FALLING FOR IT
AS DUSK FALLS is a page-turner without pages
On the face of it, this is a hard sell to the videogame crowd. There’s no direct control over an avatar. You complete QTEs and make choices, and… that’s about it, really. Yet the limitations of the format are transformed into strengths here. You may initially mourn the loss of the ability to spin on the spot and jump around on tables during poignant dialogue, but once you’re playing? You’ll want little more than to see what happens next.
The story concerns two very different families brought crashing together during a small-town motel siege. To explain much more than that would run the risk of spoilers which, in a game like this, could tear holes through the experience.
As a motion comic, there’s almost no full animation present. Instead, what are essentially comic panels are presented one after the other with subtle fade-in transitions. I worried that this would break the atmosphere for me, but I got used to it almost straight away.
Two words that constantly pumped through the heart of the game during my playthrough were intimacy, and pace. I quickly began to care about all of these people and what happened to them, and more than once I found myself agonising over a decision. I felt close to the people; close to the story; close to making a decision that I would regret. Similarly, with no possibility of the player becoming lost or distracted in the game world, the developer has huge control over the pace of the story – and they nail it.
I didn’t even mind the quick time events. Hell, I liked them. It amuses me greatly that the game features not one, but two dish-washing QTEs, but other than that, their inclusion makes sense, and often even adds to a scene’s tension. Trying to escape a pursuer over rough terrain; hurriedly hot-wiring a car; getting a stubborn bit of food off a plate; you know, that sort of thing.
DAFFY DUSK
It probably sounds like I love As Dusk Falls, and that’s because I do. However, when you love somebody, you have a duty to point out any important mistakes that they make. This is why I have to say that the ending is pretty crappy.
I’m so frustrated with it, it’s made me swear in a review for the first time in five years of freelancing. I’m talking specifically about the final scene; the scene that everybody gets regardless of any choices they made beforehand. The scene that plays out no matter who’s dead, arrested, divorced, or forgot to do the dishes. It’s cheap, it’s lazy, and I hate it. Sticking that scene on the end of As Dusk Falls is like super-gluing a
Funko Pop to the hood of a Benz.
Nonetheless, I still liked the way that my first attempt at the story turned out. Events and relationships ended in a messy, realistic way that I wish I could share with you, and as the credits rolled, I was already thinking about what I’d do differently next time, the ending I’d like to see, and how I might get there.
There were a few bumps in the road on the way to that final sequence, but they were more potholes providing brief shakes than landmines that sent the wheels flying off. For example, the main disadvantage of the visual presentation, and one that could not be sidestepped entirely, is that static faces cannot express emotion as effectively as faces in motion. Most of the time, this wasn’t an issue. But on a few occasions – usually when a character was caught mid-grimace in anger – expressions were unintentionally amusing.
It also has to be said that the handful of flashback sequences, while as excellently put together as the rest of the game, are robbed of a degree of tension simply because you already know that one or more of the characters don’t die. I’m pretty much scraping the bottom of the criticism barrel here though.
If you’re looking for a strong story that you’ll want to replay at least once, and/or something to tide you over until we get that dish-washing simulator we’re all waiting for, this is very much your game.
I began to care about these people and what happened to them