Last year when I wrote about Until Dawn, I said I would be picking up the next game that the creators had worked on, Man Of Medan, and that’s exactly what I did do.
It certainly has an interesting plot, but I won’t go into too much detail as I don’t want to spoil it for any of you who might want to play this yourselves. There are plenty of secrets to discover while you’re poking around on the creaky, old ship – without a doubt there’s plenty more for me to find.
There are of course some mechanics which are carried across from Until Dawn. Pictures hidden around which show you premonitions, relationships between each character which are affected my choices and actions, traits which are emphasised or replaced with other traits depending on your choices, and then of course different paths and actions you can take as you play through the game.
Unfortunately there are some ways in which Man Of Medan is lacking somewhat. Until Dawn felt like a much longer experience, with lots of secrets, lots of story, lots of places to explore. But Medan seemed to wrap up a lot quicker, I was actually slightly surprised when I realised I had reached the ending. Part of me wonders if this is in fact because the main bulk of the game takes place on a ship. We’re not talking about a luxury cruise liner, but a military freighter. There’s not much in the way of variety when you’re looking around the ship – once you’ve seen one section, you’ve pretty much seen it all. Perhaps the game is intentionally shorter because the creators thought it would be too boring to spend so much time there?
Another difference is the lack of a clueline. Until Dawn had a feature that I particularly enjoyed where every time you found a secret that was related to the incident that happened there many years ago, it opened up a small portion of this so-called clueline, which was essentially a video for you to watch which explained the events that took place in the past. The unlocked portions were so tiny, that you would have to be some way into the game before you could really start to piece things together. I really missed this feature as I was playing Man Of Medan, and I felt it was a shame not to include it.
I will definitely be playing more of the game though, to make different choices, see what other things are hiding for me to discover, and see if I can get everyone to survive (I may have accidentally got three of the five characters killed …). Also I really want to try out the co-op features that have been introduced and see how that is handled!
So ultimately, although I did prefer Until Dawn, I still feel Man Of Medan is quite a good game, and I recommend it if you see it on sale!
- Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC
- Release Date: 30/08/2019
- Genre: Interactive Horror
