‘Man of Medan’ Makes Every Choice Permanent — and Mostly Earns It

“The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan” asks players to make choices that cost lives. That’s the pitch, and it mostly delivers on it. The horror anthology’s first entry splits five friends across two timelines — a shipwreck and a ghost hunt — and hands players a branching script where death is permanent and the game remembers it.

Trailer, via Bandai Namco Entertainment America.

Five Friends, Two Timelines

Players take turns controlling each character as the story moves between a sunken boat and a haunted island. Choices made in one timeline ripple into the other. Miss a warning, and a friend dies. Save a friend, and the game tracks that kindness later. It’s a clever system, and it gives the game a replay value few horror titles manage.

Fear and Friction

The tension rarely lets up. Rooms hold secrets players need to find, and the dark holds threats they can’t see until it’s too late. The game leans on sound design as much as sight, and moments of quiet dread land harder than jump scares.

Combat is limited. Players fight with whatever they find — flashlights, bottles, makeshift weapons — and the game doesn’t let anyone survive long without thinking fast. This keeps fights short and tense rather than long and frustrating.

The Cost of Choices

Not every choice pays off. Some deaths feel cheap, and the game doesn’t always explain why a character dies the way they do. Replay runs can reveal new paths, but the game also punishes curiosity with death, which keeps players cautious even when they want to explore.

The story drags in its middle stretch. Some scenes run longer than they need to, and the pacing sags before the final push. The payoff still lands, but the climb there loses some of its force.

“The camera gap is real but the battery is what will decide this.”

That line, spoken by a character early in the game, sums up the tension running through the whole experience. The game knows it’s asking players to trust it with lives they’ve grown attached to, and it handles that trust mostly well.

Where It Falls Short

The game isn’t perfect. Some puzzles lean on guesswork, and the game doesn’t always tell players what they’re missing. Death tracking works best when it rewards players for remembering past choices, but it occasionally punishes them for making the wrong call.

Performance on PS4 shows its age. Load times are longer than they need to be, and frame drops appear during tense moments. On PS5, the faster load times help smooth out those rough edges, though the core experience stays the same across both versions.

Final Score

“The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan” succeeds at what it sets out to do: make players feel the weight of their choices. The branching narrative, replay value, and horror elements combine into a solid, if flawed, scare. It’s a strong start for the anthology series.

Anthology Series · game review · horror games · PS5 · survival horror