shown in other branching paths that I didn't see, but, like I said, I didn't enjoy the game enough to want to go back and see them.
I still think it's ludicrous that the pirates just... didn't see Brad back on the Duke of Milan, too. He was sleeping in the bunkbed right under Conrad; how could they possibly have missed him? Like, just lying there, for hours, with eight people stomping back and forth past the door. What?
Just finished it and... no, that was a bad one. Until Dawn's storytelling and character work were good enough that the monotonous gameplay wasn't really an issue, but Man of Medan is a boring story, poorly told, with not a single character I had any interest in. This game is on the level of those 90-minute low budget jump-scare-a-thon horror movies that are a dime a dozen on Netflix. There's no real central theme to the horror, just a hodge podge of different tired horror tropes you've seen before dozens of times. And when the story and characters don't catch your interest, that just leaves a game which is 90% molasses-walking with terrible controls (turning the wrong way every time the fixed camera angle changes) and 10% QTEs that sometimes don't register because the framerate can chug (the 'press A in time with your heartbeat' thing is particularly bad for this).
I had 4/5 characters survive, with the one dying so suddenly and so anticlimactically that I was sure it had to be a fakeout. Spoilers:
Junior shot Julia out of the blue in a 'talk down the bad guy with the gun' scene so poorly executed that I didn't even know it was one until it was over. And when she's dead they do an extreme close-up on her face which should have a bullet hole in it, but the 4K graphics make it perfectly clear that she just has a little red smudge on her forehead. Did they run out of budget before they could 3D model an actual bullet hole?
Luckily it only happened like fifteen minutes from the end, and to its credit the game does at least have scene selection (unlike Hidden Agenda), so I went back and finished the game with all five survivors and found that barely anything changed. With Until Dawn I was excited to see every possible permutation of the story, and I really enjoyed getting the Platinum Trophy, but I don't see myself touching this again. At best I might look up some Youtube videos of other endings, but I'm definitely not going to repeat hours of molasses-walking just to get them myself.
I just don't think Supermassive really... knows what they're doing with this genre sometimes. I mean, I know that sounds harsh, but I feel like they don't really design them like video games that you can play well by being diligent, searching areas thoroughly to make sure you're prepared for what comes next. Quantic Dream's games get a lot of deserved flak, but with those games I usually feel like whatever happens, positive or negative, it's because of a choice I made, or a gameplay sequence I could have executed more skilfully. I feel responsible. In Man of Medan it feels like whatever happens happens and I don't really have much control over anything. It'll put you in a room where you can inspect two things, and one thing will be some vital thing that'll change the story, and the other will immediately move you on to the next scene with no chance of coming back, and you won't know which is which until you choose one. They'll put you in conversation scenes where your choices are super important, but they don't give the scene enough gravitas to clue you in, so it just feels like business as usual until something major suddenly happens. It's like their design philosophy is halfway between "be careful, what you do matters" and "hey shit happens lol just have fun".
Aren't we supposed to confront the evil at the very end and beat it? Or, y'know, die trying, but at least learn what's going on before the end of the horror movie? I still don't know if it was ghosts or chemical hallucinations, and not in a clever, purposely ambiguous kind of way, but in an 'it feels like there are scenes missing' kind of way. What was with the locked coffins? Why did all the US soldiers see a little boy? Why does Shawn Ashmore get killed by an old woman? I guess some of this might be shown in other branching paths that I didn't see, but, like I said, I didn't enjoy the game enough to want to go back and see them.
I still think it's ludicrous that the pirates just... didn't see Brad back on the Duke of Milan, too. He was sleeping in the bunkbed right under Conrad; how could they possibly have missed him? Like, just lying there, for hours, with eight people stomping back and forth past the door. What?
Haha I lost my one character in the same situation as you, but it was her boyfriend. Everything else, it seemed pretty easy to keep everyone alive, and losing someone there definitely just felt like poor writing.
Overall, the game was pretty terrible. A big step down from Until Dawn in almost every way, except for the co-op, which was actually quite fun (mostly because my friend and I were commenting on how terrible everything was.
The technical issues, however, were just brutal. I feel like I have a much higher tolerance for framerate drops than most, but this game got absolutely brutal at times, often in parts where they also fed me a QTE which then became next to impossible to hit. On more than one occasion I was 100% sure I pushed the right button at the right time, and the game just didn't register it.
Beyond tech issues, the story was bad and felt unfinished. Five minutes before the end (which took my friend and I 3.5 hours) my friend was like "I...think this is the end", and I swore up and down there had to be more, it didn't make sense for it to end here. Sure enough, I was wrong, and the game felt like it ended completely out of nowhere.
Pretty bad game. Boring gameplay, terrible story, LOTS of tech issues, all only saved by an admittedly clever co-op implementation. Unless the next one is a big step up, I'll be skipping this series
Beyond tech issues, the story was bad and felt unfinished. Five minutes before the end (which took my friend and I 3.5 hours) my friend was like "I...think this is the end", and I swore up and down there had to be more, it didn't make sense for it to end here. Sure enough, I was wrong, and the game felt like it ended completely out of nowhere.
- Following Until Dawn and Detroit highlights the shortcomings of the game design, which meant the story, characters and visuals would have to be top notch to make up for it
- Unfortunately, there is a clear lack of polish visually, while some stuff looks incredible, it looks worse than Until Dawn in many regards
- The story and characters didn't do it for me at all, but that happens with anthology horror, you don't care about everything the same way
- I think in an anthology this is fine, but there is a pricing error. This should be 20 dollars, you get the "trilogy" aka content on par with a full game for 60 bucks. They should have only released a physical edition with all 3 games once they are done.
- The multiplayer seems really fun even though in this particular story it ended up a bit limited because of its gimmick, it's exciting for the future episodes.
I'm surprised at the rather negative reaction personally, I quite enjoyed it.
It obviously is a smaller scale Until Dawn but I was fine with what was on show; found it particularly tense throughout.
I finished it with everyone surviving surprisingly, and will move on to a Curator Cut run next
I still don't know if it was ghosts or chemical hallucinations, and not in a clever, purposely ambiguous kind of way, but in an 'it feels like there are scenes missing' kind of way. What was with the locked coffins? Why did all the US soldiers see a little boy? Why does Shawn Ashmore get killed by an old woman?
I'm not 100% sure myself to be honest, and maybe others can further explain some things, but for what it's worth:
It wasn't ghosts. The only real threat to them was the pirates. Everything else was all in their heads, thanks to the Manchurian Gold bioweapon making them see everything that wasn't there.
The locked coffins were the remains of the soldiers they recovered that had terrible experiments involving the "gold testing" done to them. One of the recovered soldiers was so fucked up there was barely anything left of him, so his body was put in the small casket "until we can get him home". The coffins and crates were reinforced with locks to stop people potentially being exposed to the bioweapon.
Rumours started swirling that there was a child's body in the small one as much of the true information was kept from everyone. When lightening struck and exposed the contents of the other crates in the hull (the ones you see being crane-lifted in during the opening), the "gold" started to leak out and everyone was exposed. Some of the soldiers swore they saw an apparition of a child, no doubt influenced by the coffin and one soldier whose report you find states that he swore he saw a kid on the boat.
Where it gets fuzzy for me is that I'm not sure if it literally shows you what you fear most (hence the guy at the beginning seeing a child and, obviously, given his own child back home) or just something to terrify you to death. Because fuck knows why Iceman is scared to death of Wartime dancing girls that turn into old zombie ladies (I know he sees a poster of the fancying lady first), or why Fliss in my play through ended up on a deck that had cult worship and pentagrams and blood fountains in it.
I will also say that I actually enjoyed the game a lot but, if you know even a smidgeon of the story of the Ourang Medan and some of the wild theories that exist around it, then there maybe won't be too many actual surprises for you based on where they went with it. I'm hoping Little Hope in comparison is an original tale rather than based on anything specific.
Is there a "best setup" for the movie night mode? We want to play as a group of 3, but I have no way how to hand out the characters. I remember there being an ultimate setup guide for Until Dawn (e.g. don't pair these 2 characters with one player cause they influence eachothers storyline).
Aren't we supposed to confront the evil at the very end and beat it? Or, y'know, die trying, but at least learn what's going on before the end of the horror movie? I still don't know if it was ghosts or chemical hallucinations, and not in a clever, purposely ambiguous kind of way, but in an 'it feels like there are scenes missing' kind of way. What was with the locked coffins? Why did all the US soldiers see a little boy? Why does Shawn Ashmore get killed by an old woman? I guess some of this might be shown in other branching paths that I didn't see, but, like I said, I didn't enjoy the game enough to want to go back and see them.
From my playthrough it seemed pretty obvious that it was all chemicals. There are document notes about "Manchurian Gold" being a codename for chemical ammo developed in China that makes people see 'some shit', and my characters talked about it. The ammo(?) was being transported in (some of the) coffins, but started to leak. People are dying to fright from their hallucinations.
Agree with the controls being bad though. At one point (in the weather lookout on the ship) I got boxed in and literally couldn't move out, my character just went around in circles. Fortunately just exiting and loading in again fixed it.
Also 100% agree with the problem of knowning what interactions move the game on and which don't. Sometimes you have two doors and there's literally no way of knowing if opening one will lock you out of content. A spent a lot of time running back and forth just trying to manage those issues.
A game like this needs much better quality of life for the player. There are too many UI and control issues, too many niggling little things for me to want to replay. Scene selection should just be global once you've completed the game. You should be able to skip all actual cut-scenes. All the UI/interface bugs must be fixed. There should be a 'restart chapter' and/or 'restart act' options (at least once you've completed it once) so you can explore options more fluidly and so on.
I had Fliss die at the very end, and of course first thing I scene select back to that point to replay and not miss the QTE... then I have to wait through the unskippable curator end credits + unskippable teaser for next episode + unskippable post-credit scene OR the game considers the playthrough as only 99.98% complete or some shit, and doesn't allow scene select again! Like.. who came up with this shit? As soon as I've made the last choice the game should be 100% and I should be able to just exit to main menu. It's like it's made by people who don't actually play games?
The painting in the center is a premonition for the next game, it shows the character from it.
As far as the plot questions, idk I mean obviously people make different choices but I feel like it's pretty obvious what was going on
It's the gas, it's very explicitly spelled out that it's the gas. Some of the ways you save people involve them not breathing the gas as well. Why did the soldier see a boy? cause it was his son.
Beat it last night and loved it, definitely felt like a worthy (albeit slightly budget) successor to Until Dawn and I'm really looking forward to the next one. I need to go back and check some of the other ones I think I saw, but I thought
the creepy characters hanging out in the background were really cool. I thought I was imagining them, but I saved a clip and there clearly is the guy from the intro video standing behind the characters. I also remember seeing the sailor pin-up that chases Conrad beside a door out of the corner of my eye but when I quickly went back they were gone but I'm not sure if I'm crazy on that one.
I will also second what the poster above me said, the game makes it really obvious, not even sure how's there's a question of what's going on unless you missed a lot of stuff.
I just couldn't let go of the game until i was done with it, past the curator.
I had a good time, though... everybody saved on first attempt is a let down :/
I thought i would struggle and get a bad end, everybody dying so i can replay and try to find how to save everyone... but nope...
i missed heart beat qtes and the like; but it didn't instakill a character.
More than that...
I had 3 active escape plans at the end when i just needed one.
The engine part, the escapee, and air-lift on route ...
that's overkill xD
It was a bummer to see the ending sequence did not mix the two escape plans left overs...
Maybe that's just because i played alone and not multiplayer.
I replayed the introduction chapter, it was nice to see variation in the ending sequence of the chapter even though i did exactly the same thing in both.
It's very untildawnish; stiff puppet characters are cute for me, but i understand how off putting they can be :)
Just best it, did terrible of course, 1 survivor. I enjoyed the game, I didn't like it near as much as Until Dawn, but still liked it enough. My big problems were the slowness of everything leading to the ghost ship and I didn't really care for any of the characters.
I experienced a Shitty Game breaking bug While playing co op
I'm at the part where im fliss chasing Conrad. At the ladder part we going a poor connection pause in the middle of a QTE so my friend failed to click a button and Conrad fell and probably died but he paused as soon as he fell and we thought we should quit and continue, hopefully we can re do it but now it's stuck at the ladder part with Conrad gone and fliss just frozen at the ladder. We tried restarting a couple of times but it won't work and now I have to restart sadly
Also I just finished a run of the Curator's Cut, but it was pretty pointless I feel =/
It's just so minor, it's only worth bothering with if you're already wanting to do another run to see the outcome of other choices I think.
I've been hearing there's only a small portion of the game actually on the disc and it needs mandatory downloads to work...can anyone confirm or put my mind at ease here? PS4 mostly, but same supposedly goes for X1.
I've been hearing there's only a small portion of the game actually on the disc and it needs mandatory downloads to work...can anyone confirm or put my mind at ease here? PS4 mostly, but same supposedly goes for X1.
i wish the game were more playful at the beginning. Like the bit with Brad telling the ghost story. You can interject here and there but you're kinda locked into this bonding, drinking scene for a few minutes listening to a character tell a dumb ghost story. Like, what if WE got to determine the story as Brad, choosing the route it went, and that being a chance for us to see what makes the other characters tick?
What Medan is really missing is some of the ways Until Dawn tried to fuck with you — asking you if you thought clowns were scary, spiders, gore, etc. That could have been a great hook in to setting up some pay off later when the characters start seeing shit. Very little from The Curator too in terms of him providing influence over the incoming events
I'm really hoping Little Hope has more choice for you to shape the ongoing encounter like Until Dawn.
I've been hearing there's only a small portion of the game actually on the disc and it needs mandatory downloads to work...can anyone confirm or put my mind at ease here? PS4 mostly, but same supposedly goes for X1.
Is there some way to play onilne with one other person with only one paid copy of the game? Like how it works with A Way Out, or using Share Play or something?
About three hours in with everyone still alive. Really enjoying it and glad to see it's getting progressively more creepy. In any free control section, I keep wishing we could get a survival horror game with this design with inventory, weapons, etc... Resident Evil style. Felt the same way in Until Dawn - the cameras would be perfect for it.
If you enjoyed Until Dawn, I cannot recommend this enough!
In any free control section, I keep wishing we could get a survival horror game with this design with inventory, weapons, etc... Resident Evil style. Felt the same way in Until Dawn - the cameras would be perfect for it.
Yeah, I had the same thought. It's the higher production values mixed with older school survival horror design that I want. I'd be fine with a Silent Hill that looked like Man of Medan with a more stable framerate.
Really enjoyed this game. I suggest not listening to the reviews as apart from the performance issues most of the scores are subjective based on the story. If you love B horror movies this is a must play.
Liked this up until the end where there were massive continuity problems (one character just shows up in a scene where it makes no logical sense for them to be there based on what we saw in a previous scene) and some plot threads got dropped entirely. Really liked the game up until then but man they really dropped the ball with that
About three hours in with everyone still alive. Really enjoying it and glad to see it's getting progressively more creepy. In any free control section, I keep wishing we could get a survival horror game with this design with inventory, weapons, etc... Resident Evil style. Felt the same way in Until Dawn - the cameras would be perfect for it.
If you enjoyed Until Dawn, I cannot recommend this enough!
