The Dark Pictures Anthology is a great franchise full of intense survival horror gameplay, and immersive cinematics but which game is the best? Here are our rankings for every title in the spooky series.
Supermassive has delivered some fantastic horror titles over the years, including The Quarry and Until Dawn, as well as The Dark Pictures Anthology. As the name suggests, these games each tell their own unique survival horror story and they play out like interactive movies where each character’s fate is in your hands.
Some entries in the series are stronger than others which may leave you wondering what Dark Pictures Anthology games are most worth picking up, so we’ve got you covered with a ranked list of every tale in the Curator’s library.
So, here are all The Dark Pictures Anthology games ranked from worst to best.
5. Switchback VR
Switchback is an on-the-rails shooter (much like Until Dawn: Rush of Blood) VR game that borrows from previous Dark Pictures chapters for its sections. It’s a game for VR owners who enjoy the Dark Pictures universe and serves as a celebration of its first season. The gameplay is different from the slow, cinematic, survival horror we’ve come to expect from the series, but it’s a fun distraction while we wait for Season 2. You’ll need to own a VR set to take part, of course.
4. A Little Hope
Being set in a town full of ghosts is just as scary as it sounds, and the second entry of The Dark Pictures Anthology can actually be the scariest in many ways. A Little Hope, as a town, takes lots of inspiration from Silent Hill and the developers really increased the creep factor for this entry.
The issue is that A Little Hope does little to push the series forward from a technical point of view and is just as janky as Man of Medan. The tale it tells is also not quite as good as others in the Anthology, despite the setting being one of the most spine-tingling.
3. The Devil in Me
Taking inspiration from the real-life murders of H.H. Holmes, as well as fictional slashers like Halloween, with a dose of Saw thrown in, The Devil in Me sees a documentary film crew trapped in a house of horrors while a relentless serial killer tries to pick them off one-by-one. It’s tense, scary, and full of grim surprises, but it often leans too heavily on the Saw influence and less on the awesome atmosphere it builds up at the start of the game.
It also needlessly pads out the adventure with boring exploration sections that kill the tension rather than build it. Previous entries got this balance right, whereas here it just feels like filler. Dark Pictures games benefit from their bitesize runtimes due to their replay value, so The Devil in Me falls short here.
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2. Man of Medan
The original and first chapter of The Dark Pictures Anthology is still a superb playable horror movie if you can look past its wonky controls and the stilted movements of the characters. However, a group of rich kids stuck on a ghost ship being stalked by pirates is still one of the scariest settings ever. Imagine Captain Philips meets Until Dawn with a sprinkle of Resident Evil Revelations and you’ve got the vibe.
Those who’ve played games like Until Dawn or The Quarry and are looking for a nice entry point into The Dark Pictures Anthology owe it to themselves to start here. It’s dated compared to the more recent chapters, but it’s still one of the strongest.
1. House of Ashes
House of Ashes pits a group of CIA and US Army soldiers in a deep underground tunnel system in the Middle East while they are stalked by ancient vampire creatures. Relations between the protagonists are fraught as each character works to not only stay alive but to exorcise their inner demons – and avoid getting eaten alive by the real-life ones hunting them.
The game is the strongest entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology so far, being set in a terrifying environment while monsters, prejudice, and paranoia threaten to literally and figuratively tear the group apart. It mostly wins the top spot due to it having the most interesting cast of characters when compared to other entries in the Anthology. In this game, not only do you need to work to keep your characters alive, but you find yourself wondering if you even should. Does everyone deserve a second chance or redemption?
Don’t forget, Season 2 of The Dark Pictures Anthology kicks off with Directive 8020, possibly in Fall 2023. It’s also worth checking out Supermassive’s other horror games, The Quarry and Until Dawn.
Check out more horror gaming lists below to find plenty of exciting titles to play:
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