As a seasoned gamer with over two decades of gaming under my belt, I find myself drawn to unique experiences that challenge the norm and push the boundaries of what we thought was possible in video games. With this in mind, I ventured into the post-apocalyptic world of “A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead” – a game that, on paper, seemed like an intriguing blend of stealth and horror elements, set against the backdrop of a world silenced by monstrous creatures.
The Road Ahead” was launched in a low-key manner. Although it’s a peculiar task for players to undertake, I’m glad I had the chance to play it – even with all its problems.
The Path Forward in A Quiet Place: On the Open Road
The proposed direction for this game might lead to an annoying gaming experience due to its emphasis on slow crouching movements, which is problematic considering that the game seems to prioritize stealth elements. In games where I have the option to enhance my crouched movement speed, I typically unlock it as soon as possible because I enjoy stealth genres. However, The Road Ahead appears to make crouching a near constant requirement throughout its 7-to-10-hour story, and it necessitates moving slowly, often barely nudging the left stick due to the unpredictable behavior of the aliens in the game, similar to the Xenomorph from Alien: Isolation, who can detect even a swiftly performed crouched footstep.
The complexity arises from the multiple terrains and hindrances you must navigate in each mission. Scattered items like tin cans, wooden planks, leaves, and puddles dot the paths, obstructing your advance towards minor environmental challenges such as gathering and employing fuses to open doors. Each move in this game is crucial, indicating that hasty actions could lead to failure, emphasizing the need for quick comprehension of your surroundings to survive.
At the beginning of the tale, Alex constructs a device called a phonometer which compares ambient sounds with the noises she produces. If the noise she generates surpasses the background sound level, the alien might be able to detect her. Depending on the game’s difficulty level, she can only evade detection for two or three instances before the alien either attacks her directly or rushes towards the location where the noise originated.
In some levels of the game, aliens are freely roaming in space alongside you, while in others they remain hidden but will abruptly end the game if you make too much noise. I noticed that the aliens were incredibly perceptive regardless of the difficulty level, even when playing on all three. There is also an extremely challenging “survivor” mode, which appears impossible given the unrelenting skill of the game’s main creatures.
Frequently, you need to open doors and drawers in this game, not just for moving forward through levels, but also to locate necessary items such as inhalers for Alex’s asthma or batteries for her flashlight. Interestingly, it takes around 8-10 seconds to open any door or drawer without alerting the monster, which means you have to execute every action with the stealth and caution of a teenager trying to sneak out at night – but with significantly higher risks involved.
As a devoted fan, I must confess that The Road Ahead has a unique way of challenging my patience like no other game I’ve played. It masterfully replicates the tense atmosphere from the movies, where even the monsters seem hypervigilant. In this game, Alex, our protagonist, skillfully manages two essential tools with her left hand – the phonometer and the flashlight. This restriction forces a deliberate choice: do I illuminate my path ahead or listen for signs of danger? The phonometer offers valuable insights into the alien’s awareness, but without the flashlight, I risk blundering into loud obstacles that would render the phonometer unnecessary – I’d already be in trouble.
In the progression of the tale, both Alex and the monsters gradually acquire new tactics in their arsenal. For instance, Alex can hurl bottles and bricks, or lay planks, quietly and secretively, otherwise… to fashion passageways through certain regions. As the narrative deepens, items such as flares for Alex and an alien scanning ability that detects any sound you make, regardless of whether it surpasses the natural ambiance, enrich the survival experience. Remarkably, she can also create shortcuts using the aliens by hurling a brick through a window, causing them to break through walls connected to the room, opening paths previously inaccessible. The game’s meticulously paced cat-and-mouse sequences are its most compelling aspect, despite some missions having limited opportunities for creativity.
Generally speaking, The Road Ahead often presents intriguing concepts, but it doesn’t always fully develop them. For instance, you can find sandbags throughout the world that let you create quiet pathways, much like in movies. However, whenever sandbags were involved, there were too many of them, making it less important for me to strategize my route effectively. Instead, I would construct a self-sufficient escape route with safe passageways so I’d always have an exit plan if the alien was approaching and didn’t notice me. Additionally, at certain points, bricks are stacked in an endless supply. I wanted to consider more how I could utilize these tools rather than just using them casually.
It can be aggravating when checkpointing, as well. Typically, the game auto-saves after you finish a significant part of an area, such as collecting one out of multiple necessary items to progress. However, problems occur when a single step within a complex sequence feels overwhelming, and having to repeat that segment feels discouraging. In two instances, I had to restart an area due to bugs that seemed unprofessional. One instance involved entering an area that was supposed to remain closed until finding the key. Although I hadn’t found it yet, I assumed I simply missed its location since I managed to reach the other side. However, I could see where I needed to go next, but the game wouldn’t let me proceed because I had inadvertently entered a purgatorial state, being in the right place at the wrong time.
In the final stage of the game, I found myself in a situation where I ascended onto a rooftop and followed an on-screen prompt to open a hatch. However, upon closer inspection, there was no actual hatch present, leaving me stuck within the game’s structure and forcing a restart from my last checkpoint. This reminded me of leftover elements from earlier versions of the level, as if the designers hadn’t quite finished polishing everything. It seems that while the game is brimming with innovative ideas, it occasionally falls short in terms of execution and smoothness.
In this game, Alex’s asthma condition is incorporated in a unique way: excessive tension can trigger an asthma attack. This tension comes from both physical stress, such as lifting heavy barrels to clear a pathway, and psychological stress, like being close to a monster. The monster often gets very near, creating a tense atmosphere that might lead to a quick-time event where Alex experiences an asthama attack (signaling the alien). You have to temporarily avoid it by finding inhalers or other aid, or completely overcome it with a precise button press. I found these events easy enough to handle but seldom achieved perfection, which was ideal; it added another layer of challenge as I moved cautiously around the monster.
Alongside her respiratory problem, Alex faces additional struggles that I won’t reveal, but these seem more manufactured for emotional effect than genuine character development. Despite the game’s engaging plot, I often felt the writers overloaded her with issues rather than deeply exploring one aspect of her personality to make me care about her. The emotional connection in video games is inherent, so some aspects of Alex’s past and the events she experiences feel like excessive attempts to ensure players remain emotionally invested.
As a dedicated fan, I found the deliberate pacing of the game to be a commendable aspect that added depth to the overall experience, even when it didn’t quite meet its full potential. Unlike some, I was never truly annoyed by this pace. However, there were minor issues that bothered me, such as the sparse audio settings and occasional bugs, which felt somewhat out of place given the game’s strong point – its measured tempo.
In this game, I usually use headphones for an immersive experience, but I was taken aback that it lacks basic sound settings tailored for headphones. Consequently, the game’s audio can seem dull when played through a headset. However, there is an option to let the character pick up your microphone audio, which functions quite well due to custom calibration options. I experimented with this feature at various times, but I mostly turned it off during my playthrough because I have children and a pet at home, and I didn’t want the game character to die to the soundtrack of the Bluey theme song.
It may seem like I have a lot of complaints for The Road Ahead, and if you count them individually, my frustrations do outnumber the parts I enjoyed. However, I also find its novel stealth-horror approach interesting enough to merit seeing it for yourself; its best parts are greater than their sum. A patch could resolve some of the polishing issues–though given how this game was tossed into the world with little marketing, I wonder if the team is even assigned to do more with it.
As a gaming enthusiast, I must say that “A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead” is an intriguing yet imperfect endeavor to adapt a seemingly unsuitable concept into a video game. Stealthily creeping around for hours in silence as a monster lurks nearby was undeniably challenging, but surprisingly, it worked. If only the developers had paid more attention to detail, this could have been a cult classic.
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2024-10-22 02:39