Since the first installment debuted in 2018,A Quiet Placehas cemented itself as one of Hollywood’s biggest horror franchises of the past decade. Now, fresh off of the theatrical run of the series' first prequel and spin-off, Paramount has released the first video game set in theA Quiet Placeuniverse:A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.
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Don’t let the monsters hear you!
Unfortunately, like so many other forays of blockbuster films into the world of video games, the final product is a half-hearted and unconvincing attempt at making the ideas portrayed in the source material work in an interactive space.
From Box Office to Home Consoles
As with any licensed game,A Quiet Place: The Road Aheadfeatures several nods and references to the original content. Tools used in theQuiet Placemovies are handed to the player, such as bags of sand that dampen your footsteps as you walk over them. Collectibles come in the form of electronic spaceship toys, a cheeky (and dark) reference to the death of the youngest member of the Abbott family in the first film.
Obviously, the game follows the same premise as the films, in which a race of sightless aliens with extremely-heightened hearing land on Earth and decimate humanity. These “death angels” are impressively accurate compared to the ones in the movies, hunting their prey with the same shocking level of ferocity and speed. The experience is intended for fans of the films, introducing these universal concepts briefly before moving on to the gameplay.
The game follows Alex, a young woman who has survived just past the 110-day mark since the monsters first arrived on Earth. In an incredibly-unfortunate turn of fate, Alex is a victim of both anxiety attack and asthma disorders, causing her to need to use an inhaler during intense or demanding situations.
Hide and Seek
A Quiet Place: The Road Aheadworks best in the early moments of the game, when it’s taking the heaviest nods from the movies and exposing you to the potential of a Quiet Place video game: in a world where the monsters hear everything, you need to be as quiet as possible to survive.
The gameplay is your standard survival-horror fare: make your way to the end of the level without being caught by the big bad guy, distracting or evading them whenever you can. There’s a lot less freedom in how you proceed than other decade-old titles in the genre likeAlien: IsolationorDead Space, and it ends up landing somewhere closer to (or behind) the firstOutlastgame in terms of variety.
In a world where the monsters hear everything, you need to be as quiet as possible to survive.
The main mechanic in the game is what makes it (and the films) stand out: the amount of noise you make heavily affects how easily the monster can find you. This is where Alex’s disorder becomes a major hurdle in the game, as the charges for your inhaler (and your lungs during asthma attacks) make noise.
The first real level, set in a hospital-turned-hideout for a small group of human survivors, brings real intensity and stakes to the game. The graphics and lighting are solid enough, avoiding any chance of players being taken out of the moment by silly visual bugs and providing the right atmosphere to make the game feel scarier. With the multiple stories of the hospital in play, players can hear the monsters stomping around in adjacent rooms, and can tell when their fellow NPC survivors have been located and taken out.
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The experience is linear, introducing you to the basic mechanics of noise reduction and stealth while escorting you through easily-solved roadblocks involving creaking doors and ventilation shafts. Your character is equipped with a Phonograph that serves as a visual indicator of how much noise you make with each step. Your lungs will become more strained with the more physical activity you perform and stress that you endure, forcing you to take pills scattered throughout the level or hits from your inhaler to subdue the pain. These mechanics are introduced to you in such a way that it feels like you’re in the “tutorial level” and are about to be let loose into the actual world ofThe Road Ahead. That feeling never goes away.
Don’t Make A Sound
In the classic cookie-cutter horror movie, the characters facing off against the evil force picking them off one-by-one always seem to be making dumb decisions that the audience would never make (a writing decision made for the sake of dramatic irony). InThe Road Ahead,you are forced to play as one of those ill-fated characters, constantly setting off roadblocks you didn’t even realize existed.
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In some ways, it’s one of the most clever aspects of the game; paying attention to the noise of the surfaces you’re walking on, and the speed at which you walk, becomes vital, forcing you to look out for shattered glass or fallen leaves that may crunch under your weight. While this idea works early on, as you continue through the game, it begins to make less and less sense, crossing the border from challenging to unfair.
Ground surfaces will change their noise level seemingly at random, especially further into the game when you walk across metal pathways and wooden steps. Taking a single step in the wrong direction (which appears to be the exact same as the step before it) can set off the monster near your position.
In a world where nobody wants to make noise, everyone is apparently tossing their metal cans of food onto the ground whenever and wherever they can. If you touch one of these cans (which can be hard to anticipate, since you can’t see your own body or legs), you’re going to knock it over, and if you knock it over, it’s going to clatter and spin across the floor. Moments like these are what make you realize how much the characters of the Quiet Place films rely on fine motor skills and precision movement, both of which are abilities that aren’t achievable inThe Road Ahead.
Studio Franchise, B-Movie Spin-Off
The biggest gimmick and draw of the game is its live microphone feature, which emulates noise in the game based on the sounds you make in real life. This feature is an interesting, but overall disappointing addition, requiring a good amount of self-testing and tweaking before being somewhat-decently balanced for your game. Personally, I found myself remaining silent with no problem. Seeing as I was playing alone in an empty room, I had no need to talk or make noise. It’s hard not to compare the microphone mechanic to other horror titles that have implemented the hardware much better – games likeLethal CompanyandPhasmophobia.
It’s hard not to compare the microphone mechanic to other horror titles that have implemented the hardware much better – games likeLethal CompanyandPhasmophobia.
Half-baked and underdeveloped content like this is found everywhere in the game, whether it be dull and repetitive quick-time events, mediocre voice acting, inconsistencies between the game’s sounds and your Phonometer, game-breaking bugs that freeze enemies permanently or inappropriately-timed music cues that break immersion in a game built around immersive audio.
Some aspects of the game feel blatantly thrown-in and out-of-place. When you get killed, the screen cuts to black before a pre-recorded cutscene of your first-person POV plays. Unnecessary first-person shooter and chase sequences begin popping up in the back half of the game, the latter of which make zero sense considering the monsters run as fast as a car at full speed. The plot of the game takes interesting turns, but is communicated through drab walking simulator scenes with bland dialogue that makes it hard to stay invested.
Closing Comments:
A Quiet Place: The Road Aheadtakes an interesting concept and fails to reach the mark, fizzling out into mediocrity before even getting started. The goal of remaining quiet is portrayed well with several successful mechanics (opening doors slowly, watching where you step), but becomes boring as the game fails to create engaging challenges while plummeting in quality. Fans of the franchise will get a kick out of this adaptation for the first few hours, but it’s hard to imagine many players sticking around until the ending.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
Version Reviewed: PlayStation 5
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