2/5 ★ – LucasOnPS4's review of Until Dawn.

Until Dawn pays a lot of tribute to 80s slasher films, but it pays tribute to the absolute worst aspects about them. The characters and their development are pretty basic for a story like this, but the plot is so incredibly badly put together that it absolutely baffled me. By the time the story had already finished itself with one of the most predictable twists in video game history, it throws these supernatural creatures into the mix to keep the plot going for a longer time. And as it progresses, it fills itself more and more with conveniences and plot holes. I'm not against the idea of the plot in general, but a rewrite or two could've saved it. What caused this game to grab my attention in the first place was the fact that it's one of those "choice affects the story" games, a genre that I absolutely ADORE! But even some games where your choices barely affect the story did it better than this. Why? Because some of the choices you make along the way have some of the most random and unforeshadowed consequences in any video game ever. It's like the creators didn't care about providing the players with common logic and just wanted to use it to spite them by making sure that they would cause as many characters to die as possible. There were many instances where I shut down the game before it could save after a character died, so that I could pick the option the writers didn't want me to pick. Most infamously the stupid trap door in the cave. That part is worse than any jumpscare that any movie has ever thrown at us! I will say that I like that they bothered to give hints through the totems. They give the player a valid reason to pay attention to the inviroment, the first one is pretty easy to find so the player knows about their presence, and it can be fun to try and find all of them for those who want to play it again. But some of them are too hard to understand and other times they don't serve a point since many of the things they foreshadow happen regardless of the player's choice. From a technical standpoint it's mostly alright aside from some iffy character models. The backgrounds are handled with great detail and they make the player feel as cold as the characters, but why does it have to be 24fps? It slows down the already kinda inflexible gameplay and it makes many of the characters' movements stiff and uncanny Conclusion: I do NOT recommend Until Dawn. I am happy that I played it in the sense that I've found pretty unique things to criticise, but that doesn't make it a pleasant experience. I hope The Dark Pictures Anthology will do a better job