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Man of Medan is the first instalment in The Dark Pictures Anthology, a horror series from the creators of Until Dawn. Now, I like that game, but its writing is far from perfect, so I hoped this title would remedy some of its problems. Sadly, it didn't. In fact, it has some additional problems of its own.
The big one is the characters. Good God are they boring! It doesn't help that you have to endure a lot of them wandering around the ship, usually alone and almost completely wordless. They're so devoid of any appealing or interesting personality that I honestly didn't care who lived or died. In fact, I did get a couple of them killed, and was utterly indifferent.
Also, in my playthrough, Brad was completely absent during the abduction scene, and when he reappeared later, there wasn't a word of explanation as to where he'd been.
I've heard that in the online multiplayer mode, both players' stories run concurrently when their characters split up. I guess that's a nifty idea, but I'm not really interested in exploring that path.
The graphics are easily the game's greatest strength: they nail the ominous atmosphere. That and the premise is pretty interesting once it becomes clear what's going on. But although it piqued my interest at times, the one emotion it didn't evoke was fear.
Final note: depending on your choices, you may end up with an unsatisfying narrative and dialogue that makes characters or even scenes seem inconsistent.
My rating: 65%
