In general, I’m not a horror fan. I scare easily and when I’m sitting at home on my couch I prefer to not crap myself. I’ve played some good horror games, I just avoid most of them. Yet for some reason, I’ve always been in love with The Dark Picture games and Supermassive Games in general. I think its that they are more so tense than scary, though they do have scary moments, and are very narrative based. After a bit of a delay, Supermassive is back with Directive 8020, so how does it stack up?

First and foremost, Directive 8020 is a Dark Pictures game, but it’s also a standalone title. As we discussed in our interview with the games creative director Will Doyle, Supermassive wanted it to be it’s own game, but still be part of the Dark Pictures anthology. Needless to say though, you don’t need any prior knowledge of the Dark Picture series to play Directive 8020.

The game takes place on a spaceship called the Cassiopeia. The ship and crew have flown 4 years to get to the planet Tau Ceti f, a planet that humans are looking to hopefully inhabit one day. Their mission is to orbit the planet and gather intel while waiting for another ship, the Andromeda to follow behind and land on the planet.

Most of the crew has been cryogenically frozen for most of the trip in order to preserve supplies and air. 2 sleep technicians, Tomas Carter and Pari Simms, remained awake for the entirety of the trip in order to monitor things. Hours before they need to wake the rest of the crew a meteor hits the ship. The two quickly go assess things and things quickly unravel from there.

Who’s Real & Who’s Not?

It is really difficult to talk about such a narrative driven game without getting into spoilers, but here we go. Directive 8020 features 8 episodes as the crew work to assess what exactly is going on. In typical Dark Pictures fashion, the story itself is crafted by you and your decisions. What you say or do can have consequences later on down the road and can be the difference between life and death.

The introduction of the turning point system does a really good job of letting you create the story you want. After all major decisions and sections within each chapter you can simply head into the menu and go to the turning points menu and revert back to any spot you’d like. If your decision didn’t give you the outcome you wanted, try again and get the one you want.

Of course you don’t have to do this, as many will want to play the game and let their decisions be final, but it is a nice touch overall and an absolute game changer for those like me who want to get all the secrets and achievements. Being able to not only see what sub-chapter has secrets, and how many is amazing.

As mentioned earlier the story is setup by a meteor hitting the ship. As things progress things start to seem weird and the crew members don’t always seem themselves. The alien organism that was on the meteor is able to mimic anything it comes in contact with, including humans.

As the crew reaches out via comms to some characters, they can tell something is wrong, but they don’t quite understand it for awhile. They just think being in space this long has done some things to their psyche and are being cautious with them.

To add to it there are new messages that are essentially text messages. They are optional but add a lot of detail to the narrative so they are worth looking at. It’s also a fun way to try and figure out if you are talking to the real character or the mimic.

The story admittedly does take a bit to ramp up, as it isn’t until around episode 5 that things really get going. I personally like this style of storytelling as it builds the characters up and sets the tone and stage for an epic conclusion, but I know some will want a lot of action right away. Rest assured though the story is excellent and will have you on the edge of your seat and making you think and wonder what’s happening next and where it is headed.

A Stellar Crew

The actors do a fantastic job in Directive 8020 portraying the crew, as is expected in a Dark Pictures game as they often steal the show. If you have played any of the Dark Picture games you will likely recognize almost everyone here, and in that sense it is fun to have played the previous games and seeing the range of characters these actors and actresses can play.

One thing to note when it comes to the cast is that Supermassive did a lot to hype up Lashana Lynch, who plays pilot Brianna Young. She did great, but because of the advertising some might think she is the main character. And while she is in it a fair bit, I don’t think I’d call any of the characters the main character. That is in general a strength of these games as all the cast gets considerable airtime so I won’t say its a negative, but even I thought we’d see more of the Hollywood star.

A potential negative that some might have is the games length. It’s hard to fully guess my playthrough time as I was spending a lot of time looking for the secrets, but the game felt like it was about a 5-6 hour experience. Perfect for me and I was happy with it, but I’m sure others might want a longer game. These games typically have a lot of replay value at least with all the different endings.

A Host Of New Features

Supermassive games have generally been pretty light on gameplay and the variety of said gameplay. Typically you’d walk around, deal with QTE’s and that is more or less it. With Directive 8020, Supermassive has done a lot of work to incorporate much more gameplay and for the most part it pays off.

Perhaps the biggest change now is the stealth sections. There are many areas where you will be creeping around trying to avoid being spotted by the enemy. If you do get spotted you can always run away, but should the enemy end up catching up to you, you might have to fight them off (with a QTE) or you simply might meet your maker right there.

These moments can be tense, especially if you are indeed trying to survive. I didn’t find them overly difficult, but they got the job done in terms of adding an additional layer to the gameplay and that tense feeling. I suppose you lose a little bit of the sense of urgency because of the turning point system, should you choose to use it, but overall this is a great new addition.

Between the new stealth sections and the turning point mechanic, that’s enough to make Directive 8020 standout from the previous games, but there is more added. There’s many doors that can be opened with codes that you have to figure out, most of which are surprisingly complex. These are typically just doors to get you a secret so not necessary to push the story forward, but interesting to figure out nonetheless.

Additionally there’s a new mechanic to change the flow of power from one door to another to open up new areas. Again, a very simple process that doesn’t do much for moving the series forward, but didn’t hurt it either. The last new mechanic is a utility stick that will bypass locked doors. Using it will give you a little mini game where a bunch of lines are spinning and you have to line them up.

I actually thought this mechanic was a great addition, however they missed an opportunity. Often times these doors had to be opened during the stealth sections. I was thinking I needed to rush through them or risk being caught, but it seems like once you get to the door the enemy just stops looking for you. I had troubles with them a couple times and thought for sure I’d get caught but never did. With the stress of trying to avoid being caught, I thought this would have been better utilized.

Less Of The Old Features

While the new features are front and center, the franchises usual features are either heavily reduced or gone all together. I mentioned QTEs earlier but there are WAY less than previous games. In those games I feel like the main thing was doing QTEs and in Directive 8020 I could probably count on 2 hands how many I encountered.

Also with the addition of the stealth sections where you try to avoid the enemy, completely gone are the hold your breath mini games that were a staple in the previous Dark Picture games. This one actually sucked to see gone as I always thought those were some of the best sections in those games, so it would have been nice to see one or two at least.

Top Tier Technical Performance

I’m also happy to report that Directive 8020 runs quite smooth on console. Other than a few cutscenes having some slight stuttering, everything ran smooth while I was playing. The game looks great, especially the very few moments when we got to see outside the ship in the early episodes.

The only real technical issue I had is in a single sub chapter my controller would act as if it was offline twice. I never know if this is my controller being wonky or a weird thing in the game but it was all of a 2 second annoyance either way.

Final Thoughts

Supermassive has stayed true to themselves while adding some meaningful new features. The new stealth sections and the new Turning Points system fit the game and its impressive narrative well. While other game play additions are fine, they don’t move the needle quite as much and the omission of some older mechanics is a disappointment.

Still Directive 8020 is a great cinematic experience with more gameplay than ever before and fans of the genre and studio will find plenty to love. It might not be a groundbreaking experience, but Directive 8020 delivers as one of the Supermassive’s best games.

Directive 8020 was reviewed on Xbox Series X. We’d like to thank Supermassive Games for providing a review code for purpose of this review.

Directive 8020 releases on the 12th of May on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.