The definitive best way to play ‘Man of Medan’: Review

The following is a spoiler-free review of Man of Medan.

Buckle up, Until Dawn fans: The mysterious Man of Medan has reached mainland.

On Friday, Supermassive Games, the creative geniuses behind horror masterpiece Until Dawn, released the first installment of their Dark Pictures anthology series. A chilling adventure through a nautical nightmare, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan explores plenty of what made its predecessor great, but with a ton of new ways to play — including three different game modes.

With a story as big as this one, we decided to split up Mashable’s team of gaming reporters (not always a safe choice in a scary setting, we know) and suss out the definitive best way to play Man of Medan. We laughed, we screamed, and we died… seven times to be exact. 

You’re welcome!

Playing solo

For my first Man of Medan playthrough, I decided to go it alone. That meant making every decision, observation, and action for myself by myself.

Meandering around solo, I was able to pay attention to the story sans distractions and become immersed in this bizarre world of pirates, ghosts, and bare feet on rusty floors (gag.) I poked anything and everything that interested me — for far longer than any of my friends would have allowed, I might add — and got a succinct, but detailed experience. As a result of my intense, athlete-like focus, I was a prime target for jump scares and everything was way more terrifying than it ought to have been. This game is not that scary, but I assure you: I screamed. A lot.

That said, while playing alone definitely made things scarier, it also made numerous flaws in the game’s execution more apparent. Compared to Until Dawn, the characters of Man of Medan are paper-thin, and the voice acting behind them leaves something to be desired. 

Disproportionate character reactions, be it too scared or not scared enough, hamper plenty of scenes — and consequently, make the entire story feel a bit inauthentic. (My colleagues and I hypothesize that at least some of these mismatches occurred as a result of the game’s impressively large decision tree, but who can say for sure.)

Additionally, frustrating game mechanics are made even more frustrating when you’re alone. As in Until Dawn, Man of Medan‘s action sequences are plagued by controls that ere on the side of too sensitive; I lost three of my five characters to clumsy thumbs alone. While laughing at your friend mucking up an action sequence and getting someone killed can be fun, sitting alone in your shame is less so.

Granted, I still had lots of fun during my playthrough and got a great first glimpse at the story. To the creators’ credit, when I hit the final scene, I was eager to go back for more and see how else things could have unfolded — but I would not be doing it alone. -Alison Foreman, Entertainment Reporter

Playing Movie Night (aka offline couch co-op)

After playing Man of Medan in Movie Night mode, I can’t imagine playing it any other way.

Mashable’s Alexis Nedd and I selected our characters we wanted to control and made our way through the game over three days, passing the control back and forth and just generally having a blast the whole time. Sometimes we came to a consensus on certain decisions, and sometimes we made choices that we didn’t agree with each other on, which added a fun element to the game that really made it feel like a group experience.

The mysteries of Man of Medan were fun to chat about as we started coming up with our own theories about the fishermen and the haunted nightmare of a ghost ship. And I imagine it would only be more fun with more friends, as it’s such a narrative-heavy and cinematic game that I didn’t mind not playing when it wasn’t my turn.

Plus, in my opinion, spooky stuff is always better with a friend, even if it meant we weren’t always fully paying attention and got every character killed. Whoops.

If one of your characters does die in Movie Night, that’s one less person you get to play as. After our first character died (one of mine), Alexis was kind enough to offer me one of her many characters to even out the playing. But even if she didn’t, it still would have been fun to just watch her try to make it out alive. -Kellen Beck, Entertainment Reporter

Playing Shared Story (aka online two-player co-op)

Man of Medan‘s online mode is weird. Like sexy-zombie-sailor-lady chasing you around an abandoned WWII freighter levels of weird. Here’s how it works. 

You and one online friend — in my case, Mashable’s incomparable Jess Joho — pair up in the main menu. Whoever sets up the session can then select one of two soldiers, Joe or Charlie, to play as during the prologue. Unlike the Movie Night mode, this is the only chance you have to select roles within the game. Following the prologue, the five main characters are exchanged freely between the two players, presumably with the game adjusting for who has and has not survived.

It’s a real Rubik’s Cube of perspective and shows just how much planning went into this thing.

Once the main narrative begins, each player experiences an entirely separate story, the events of which occur simultaneously within the game. For example, one of you might be making conversation as Conrad aboard the Duke of Milan, while the other scuba dives as Alex beneath it. This opens up a whole lot of content that you may not have experienced in the solo or Movie Night modes, and provides some great justification for playing through the game multiple times. It’s a real Rubik’s Cube of perspective and shows just how much planning went into this thing.

That said, unless you are communicating with your friend via text or video chat, you will have no idea what is happening in their story during these times apart — and attempting to describe what is happening can be a challenge. Imagine watching a movie while simultaneously trying to listen to someone else describe the movie they’re watching. It’s infuriating.

Granted, playing independently isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and I may have had more fun if I hadn’t tried to communicate with Jess at all. It’s an unconventional take on the online co-op, and an impressive one at that. But if the creative intent here is for online friends to play without communicating, the game doesn’t do a great job of making that clear.

When your characters are in the same place, you can see the other player explore areas and occasionally overhear their conversations. Some of the conversation trees or more flexible than others. In my session, I could hear Jess having conversations I’d already had verbatim, but with different characters involved — which was a bit sloppy.

As far as collaboration goes, you and the other player can team up to complete tasks like forcing open door or breaking through windows in specific instances, as well as steer group conversations through different characters’ viewpoints. During these conversations, however, the game grinds to a halt when one of you has to make a dialogue choice. It’s a lot of talking, and then waiting, and then talking, and then waiting. 

If that all sounded a bit clunky, well… that’s because it is. There’s a lot about the Shared Story mode that feels off, including more technical glitches than I experienced during any other playthrough. Ultimately, Jess and I only made it through about two hours of online play before we decided to give up on our Shared Story, and set a date for playing in-person.

All that is to say, for completionists looking to see every nook and cranny of Man of Medan, the online mode is definitely worth checking out — but its bizarre execution makes it the worst way to experience the central narrative, at least for the first time. -AF

Best way to play verdict: Movie Night

After playing in Movie Night mode with Kellen and hearing my colleagues testimonies regarding solo and online co-op, I feel good about leaning into my bias and declaring Movie Night mode the best way to experience Man of Medan.

We didn’t try our best, but we did have the most fun. 

I love couch co-op and often wish that more games offered the opportunity for non-competitive, side-by-side gameplay. While Man of Medan’s branching story is compelling, I can easily see how plonking through it alone would highlight just how much of the game involves walking quietly through spooky hallways and waiting for something to pop out and scare you. Having a friend right there fills the gaps in the game’s slower moments and makes the action sequences better — frantically mashing buttons feels more purposeful when someone is yelling “HIT SQUARE PUSH GO GO GO” in your ear. It just does!

One of the other great things about playing Movie Night mode is the inevitable sense of shared victory of failure that came from our playthrough. I’d be miffed if I played through a game myself and lost all but one character, but knowing Kellen straight up murdered half of them made what could feel like a fail state into one more thing to joke about. Other issues like framerates dropping and button latency in the third act of the game would also be way more annoying if I didn’t have someone to immediately confirm that no, I totally got that QTE in time, it was definitely the game’s fault. You’re good, Alexis. You’re a good person.

By the end, Kellen and I had killed almost everyone, so RIP to the cast of Man of Medan. We didn’t try our best, but we did have the most fun. -Alexis Nedd, Senior Entertainment Reporter

How should you be making choices in Man of Medan?

Man of Medan pulls off a neat trick, something its predecessor Until Dawn never really managed. It’s open-ended enough for there to be value in experimentation, and short enough to make trying out different approaches a palatable possibility.

Since finishing my first runthrough and talking to some of my colleagues at Mashable and beyond, I’ve realized that wildly different outcomes are possible. There’s a small cast of characters and, starting about halfway into the story, any of them can die before the end. That leads to a wealth of possible combinations.

Find a way to live inside the story and just let the horror wash over you.

All of which is to say: don’t sweat your choices too much. The first time you play, let your kneejerk instincts guide how you role-play each character and watch how the story unfolds. There’s always time to go for specific outcomes later, once you have a sense of how the larger plot plays out.

I’d also urge everyone to let go of any ideas around “winning” this game. In Until Dawn there was this sort of unspoken goal where helping everyone survive their long, dark night in the woods was a good thing. But after playing Man of Medan, I feel like the opposite is true.

It’s not that you’re ever specifically told to lighten up and accept that dead characters make for more compelling horror (they do!). But Medan is more brutal than its predecessor. Most of the big character deaths happen when you screw up a “press the button at the right time!” sequence too many times, and it feels — to me, at least — like there’s tighter timing on these moments than there was in Until Dawn.

Success is also relative. There are times when you’ll be faced with choices where failing intentionally is a good thing for these characters. So don’t be afraid to screw up. All of your decisions matter in Man of Medan, whether it’s a dialogue prompt or a “press the button” sequence.

Just think in role-playing terms. Make an effort to exist in the mindset of whichever character you’re commandeering at any given moment. We’re just a passive viewer when we sit down to watch horror films, but becoming an active participant is the whole appeal of video games in the same genre.

Man of Medan in particular is unique among horror games in giving you, the player, a ton of agency in shaping the story’s eventual outcome. You can’t dictate every single beat — where’s the thrill in that? — but you’re role-playing all of the potential victims. So when you sit down to play, find a way to live inside the story and just let the horror wash over you. -Adam Rosenberg, Senior Entertainment Reporter

The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan is now available for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.