Directive 8020 Review: Dark Pictures Returns With Scariest Game Yet

After a nearly four-year wait, Supermassive Games’ popular horror video game series The Dark Pictures Anthology is finally back. This time around, the English developer tackles sci-fi horror, taking inspiration from Alien and The Thing to offer up their own scares in space. Featuring more focused gameplay, which has a lot of sneaking around dangerous foes, it winds up being a departure as it drops a lot of series staples, including co-op play. This is my review of Directive 8020.

The biggest change to the Dark Pictures formula is that there’s less focus on exploration this time around (there are definitely fewer documents to pick up and flip over), and you’re in QTE-led cutscenes less often. In fact, you can press a button at any time, and you’re told exactly where you need to go to progress the story. Instead, you’ll have to actually play through stealth sections rather than simply making choices as to where you should hide, as stalking characters will be searching for the various characters you control with regularity.

These sections are solid and can be quite tense the first time around, but there’s nothing special about them despite a fun mechanic of being able to set off distractions at a distance. There’s simply not enough depth to the stealth gameplay to make it stick out as a highlight. I wouldn’t want to replay these sections, and they definitely slow the game down compared to the pace of past Dark Pictures games. In fact, the game in general feels a lot more in line with Until Dawn and The Quarry than past games in the franchise. The Curator doesn’t have any intervals in the story, nor is there actual cooperative play (although you can do a “movie night” mode still). It’s a much more solo-focused experience, which isn’t a bad thing, but will require some different expectations coming in.

Directive 8020’s strongest suit is the interesting space story it tells. The talented Lashana Lynch leads the cast, and she’s joined by many familiar faces (as in reused character models from past Supermassive games), each voiced by different actors. The story is at its best when it’s like The Thing, with players questioning whether the person they are talking to is human or a deadly imposter. However, this only really comes into play in the game’s last third, so it takes too long to reach its more interesting sections. The story is well-told and well-acted, but it is presented a bit strangely, as the narrative jumps around in time. Since there’s no big revelation that makes the convoluted structure worth it, a simpler chronological storyline would’ve made more sense.

However, despite all my nitpicks, this is the scariest Dark Pictures game yet and my favorite as a result. I was often genuinely on edge, which was never the case in The Devil in Me or House of Ashes. It also looks better than most of the studio’s recent output, and I didn’t run into any technical issues either while playing in its 120Hz balanced mode on a PS5 Pro. It’s a real evolution for the series, even if some of the elements I loved the most went by the wayside, and there’s still some work to be done.

Directive 8020 Review: Final Verdict

There’s a lot to like about Directive 8020, as the sci-fi horror video game is a nice departure from Supermassive’s previous titles. With smoother gameplay and some genuine chills, the extra time in development has definitely helped it. However, some longtime fans of the Dark Pictures series will be disappointed by the lack of exploration and no true co-op play, which had been staples of the franchise. It also feels less enjoyable to replay because of its many stealth sections and solo focus, even though it’s a better experience the first time through.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a digital copy for our Directive 8020 PS5 review. Reviewed on version 1.000.004.