grihajedy The Casting of Frank Stone Review

📜6/10 Well, just when the Supermassives were taking a short break from the Dark Pictures series, they were put to work again... this time to make a horror movie licensed for one of the most popular multiplayer games at the moment, ideally suited to the template concept of "teenagers running from a maniac in an abandoned building", I in no way justifying the developers, they themselves chose to be more "craftsmen", but it makes it all the more interesting to review each of their games, because sometimes it turns out average, and sometimes it turns out mixed and controversial, as it turned out this time, Well, let's figure it out, related to the technical part and the sky-high minimum system requirements is the visuals, yes, the characters on Unreal Engine 5.3 look really cool, but literally everyone already uses it, you know... just insert the latest version of Unreal - this is no longer surprising, the players have already seen everything, no one gave the game some kind of visual charm and stylistic recognition, which was at least minimally in "The Quarry" (2022), and some scenes are so dark that you can't see anything except the main character's body, it's even funny.. + The main setting of the mill is so ordinary, so asset-gray-template, that you don't see the difference between this and their previous B-class games of the 2020s, Okay, what else could another half-walking dialogue game do to stand out? Gameplay? Don't make me laugh.. although in fact, in millimeter steps, but progress is coming from the first "Dark Pictures" games, They couldn't do without generators in the DBD game, they had to add almost a survival mechani, Imagine! Where in one of the sections we need to study the location again to find the spawned parts, then not miss the circle-qte near the generator a couple of times, and if we fail, then we will have to get out ̶ ̶p̶i̶s̶t̶o̶l̶e̶t̶ the camera, and oh nooo.. have time to press the right mouse button and then hold down the left one, otherwise suddenly a barely hobbling ghost will reach us, this is still a walking simulator, not a dynamic action game at all.. But I read here that in their next game the devs have promised to fully develop in the direction of survival-horror elements, so this was either a preparatory trial run, or this is what they had in mind, I hope not) In general, the walking sections have become larger, but there also seems to be more backtracking. Moreover, I expected some kind of full-fledged control of the video camera, the story about directors is favorable, let me work as an operator for a couple of seconds, but no... either scripts where the movie is also only through a lens and not even any interesting angles, or hold it on to the monster. Well, finally, the "editing" mode was brought in, you no longer have to replay the entire game and listen to the same dialogues for 6 hours to try to kill all the characters, now you can just rewind the tape to any chapter of the game after the first playthrough, or immediately with the deluxe edition, although the influence on the player's plot is standardly weak, and there are even too few dangerous places this time, the difficulty seems to be remembered for a specific player, Yes, they saved the "party" mode here, where everyone can choose one or 2-3 of the five characters, But .. in Steam, the publisher didn`t add "RemotePlay", as it was with "The Quarry".. you can download the artificial "RemotePlayWhatever" from GitHub, but due to the latest Steam updates, so far you can only give control to one friend and only if he has a joystick, but in such a game, co-op is the fundamental thing, if anyone doesn't know, a stupid horror movie about stupid teenagers, where you and your friends compete to see who will save the life of their character, a plot in a game with such a gimmick fades into the background, But this time in the story about the filming of the "cursed" movie there was even conceptual potential, in the narrative even the alternation of the past and the future with the same but aged characters is used, but since we now have a fully mystical game, and I will remind you that in each "Dark Pictures" they tried to leave a loophole for a realistic explanation, for example - everyone just breathed in psychotropic gas in "Man of Medan", in addition, the developers fully use (and maybe create :)) the DBD plot, which gives a good... I don't want to spoil what kind of intrigue... but b&&tch it doesn't lead anywhere! I.E. interesting plot twists just for the sake of twists, and it all ends with nothing, an open ending, literally an advertisement, like a cutscene to an online run.. and, by the way, the game also lost the element of foreseeing the future in the "pictures", and it seems like it didn`t receive any comparable intriguing aspect in return, And about Easter eggs for fans, yes, the whole game consists of this, but for the average person it will be only dolls, which is a very lazy, albeit quite detailed move, there will only be one surprise doll, so to speak.. Well, I liked one Easter puzzle, that's all, they could have approached this issue much better and more creatively, I think. In general, Supermassive did something again.. it's even playable, not terrible, but neither fish nor meat, definitely worse than the average "Quarry", I hope they don't crunch too much with the already delayed co-op "Little Nightmares 3" and "Directive 8020", I want good movie games, I wouldn't play if I didn't want the genre to prosper, just keep in mind that the devs are constantly working on two or three projects at the same time, and then you can look at it much more objectively in advance. p.s. Owners of deluxe editions do not turn on alternative costumes!, they are a bit freaky, and at first they can be confusing, it's better to get used to the characters in regular ones first. 😊 𝗦𝘂𝗯 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝘆 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺`𝘀 𝗖𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿`𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41977550