Supermassive’s “party horror” games, as I like to call them, have become a guilty pleasure of mine. This series famously began with Until Dawn in 2015 and peaked with House of Ashes in 2021, if you ask me. (Although I enjoyed the schlocky Quarry in 2022 as well.) It’s a series pitched like an interactive horror movie, where you try to shepherd a group of ill-fated characters through a slasher by making various important choices for them, hoping they don’t get shredded as a result.
These aren’t specifically multiplayer games, but the real fun of them comes when other people are around, either because they shout out what you should do – “Don’t go down there on your own!” – or as they directly control some of the characters in hotseat multiplayer mode. Hotseat multiplayer! It’s so retro. I like the experience of playing these games, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting the studio’s next game Directive 8020 as a result, even through its various wobbles, release date delays and lay-offs. But now that I’ve played Directive 8020, my excitement has wobbled a little too.
Directive 8020 is supposedly an evolution for the series, a step forwards, introducing more gameplay elements such as stealth-action sequences you directly control. Previously, these games have been more like glossy point-and-clicks, with characters investigating lavishly realised areas hiding clues, and with button-matching quick-time events used whenever action was called for. All that stuff is still here, but now so too is stealth-action, the kind where you crouch-walk around and study enemy patrol routes while trying not to get caught. This makes Directive 8020 a more traditional survival horror experience because of it, which is risky, because it’s not an area Supermassive has much previous experience in and because it opens Directive 8020 to comparisons with other survival-horror games. Frankly, Directive 8020 feels a little less distinct because of it.
The demo I played – two-thirds of the fourth episode, of eight episodes in the game – seems focused on highlighting these new stealth-action sections. But concerningly, none of them are convincing. The first section whisks me 18 hours into the future of the sci-fi story, at which point a body-snatching alien has taken over our spaceship and is masquerading as various members of the crew. Everything’s gone wrong and I’m on the run which means, in stealth-action terms, here’s a section of the spaceship I need to navigate while avoiding a patrolling enemy. There are tables I can crawl behind, platforms I can leap over, and environmental objects I can interact with to make distractions, though these seem few and far between. And because I’m dropped in the middle of the game, I haven’t yet had time to understand the game’s somewhat quirky controls – who puts a sprint modifier on the left bumper? So I walk glacially slow while turning my torch on and off and squatting up and down while trying to outfox an enemy. It’s a frustrating introduction.
The next stealth-action sequence is better because it’s scarier: I have to enter some confined pipe ducts to search for a missing crew member – a sequence that pulls the camera close in first-person (it’s usually third-person) as I crouch-walk around dark corridors. It’s claustrophobic and tense because I’m clearly on the way to a horrid discovery of some kind, and dark shapes tease my in-game peripheral vision as I progress. But the tension is dampened by a feeling of invincibility because I have no choice in what I can do, other than to move from point A to B. There’s a briefly startling discovery, followed by what’s supposed to be a thrilling scare, but because I can’t do anything other than watch, the effect – as a passive bystander – is lessened.
The final stealth action section unfolds shortly after, in a more open area, which has a very familiar objective: solve a simple puzzle (turn on a bridge operation terminal) by finding a fuel cell while avoiding the threat roaming around the area. It’s simple and it’s dull, and the major issue here is the enemy. Survival horror games like these hinge on their enemies, and on the threat and excitement they produce. Think of the Girl at the beginning of Resident Evil Requiem who chases Grace around those claustrophobic hotel corridors, disappearing up into the ceiling and then plunging back down suddenly in the dark. She is grotesque and fast and terrifying. The enemy here is not.
The enemy here looks like a youth in a hoodie, which okay, can be terrifying, and this one has cricked and cracked its bones back together after surviving a serious fall, so there’s a supernatural element in play. But here in this large and cavernous – and rather nondescript – space station interior, it’s dwarfed, and the mystique of the enemy is not helped by its robotic movement and predictable patrol pattern. There’s barely any tension here, as if it’s all dispersed up into the echoey chamber we’re in, and there’s nothing very interesting for the player to do, mechanically, beyond watch, move a bit, watch a bit more, and move a bit more. It’s all a bit bland – a bit basic – and I only hope that the stealth-action elements develop beyond this as the game goes on, though we are on Episode 4 here, not Episode 1.
Directive 8020 is on more confident ground when the characters start chatting to each other and we begin making important story decisions, although there aren’t many decisions to experience in this demo. Cinematic presentation is again a highlight, with close attention played to recreating faces of actors like Lashana Lynch – Monica Rambeau in the Captain Marvel films – and who has a good resemblance here. However, there’s a lack of energy or dynamism sometimes in the animation or performances. I see the ship’s commander – played by a rasping Danny Sapani – tell his team about a missing crew-mate who they believe might be dead now, or at least in serious trouble, which is a moment that should increase the tension and provoke a strong response. But there’s little reaction from the crew, especially in a bodily sense; characters stand in a circle with their hands by their sides as if awaiting animation instruction. It’s not very interesting to watch.
Another evolution of Directive 8020’s is Turning Points, which builds on the series’ cornerstone choice and consequence moments by introducing the ability to rewind time, and to replay these moments and see if things lead a different way. It works very much like reloading a save from a certain point, giving players an easy way to sate their curiosity, although isn’t part of the fun of choice and consequence in replaying games in order to find out? Regardless, it’s hard to really get a feel for this system across roughly an hour of play, without many dramatic Turning Points to experience.
Some Turning Points are locked because they’re tied to events that happened in earlier episodes, including whether or not some notable people had died, which is a prospect that’s exciting, but the only things I can test are whether the ship’s only gun is brought into play – an almost literal Chekov’s Gun – and whether or not I’m caught during stealth-action sequences. I decided to experiment with the latter and purposefully get myself caught, and have my eye drilled out as a result, which is enjoyably grim, although it doesn’t seem to affect the outcome of the scene very much. There’s a strange lack of concern about my grievous injury and getting me medical attention, as though I’ve only bloodied my knee.
Ultimately, I’m left feeling a bit confused and concerned by Directive 8020 after this showing. I hope some of the things I’m struggling with – a sense of attachment to the game and its story – are because I haven’t played the opening parts of the game. After all, this series is typically strongest when you feel decisions pile upon each other and when you start to sense how many different ways the game could have gone, and when you care about the people you’re trying to keep alive. I’m only offered a fleeting glimpse at those things here.
What I do see, perhaps disproportionately so, are stealth-action sequences, which I’m not convinced by. Does this ratio of gameplay-to-story moments represent how it will be in other episodes? And if this episode is roughly an hour and there are eight episodes, is that an indication of how long the game will be? Frankly, I feel as though I’m left with more questions than answers, and with less faith in Directive 8020 overall. I hope my fears are proven unfounded when it releases this May. For better or worse, we don’t have long until we find out.
