Man of Medan – PAX East Preview
From the minds who brought us the bloody, gorey, intense, and adrenaline inducing horror thrill ride that was Until Dawn, comes an inaugural entry into a series of horror games from developer Supermassive Games. It’s a hard ask, but from what I experienced at the PAX East 2019 demo, they may be able to fulfill it. While not the best environment to enjoy a good scare, Man of Medan kept the jumps coming as I struggled to piece together what was happening as the introduction not being the best at explaining what is going on. The gist is a bunch of pretentious rich man-children have chartered a boat, bringing their poor boat skipper with them as they encounter a ghost ship. Things go from there, and the place they go is into spooksville.
The first of what is to be many new games based off of the Until Dawn formula, Man of Medan is carrying a lot on its shoulders if it’s to be the promise of more. But from the demo it could realistically do that. The cast is diverse, multi-racial and lingual, but its shine might be the ghosts. The Medan looks to be a haunted ship once occupied by different generations of ghosts, some being soldiers from WWII.
Exploring the old ship feels akin to searching something far older, eerily similar to the abandoned mental facility of Until Dawn. Instead of the impending feeling of the frozen mountain top outside, it’s held by the knowledge of being tens if not hundreds of miles from land and civilization, a permanent trap of horror and tension both from the supernatural elements and, even worse, those of the fellow human beings around you.
With history, myth, and urban legends to spare, there doesn’t seem to be a lack of source material from which to work. Man of Medan, the first in the Dark Picture anthology of stand alone horror games is set to launch sometime in 2019 for PS4, XBONE, and PC from Supermassive Games and Bandai Namco.
