The Devil in Me takes us down a historical road of revitalizing the horrific tale of H.H. Holmes' murders through an obsessive fan's homemade hotel renovation. Our journey into Holmes' hotel is experienced through the eyes of our protagonists, the filmmaker crew of 'Lonnit Entertainment' under the directorial leadership of Charlie Lonnit. His crew consists of Kate (the presenter), Jamie (chief grip), Mark (cameraman), and Erin (intern audio engineer). Each member of the crew carries their own individual relationship with one another, but this time around in The Dark Anthology series, it seemed like it was more focused on the emotional state of the group as a collective, versus diving into a specific pairs' relationship, apart from romantic pairs. This time around, the characters are all given a unique ability that helps them to unlock secrets during their chapters, which I think would justify as an innovative addition, if it wasn't a linear narrative. With the storyline's playstyle, it came across as an extra step to the goal, than it did as a cool, new gadget that we can utilize in our journey (with the exception of Erin's mic). In addition to the abilities/tools, each player was also given their own unique light source, which I think contrasts to their tools, by adding to the atmosphere of the game, and seeing it in a different light, literally. From a flashlight to a lighter, we can experience the same rooms as different characters, but with a different feeling as we enter each room with a limited amount of light source. The game seems to draw from both The Shining and Saw, bringing forth a location set in a hotel and having torture rooms setup like Jigsaw. This combination set a tone of unnerving tension as you looped the corner to another possible dead end, or worse, open a door to a trap room.
Note: This is a Day 1 playthrough before any patch was released.
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After my playthrough of The Devil in Me, I encountered a lot of pros and cons to my experience. I believed the story overall to be intriguing and interesting enough, even with the lack of technical proficiency. During some of the cutscenes, as well as during gameplay, facial animations became warped and misplaced facial features appeared as slanted or on the wrong side of the face. In addition to the face, the POV camera for multiple instances, were buggy and rigid. Many times, I found the camera angles of characters walking or climbing ladders, would glitch into the character model and take a couple minutes for it to redirect itself back to normal. The instance where this became most prominent, was in the use of Mark's camera (my least favorite feature of the game). Mark's camera use was unnatural, stringent, and forced. Every time I operated the camera it would have to match the character's POV direction and could not move in a full 360 degree movement radius, and would get stuck at a canted angle POV a lot of the times. In comparison to other characters' abilities/tools, I found myself forgetting the camera existed, since it was to be used freely in areas you explored, which you would have to uncover, what would be specified as evidence or documentation against the killer. I think this feature could have been improved if it was linked to the action of having a photo gallery at the main menu, to review the shots you've taken during your chapters with Mark.
I am not a huge fan of buildup for the story, since I know I am mainly here for the intensity that I know the game will provide, but, I understand its necessity in order to provide contextual information to both the story and add to the tension of guessing what's about to happen in the next few chapters. That being said, I timed the buildup to be around 3 hours of gameplay, before the story started to take off into a more exciting direction. Given that the story is longer than its predecessors, taking me around 8 hours to complete the story, I can grant it some leeway, but it is also a game that is usually meant to be played more than once, so I can see how those first 3 hours would stop players from completing an entire playthrough again. I plan to replay it from a scene selection, where it minimizes the buildup of the story's premise.
Given its cons, there were a lot of pros to rave about in this installment. Erin's microphone creating a noise-cancelling environment that only leads the player into an increasing unknown sound, added a lot of tension in the setting, forcing me to slow down my pacing, as I didn't know if something would just suddenly appear. As a photographer, I fell in love with the lighting and color grading in this game. The lighting shaped the characters well in every scene (post build-up story) providing great contrast, that put them in a dramatic light, adding to their fear. The color grading reinforced this with the constant red and blue hues that reoccurred throughout the game, usually conveying the feeling of danger and power.
The torture rooms, although not all excessively gruesome or intricate, they always provided a nerve-racking decision, that had me second-guessing every move, knowing more than likely, someone would die if I made the wrong move. During my playthrough I encountered about 3 or 4 torture rooms, and each one had me pausing the game so I could have more time to think about what each decision would do as a result.
The Devil in Me, offered a grappling story that had me running for my life when things started to heat up, and had me second-guessing my decisions all the way to the very end. Compared to its predecessors, I felt this one stood out from the rest as being one of the best of its series, despite its Day 1 technical flaws. I will definitely be returning for a second playthrough, to see if I can uncover the best ending for our heroes and bring justice to those who fell under the knife of Grantham Du'met.
8/10
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