GameLog Page

Please sign in or sign up!

...blogs for gamers

Find a GameLog

... by game	... by platform

[ advanced search ]

HOME	GAMES	LOGS	MEMBERS			ABOUT	HELP

dkirschner's Until Dawn (PS5)

[November 4, 2025 12:28:38 PM]

I don’t think I would have played this if it weren’t on PS Plus, but it appeared for Halloween and I’ve been hearing about it for years. Seemed like a sort of generic jump scare horror game. I played one of the Dark Pictures games with Patrick, which was good dumb fun with lots of jump scares. I think this is one of that studio’s earlier games, and it feels similar. Same basic set-up and gameplay: you control a variety of characters (this one is about a group of friends who go to a remote cabin together and get stalked by a maniac), who walk around through spooky environments being hunted.

You make basic narrative decisions, which purportedly affect each character’s “stats” (no idea what it matters if a character is more or less charitable or curious or romantic or whatever) and their relationships with other characters (again, no idea the implications of this). There are QTEs during action sequences (e.g., take the safe route or the quick route; press triangle to avoid falling in a ditch; etc.). Find clues to explain the story more. Find totems that give you premonitions of your friends dying and other actions. I’m unsure exactly the purpose of the totems. Like, what does it matter if I see a premonition? I think it’s just one outcome that you see, and potentially knowing that one outcome means you can change it? One time I saw a premonition of a man petting a wolf. Later on, one character encounters a wolf. I accidentally (I swear) kicked it, then tried to pet it and it growled at me. But I soon found a bone and gave it to it, then pet it successfully. Win.

The first few chapters are campy horror movie stuff. The horny young adults are all trying to couple up and bone one another. There’s some inter-friend-group drama. You see many glimpses of a mysterious figure in the background, and the killer starts becoming more…active. The young adults are getting more and more scared, and then the action picks up and they start suffering. There’s a Saw vibe to the game. Then there are some twists, one of which I saw coming, another of which I didn’t (though one pausing to think about the plot could probably see it). More death. I think only three or four characters lived in my game (all the girls?).

It's cool that later on you can start to see how decisions led to characters’ deaths. For example, one character died because I decided to open a hatch and there was something bad underneath it. Another guy died because I had (as his girlfriend) kept a gun, so when he needed it, he didn’t have it. I assume that if I had given the gun to him that his girlfriend would have died at some point because she didn’t have it. Another character died because (as him) I had made a tough call to shoot one of the girls instead of killing himself, and later when he needed help, the girl hesitated and he was killed.

It was a fun and silly game, a good interactive B horror movie. Definitely not essential to play though. Also, it would have been two hours shorter if there was a RUN button! The characters spend 90% of their time walking very slowly. Annoying! No wonder they all died!