A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is first and foremost a game for fans of the franchise. Horror fans can also give it a try and even get some emotions and challenges, but I'm afraid they won't live to see the end credits and will quietly leave to find another place to tickle their nerves.

While A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead makes for a decent adaptation of the breakout horror franchise, it ends up falling short due to a slow, uninspired narrative and frustrating sneaking sections. That said, it's still an engaging, tense romp through the world of A Quiet Place and fans of the movie will get their fill here.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead does a commendable job of taking the uniquely silent scary movie series and spinning it into an interactive adventure, even if its methods for sustaining stress seem a bit too clearly contrived at times. I greatly appreciated the many handcrafted human touches that made its evacuated spaces so evocative, and the safety net of its consistent auto-save meant that my numerous instant deaths never became a source of frustration. However, although it may maintain a regularly tense atmosphere every shuffled step of the way, the absence of any significant story surprises or enough substantial changes to its simplistic stealth-based gameplay means that A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead doesn’t quite have enough twists and turns to make for an unmissable journey.

By staying true to John Krasinski's formula, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead comes as both a blessing and a curse. Fans of the movies are served with a reference-filled and recognizable plot, which can be its strong suit but also its weakest link as it leaves very little to the imagination. The saving grace of The Road Ahead is definitely the suspenseful gameplay in which complete silence and methodical traversal is paramount, though it begs to be asked if the player can muster six to seven hours of it. And that is if you don't run into bugs that force you into reverting to a previous checkpoint.

Stealth fans might find enough entertainment in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, thanks to moments of decent immersion and sound manipulation, but inconsistent and shallow mechanics hold it back.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a decent horror experience. The story is fine if you're a fan of the situation instead of the characters that don't give you much material to sympathize with them. The gameplay is authentic to the movies, but it can also feel ridiculous with the amount of debris that you need to be aware of. The game nails the tension necessary for a horror game, but it is also laid on so thick that it can feel tiring if you're playing in long sessions. In the end, while it could've been a tighter experience, it is still a game worth checking out if you're a fan of horror games where you can forgive some questionable game design decisions.

Unlike the deadly hide-and-seek of Alien: Isolation, The Road Ahead leaves no room for improvisation nor gives a chance to rectify your mistake. Either you do everything exactly as the level designer wanted you to, or you die. [Issue#266]

While The Road Ahead nails its survival mechanics, it ultimately falls short in narrative and gameplay depth. An immersive experience, but one with lasting impact.