Directive 8020 review: "Held back by the inconsistent implementation of series-first stealth"

Is there anything worse than waking from a four-year hypersleep to the sight of your CEO marching about in their underpants? Directive 8020's answer to that harrowing question is simple: yes. Because you could see all of your colleagues in their underpants, actually, and there may even be a murderer in the office as well.

The office in question is a space ship called the Cassiopeia. Sent by Corinth, a corporate entity owned by the aforementioned stripped-down CEO, Directive 8020 begins as the crew of this pioneering spacecraft conduct a recon mission into the orbit of an alien planet that humanity intends to colonize. It took the Cassiopeia years to get here, but mere seconds for me to accidentally get a key character killed after the ship gets invaded by a hostile alien life form.

Playing cat-and-mouse is a format twist I get along with. Directive 8020 has a greater focus on player agency than any other Dark Pictures game, although this experimental structure could be a sticking point for those who enjoy the arm's-length action of past instalments. Directive 8020 also features one of the most inconsistent casts in terms of voice acting performances, which frequently pulls me out of the moment for a brief wince. But when it's good, it's very good, and when it's not, I'm back in hypersleep.

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Night shift

Developer Supermassive Games may have hacked off the official series moniker in the game title, but make no mistake: this is a Dark Pictures game through and through, and dying is one of my favorite parts of a Dark Pictures game.

I'm pleased to report that Directive 8020 has plenty of opportunities to slake that thirst for violence. The comforting familiarity of Supermassive's choose-your-path format assures me of this by its very design, while the survival horror gameplay poses a little extra challenge and suspense as I fight to keep the crew alive.

Well, most of them. One of Directive 8020's biggest challenges with its ensemble cast is that only a handful of them are genuinely likeable. A cold professionalism underscores most of the crewmates' conversations, making their motives or any deeper subtext much harder to parse than the bare-faced teen dramatics of The Quarry.

Themes of workplace paranoia prove far more stark and serious this time around, but there are glimpses of genuine, pre-established working relationships here. Medic Cooper is a close friend of science geek Anders, for example, while Commander Stafford's friendship with pilot Brianna Young's late father grants him in loco parentis status. In a game where there's not meant to be one standout Final Girl or Final Boy, Young's significance throughout the story refutes that entirely.

Despite my reservations about how well Supermassive might handle a more stoic setting and theme after years of teen slasher kicks, I'm largely impressed. Small touches point to the uniformity of life under Big Corp employ, with the crew's array of identical utility tools stripping back rank or character-specific items seen in past Supermassive games to put them all on equal footing.

Exploring the Cassiopeia armed with little more than a scanner, a screwdriver-like wedge tool for opening doors, and Corinth's answer to Slack strapped to my wrist makes for a simple, straightforward experience. I can check my messages with fellow colleagues intermittently, with my responses to their growing distrust, fear, or other anxieties helping shape a given character's personality traits. Build traits up high enough, and certain destinies get locked in place after reaching key story beats – should said character survive to see them.

As is par for the course in a Dark Pictures game, chances of survival in Directive 8020 are greatly improved if you have sharp reflexes. Atop quicktime events, pivotal decisions that can be rewound using the Turning Points time reversal screen, and building up character traits, stealth plays a huge role. Hiding from roaming mimics in real-time is a brand new level of stomach-churning tension, but really, it's nothing I haven't seen done better before in games like Outlast.

Stepping on broken glass draws enemies' attention, and keeping an eye out for distractions by way of TV screens to turn on and off would be useful if opportunities weren't so few and far between. There's no way of fighting back against the invading life forms, save for a timely wedge tool to the jugular the first time you get caught (if you're lucky), so progression really is a matter of plotting a careful path through the dimly-lit spaceship and knowing when to make a run for safety.

Survivor's guilt

While the survival horror and stealth elements offer a refreshing twist on Supermassive's known formula, implementation is rough around the edges. Manually running from enemies for a few seconds while juggling punishing QTEs feels clunky and confusing, and most of the time, an interactive cutscene would have kept up the pace. Back-to-back chase or hiding sequences are ramped up in frequency towards the back end of the game, getting less scary and more regimented each time – find a battery, power a door, crouch-run to it, repeat. There's a push-pull relationship here as The Dark Pictures' classic DNA merges with Directive 8020's newness – a solid effort, although the novelty of it all didn't persist through the 10 hours of playtime.

Everything I love about past Dark Pictures games is still here in Directive 8020 – it's an atmospheric, tense interactive movie with moments of high-stakes choice and consequence – but the rudimentary survival horror inflections don't feel robust enough to make stealth stand out as a major unique selling point.

It's clear that Supermassive missed a trick to push things to the next level. The toolset stays the same throughout the story, leaving limited scope for true interactivity other than texting your colleagues or hiding behind crates. My scanner has unlimited charges, meaning I can spam it with little consequence, and the stealth moments are so insular and clearly signposted that it detracts from the anxiety of knowing when I should or should not have my flashlight turned on. It all makes for a limited, slightly less sophisticated handling of the sub-genre's touchstones than I'd hoped to see as Supermassive takes a step in a very interesting new direction.

One area where Supermassive shines brightest is its cinematic writing, and there's plenty of narrative richness to be found here. Watching cracks form in the crewmates' resolves, one of them forcing all other survivors through a biometric scanner to confirm their humanity, makes for agonizingly satisfying storytelling. Flash-forwards and flashbacks offer more pieces to fit into the ever-growing puzzle. Before long, I'm right there alongside the crew wondering what is or isn't real.

It's just a shame that if you're a little too fastidious in checking your Turning Points, which I certainly am, you get major plot twists completely spoiled for you. It's a huge let-down. Considering how many twists and turns there are in Directive 8020, many of them are either hampered from the jump thanks to Turning Points or end up as red herrings with little meaningful consequence to the overarching story.

The disappointment makes it hard to replay Directive 8020 with hopes of seeing a more positive outcome – or a more grisly one if you're freaky like that – especially when I only started getting truly invested in the story around the fifth of its eight chapters after a grudgingly slow start.

Ultimately, Directive 8020 is not the groundbreaking intergalactic horror romp I was expecting, but it's not a bad time either. Well-written in places, overly derivative of its Alien or Dead Space influences in others, it's still a solid 10-hour adventure that gives me hope for the future of The Dark Pictures Anthology. It's heartening to see Supermassive being playful again, tinkering with the tools that brought us epic slasher stories like Until Dawn and, much like whatever is stalking the crew of the Cassiopeia, showing intentions to evolve further still.