The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan

 Xbox One
User Score
6.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 161 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 77 out of 161
  2. Mixed: 54 out of 161
  3. Negative: 30 out of 161
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  1. LordTiger
    Aug 9, 2020
    6
    Man of Medan is a cinematic interactive game with some horror elements.in this game, u control 5 characters and their survival depends on your choices.
    I expected a lot from story and character development but it fails in both categories. character development is so weak that u don't give a **** when a character dies.
    pros: + u can see characters feelings and relationship with each    Man of Medan is a cinematic interactive game with some horror elements.in this game, u control 5 characters and their survival depends on your choices.
    I expected a lot from story and character development but it fails in both categories. character development is so weak that u don't give a **** when a character dies.
    pros:
    + u can see characters feelings and relationship with each other in the menu
    +Shared Story and Movie Night modes which u can play with up to 5 friends with one controller.
    +Shawn Ashmore?
    cons:
    -overusing the jumpscares
    -short story and weak character development
    -fps drop now imagine this happens in annoying heart pulse QTEs.    … Expand
  2. adidab14
    Aug 25, 2020
    7
    I'll echo the sentiments of many of these other reviews. They're spot on for the most part, maybe a little too harsh. This game has MASSIVE potential. It's basically a "choose your own adventure movie" and when I started it I was really into it and surprised by how interested in the story I was. The characters aren't that fantastic, but certainly not terrible, and the setting (a hugeI'll echo the sentiments of many of these other reviews. They're spot on for the most part, maybe a little too harsh. This game has MASSIVE potential. It's basically a "choose your own adventure movie" and when I started it I was really into it and surprised by how interested in the story I was. The characters aren't that fantastic, but certainly not terrible, and the setting (a huge derelict WWII boat) is just awesome. It looks surprsingly good and plays pretty well, albeit pretty clunky, very reminiscent of old resident evil days, with just a few frame drops here and there and some stuttering at parts, but not unbearable.
    The main problem with this game is the incredibly abrupt and lazy ending. It REALLY seems like they ran out of time and just had to end it prematurely. I felt like the story was only just starting before it was over. I'm not going to really touch on the decision/repercussion system. Yes, there will be decisions you make that have very grave consequences, you will be upset because you thought you made the right decision and it turned out to be wrong. The thing is, there are no right or wrong decisions really, you're just basically discovering a story. From that perspective, I found it to be much more enjoyable. That being said, some of the branching storylines are pretty lame.
    The other problem I have is a small one. The only real gameplay in this is the quicktime events. I don't have a huge problem with them but there are times where you think you need to just press a button and it turns out you need to mash it and that little misunderstanding resulted in a character dying in more than one instance for me. It's a small problem but it can have really big consequences.
    Overall though, this isn't a bad game at all. The atmosphere is fantastic, the scares are pretty good, although I would have liked to see more of them, and the story is gripping until it's very abrupt and random end. It's just a few small tweaks away from really being a great game.    … Expand
  3. Mindkiller7522
    May 12, 2021
    6
    1/2/21-1/3/21 100% Story

    I figured I'd give this a shot considering it was short. It turned out to be compelling enough to get through the four hour story and keep everyone alive. A bunch of kind -of adults set out on a boat for some diving and treasure hunting, only to be swept up in a mess with some pirates and a derelict military ship with some ghost business going on (kind-of).    1/2/21-1/3/21 100% Story

    I figured I'd give this a shot considering it was short. It turned out to be compelling enough to get through the four hour story and keep everyone alive.

    A bunch of kind -of adults set out on a boat for some diving and treasure hunting, only to be swept up in a mess with some pirates and a derelict military ship with some ghost business going on (kind-of).

    The overall tone of the game was great, but the story was a little predictable and lackluster. You are responsible for jumping from character to character and making decisions to (hopefully) keep everyone around until the end of the game. It's a little tough to judge because everyone's experience can be so different. Certain characters can die early or be absent for other reasons from the story, causing major changes throughout.

    The character models and the acting were terrible. Each actor's face falls right in to the uncanny valley and never climbs out. The dialogue is very unnatural and cringe-y. It would have been a real struggle to play any longer than I had to with these guys.

    Most of the positive thoughts that I had while playing where when the game reminded me of Until Dawn, but that game was way better. I do like the Curator character being kind of a “Crypt Keeper” of the series, though. That is a clever idea on it's own.

    Not sure if I'll be on board after this one. I played the demo for “Little Hope” and it seems to share the same problems as this one. We'll see where it goes from here.    … Expand
  4. SuperkenGaming
    Feb 15, 2021
    7
    The Dark pictures Anthology Man of Medan
    Deserving more love
    Man of Madan is the first in a standalone series of horror games from the team that brought you Until Dawn. And I love what this series is doing, its givingyou bite sized interactive horror experiences. Man of Medan is only about 3 and a half hours long, but for good reason, this is a game all about consequence. 5 kids go    The Dark pictures Anthology Man of Medan
    Deserving more love
    Man of Madan is the first in a standalone series of horror games from the team that brought you Until Dawn.
    And I love what this series is doing, its givingyou bite sized interactive horror experiences.
    Man of Medan is only about 3 and a half hours long, but for good reason, this is a game all about consequence.
    5 kids go for a dive, things happen, next thing you know youre on a ghost ship and trying to escape.
    Much like Until Dawn, you control each of the 5 characters… Though this is more than just an interactive movie.. as all 5 vcan die, you can awkwardly misstep and that’s the end for yourcharacter, there is no last second heroic save you can expect from movies and that’s what makes supermassive so unique with what they deliver.. youre choices and actions have consequence.. where the game falls flat though is in its story, there isn’t much o a mystery to solve here, theres word on this mist that makes you go crazy, but its more so just an escpe the shi[ alive story, nothing pulling you through other than that… but it still manages to do well enough to make you want to go back and do things differently if you do lose a character, which is what a game like this needs to do, it needs to want you to go back and choose different paths, I just wish things were more interesting, though there is only so much you can do with a ghost ship, but at the same time, not enough was done with this ghost ship. They played with the idea of seeing the ship and ghosts form different time periods, and I would’ve loved to see them play with this more..
    Overall though, Im happy with what Supermassive Games seems to be doing with this series, it’s a fresh take on the horror genre, no more finding missing doorknobs and valves for 10 hours, just a to the point story of try to keep everyone alive..
    AI give The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
    a 7/10    … Expand
  5. Bugalugs213
    Sep 3, 2019
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Easy to get into, a good cast of characters and some cheesy bad guys kept me interested. Didnt really have a lot of jump scares, i was expecting more on that front.
    Its a short game but has lots of replay value.
    Well worth the price and its a good sign for the next few games in the series.    … Expand
  6. BradMorgan
    Nov 30, 2020
    6
    A fun interactive story that kept my attention until the end. I liked the jump scares and scenes where quick time events and choices actually had consequences in the story. Unfortunately, the real climax in the story failed to materialize and the ending was disappointing.
  7. SenorKoquonfaes
    Nov 14, 2019
    5
    Having never played through "Until Dawn" since it was a Sony exclusive (settled for watching multiple play throughs on Youtube instead), I was pretty pumped when they announced that this game would be multi-platform. "Until Dawn" was one of the games that convinced me that interactive storytelling games with a branching narrative and choice and consequences was a viable form of video gameHaving never played through "Until Dawn" since it was a Sony exclusive (settled for watching multiple play throughs on Youtube instead), I was pretty pumped when they announced that this game would be multi-platform. "Until Dawn" was one of the games that convinced me that interactive storytelling games with a branching narrative and choice and consequences was a viable form of video game entertainment.

    I love the idea of stumbling upon an abandoned WW2 freighter — whilst dealing with modern day pirates trying to rob you — and unravelling the mystery of the ship and what happened to the crew members. I love that the story, at first, seems to have a paranormal undercurrent, combined with navigating through the dark, decrepit, and sometimes claustrophobic environments. It helps create a sense of tension and unrest. As the characters explore the ghost ship, the game initially leads you to believe that something onboard is causing them to all slowly lose their grip on reality and start hallucinating. (I.e. one of the characters pulls back a curtain covering a small shrine and then has a decapitated, rotting human head drop down in front of their face, only for the game to reveal that is was a silver-plated flower pot, or something.) The main characters eventually learn what's actually happening with the ship and it's the Occam's Razor Principle in full effect.

    The game has replay value, with it being a branching narrative with choice and consequences, along with trying to see how many characters you can keep alive or kill off, depending on your choices.

    What I disliked about the game is a bit of a longer list. Everything about this game feels like a lesser version of "Until Dawn": Fewer protagonists, less fleshed out character personalities/traits, a less expansive world, a shorter play time and weaker facial animations.

    The facial animations all have Mass Effect: Andromeda syndrome where it looks like the characters are trying to kill you with their gaze and they don't seem to really emote anything, even in high stress, high danger situations.

    The frame rate chugs concrete at certain points of the game, even though there never seems to be much going on. There was one instance during the final combat encounter where I got hung up on one frame for a solid 2 seconds before the game proceeded as it should. Some of the textures seemed low quality as well. At one point, I was inspecting a damaged life boat and the texture on it was so blurry, I assumed it just didn't load at all and moved on. This might not be a problem on PC, but it shouldn't be that bad on console hardware either (played this on a vanilla Xbox One).

    The characters don't seem to really evolve beyond the introductory part of the game, where each character's traits are laid out for you. They can go through some crazy **** but it doesn't really seem to affect them all that much.

    The game relies heavily on cheap jump scares (a dead body falls out of a locker or a pipe bursts and starts hissing steam), to the point of being a nuisance. It doesn't add anything scary or horrifying to the game.

    I feel like if this game was just a "stand alone" title, as oppose to being a part of an Anthology, maybe the developers would've had more time to expand on the story and character arcs as well as fix any optimization issues. At the end of the credits, there's a teaser trailer for the next game in the Anthology: "The Dark Pictures: Little Hope" with a release date of 2020. At this point, I hope it's towards the end of 2020 because it's clear that Man of Medan was a little underdeveloped and could've benefitted from a few more months of polish. I hope the next game can improve on Man of Medan's shortcomings.

    Overall, Man of Medan was a game that was trending towards fantastic for me, but there was just so many other issues that dragged it back down. Thankfully, it's not a full priced "triple-A" game, which kind of saves it a bit.    … Expand
  8. Filmanwalt
    Oct 25, 2021
    5
    Very interesting "horror" story Game to play in KOOP. The Multiplayer part is very well integrated and the Game is all in all a good one. The Gameplay is very simple but its more about your decisions in certain situations.

    The main thing horror isnt really that good, mostly these parts are jump scares, but you never feel very frightened. The facial expressions are sometimes way over the    Very interesting "horror" story Game to play in KOOP. The Multiplayer part is very well integrated and the Game is all in all a good one. The Gameplay is very simple but its more about your decisions in certain situations.

    The main thing horror isnt really that good, mostly these parts are jump scares, but you never feel very frightened. The facial expressions are sometimes way over the top and some graphic issues coming along.

    Sad is that the game is very short and u cant really connect to the characters.    … Expand
  9. Ekon
    Nov 3, 2021
    5
    Increase the brightness bar a few notches before starting this game because most of the story takes place in nearly total darkness aboard a derelect freighter in the dead of night. This is a bleak, ugly and dreary game with vaguely interesting characters and a plot that borders on the ridiculous. Four friends charter a boat from a very hostile female captain and explore a sunken heavyIncrease the brightness bar a few notches before starting this game because most of the story takes place in nearly total darkness aboard a derelect freighter in the dead of night. This is a bleak, ugly and dreary game with vaguely interesting characters and a plot that borders on the ridiculous. Four friends charter a boat from a very hostile female captain and explore a sunken heavy bomber somewhere in the Paciific. Four hostile guys in a motorboat harass them and anchor close by. If you can believe it, the friends and nasty captain go to sleep with the criminals a hundred yards away! Amazing. Of course the hostiles board and capture everryone as they sleep and then find the derelect frighter in search of gold. All they find are lots of ghosts. Anything is better than this.… Expand
  10. KlaatuHorror
    Aug 18, 2020
    6
    Muy buen juego, aunque algo corto. Se puede rejugar las veces que quieras. Falla quizás en unos personajes algo pobres y sin mucho carisma.
  11. cyklopPL
    Nov 23, 2020
    6
    A true 6/10 game.

    On the surface the game looks really nice, gameplay is similar to Until Dawn (quick time actions, deciding on the dialogues and in important moments under pressure which way to go etc.). However, the game takes around 4h to beat. Moreover, as many other ppl mentioned already - the story feels well paced till 3/4, and than boom, fast forward and you are watching the    A true 6/10 game.

    On the surface the game looks really nice, gameplay is similar to Until Dawn (quick time actions, deciding on the dialogues and in important moments under pressure which way to go etc.).

    However, the game takes around 4h to beat.
    Moreover, as many other ppl mentioned already - the story feels well paced till 3/4, and than boom, fast forward and you are watching the end credits. Last 1/4 of the game feels rushed.

    Also the story overall is not that great and consists of noticeably less big moments/big choices that will change the plot going forward.

    I can not see anyone paying the full price and enjoying this title, but in GamePass or maybe at a deep deep sale this can be treated as a movie. I completed this game at once in around 4h and I do not regret the time spent, however I feel like the game had much more potential if the story would go in another direction and the game would take twice as long to beat. Shame...    … Expand
  12. jyd1626
    Jan 21, 2021
    7
    Good game, however not really scary, it's a Good gamepass experience, however not so much to buy it separately.
  13. Dracosoul
    Aug 20, 2020
    5
    If you enjoyed Until Dawn, well this isn't even close to as good as that was. A few lame jump scares, some glitchy screen scenes, seems like they took a step back on this one and got lazy.
  14. Ericattack
    Sep 29, 2020
    7
    It starts very good, but than I lost interest because of the repeating ship scènes. And there was way to much reading with the papers you find, so at some point i stopt reading them.
    Overall worth playing.
  15. Dalex11
    Oct 19, 2021
    5
    Игра середнячок, не запоминается. Сюжет заканчивается резко, после прохождения остается чувство что игра не доделана
  16. Slckaer
    Jan 17, 2022
    7
    The game looks very nice on series X. The ending is maybe a little crap but I don't want to give any spoilers. Also it's a short game.
  17. mlnsn
    Jul 15, 2021
    6
    Gameplay : 6/10
    Design (video + audio) : 7/10
    Story : 5/10
    Technical aspects : 7/10
    Repeatability: 5/10
  18. neomoonsevin
    Apr 11, 2023
    7
    This game looks rushed and the characters look abit off like something's missing from the animations can't put my hand onit but it something horrible about this Shawn Ashmore looks strange on this but looks 700xs better on quantum break either way it's a ok game I will still add to my owned list
  19. M1sfiT
    Sep 3, 2023
    5
    Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaameeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!!!!!!!!!

Awards & Rankings

28
#28 Most Discussed Xbox One Game of 2019

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
69

Mixed or average reviews - based on 21 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 21
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 21
  3. Negative: 3 out of 21
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Feb 28, 2020
    60
    Visually a great "slasher" horror with an incredibly branched story. Shame it has cheap jumpscares, short play time and stiff controls with frequent QTE moments. If you use horrors to relax, this game is for you. [Issue#298]
  2. Official Xbox Magazine UK
    Oct 12, 2019
    70
    A little sedate, but a finely crafted slab of horror for those who enjoy cinematic games. [Issue#182, p.83]
  3. Generación Xbox
    Sep 18, 2019
    76
    If you are looking for a different experience, a slow game and some doses of horror we recommend you take a look at this Man Of Medan because it is a good title, different and fun to play alone or in company.
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