The one thing that I liked the most about this game? It gave you two objectives. The first was the immediate survival of the 5 people you've been charged with taking care of, for the whole time you're in control. Everyone who had heard of Until Dawn knew how to do this. But the second? You had to ensure that your party had a means of escape when it was all over: -Retrieve the distributor cap without losing or breaking it, so you can leave the way you came in. -Successfully send Conrad to cut and run for the help of the Coastguard, in which I also *LOVE* the concept of guaranteeing an early escape from the story for everyone's benefit or hindrance. -Power up the radio and call on the military to save you. Y'know, unless you've gathered enough clues and put two and two together to realize the government wouldn't let you share their terrible secrets. Little Hope tries something similar with Vince's forgiveness, but it only revolves around two dialogue choices you get at the church door. Too flimsy. Unless the second objective was the hinted "character building exercise". Something many didn't seem to get despite characters suffering injuries for bad responses. House Of Ashes? You get the choice of Salim's freedom at the very end of the game, but the choice for requesting air support comes in before you even get to meet the guy! Maybe if the air support helos were waiting on the surface if Merwin fixes the radio, skipping the entire endgame? Maybe a character or two can take more serious injuries and can't hold out for a 5 hour wait for MedEvac? The Devil In Me doesn't even have a second objective related to your party's survival, as far as I can tell. Judging from the bearings, maybe it's possible for the boat keys to not be found, or the lighthouse to not be turned on? Perhaps the entire crew gets arrested if Mark doesn't take enough photos, or Charlie's "evidence" of being complicit isn't proven fake? Maybe it's more of a struggle to find and keep tools/weapons that can be used to fight off Du'Met during the boat scene, ensuring each party member can escape the boat without getting cleaved by an axe? I dunno, I just really like the idea that you need to focus on not just keeping them safe now, but also guaranteeing the future. Man Of Medan made a great concept of that, and I wanna see more of it with Season 2.
I do agree with you with the twist not being the best I personally think they should have had the boat be haunted and the monsters were just possessed people who slept because no one was there I liked this game but I think they should have had more endings like what happens to the boat if Julia dies from the bends and she’s on her own little hope was the worst for me
I think this game would have benefitted if it took place from the original army's perspective. We had their points of view at the beginning. The knowing that you have no idea what is happening. Everyone is facing each other and for some unknown reason. They could've had build up in which you see the way the crew acts together before it all falls apart with then the ghostly appearances taking form. It would've been even more amazing if they incorporated mythologies and folk tales about the ocean into at least the hallucinations or actually had something be an enemy. Also the ending that you get with Conrad returning to the ship and dying there because everyone escaped is so unfair and heartbreaking. You have a guarantied survivor that turns into a guarantee four man if the group does escape. It feels like then your actions are all for nothing.
It's too bad that they didn't play up the mystery of where the Manchurian Gold came from, beyond the references to Unit 731 - leaning more into the 'unsolved mystery' part of the story would have made the revelation in HOA that the Manchurian Gold chemical weapon was based on vampire parasite saliva an amazing payoff!
I think the main thing man of medan has going for it is its branching, it has the most branching in the series and actually makes it feel like a choose your own adventure game unlike little hope and house of ashes where it just feels like youre playing a premeditated story
While that's cool, everything still results in hallucinations though. While Little Hope is also lame, it at least was depressing. And House of Ashe has a proper corporeal threat again.
@@Obbie40 The proper threats arent scary when you realize they'll leave nick, jason, and salim with small scratches that dont do anything and they'll kill eric and rachel in a heartbeat, makes the game feel unfair
@@dylanreed2581 Eh, Until Dawn had the main characters unkillable until a certain point and the threat leaves Mika and Sam unable to die until the last scene in the game also. I don't think Man of Medan is really that different either outside of Conrad.
I don't know about it being the worst, I quite disliked little hope, but thought they both had similar issues with their "twists", but I certainly think if the company hadn't previously made Until Dawn they probably wouldn't have convinced people to invest in the series and had the chance to get to House of Ashes. If I was totally unaware of a direct connection between this game and Until Dawn I would avoid any other games they put out, especially if I gave their second game a chance and it turned out to be Little Hope.
I still believe Little Hope is worse. Yes it's gameplay is a big improvement but story wise and characters are worse then Man of Medan. At least it had many endings compared to Little Hope which really only has two endings.
While i dont think its worse than Little Hope, I'll agree that compared to HOA and UD it falls short. However this game has one of my favorite moments in it. Its where Brad is wandering the halls alone and he keeps walking in circles seeing the same hallway and corpse only it changes slightly each time. It felt like a bad acid trip but without the drugs lol
Definitely not a great start for sure. I mean, being a spiritual successor to Until Dawn was never gonna be an easy task, but when I first saw this, I was frankly shocked at how underwhelming it was. Subsequent entries were definitely better (though still nowhere as good as Until Dawn, in my opinion), but man, this one was just disappointing as all hell.
totally agree with you tbh! and honestly i do think in a big way it's because the setting felt so same-y for each character. so even when characters were split up in game, they were all still on or around the ship so everything just felt really tedious... i honestly think this game could've benefited from the time travel thing that they had in little hope, flashing back to the original case, because it would at least have kept the pace of the story a little more interesting imo...
It’s needed to do a shinning/ghost ship movie with this game. Where the gas make you think your back in 18??whatever with soldiers or your at a fancy ball party in the ship but a murder is in the loose and it’s fade in the two worlds from dark and fancy. Mix that with the pirates, shark and modern military mixing it up. Also depth like one of the characters know there bury treasure and is extremely selfish and greedy but still cares about there friends, hot girl broke up with his bf and want to have fun and forget cuz later he vanish and people in town think she killed him after a bad public breakup with windows being broken. The smart nerdy guy doing his research to become a doctor and studying the ship that had rumors of a special vail to help his sick father tho again is scared of everything, our main girl love adventure and found out her dad disappeared in the war and want to find his journal for mom and herself for closure also the family Heirloom, make a love triangle with the funny guy but can become badass at the end also love adventure love mystery and movies. Just felt it could’ve been easy add ghost, a lunatic killer on the loose, cursed ship, use the hallucinations situation like seeing your playable character die and later you see them later or died. Now you think is that person alive and time shift to confuse you and do that for most characters. The twist being the lunatic killer possesses one of your died friends but think it’s still alive and it’s chasing you in the boat also the ghost/curse ship is always vanishing so when you FINALLY escape and free you find out you went back in time of the war and that why you see similar people you recognized cuz it’s in a loop of being trap in the war or something. In my head it make sense but adding every detail would be pages and I sim it down. Tho reading it back it doesn’t make sense but if I add the detail it will 😂
Every character does go crazy there are a few vail that heal you from the curse but very limited so you can choose to use it on that character or keep like the nerd guy for his dad. If you do go full crazy it just harder to stay alive as the curse ship throw wild things like your fear and make you hate your friends
The time loop making sense is the mom saying to our main character in the beginning like you remind me of my friend when your dad was at the war. She was just as crazy and fun till she just hated the water and boats and said it’s her biggest fear. Than she vanished. I think she went to LA like a one liner making pancakes talking about her dad and the war etc mid the one liner
I honestly watched it with so much excitement when it came out but then I got spoiled. It was about the monsters not actually being there. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t watch it. I did see a story explained but it was such a disappointment
Okay it's been years since I saw a playthrough of this game and I barely remember anything so I'm just basing my opinion mostly on this video, but I think the hallucination twist isn't bad actually. I saw that some people wish the ship was haunted or something like that but to me that would've been more boring. It's probably an unpopular opinion but I think haunted places are overdone and this is obviously not always the case but most of the time they're not interesting or scary to me, which is why I find the hallucinations scarier. Not knowing what's real and slowly losing your mind is scarier than fighting against real monsters with a clear head, at least that's what I think. Since most people realized the twist pretty early, I think it would've worked the best to actually have the player but not the characters know about it, but combine reality with hallucinations and make it so that you never know when you're actually in danger and when you're just seeing things. It would've been cool if we kept seeing danger everywhere because of our increasing paranoia and the hallucinations, and while we know that most of it isn't real, we also know that there _is_ a real monster/threat _somewhere_ on the ship. But I mean then again, I barely remember anything about this game so I don't know how well this concept actually would've worked with the setting and plot.
IMO devil in me was the worst game, man of medan beat it by a longshot, i say this because man of medan has a much better butterfly event and many endings instead of, death, live, mark agrees to offer, mark disagrees to offer
Personally, this game is my favorite from the anthology just because of the insane amount of variation and it’s stellar Co-op function. Playing this game with a friend elevates so much as I feel it was the only one that utilized that function to its maximum. LH and HoA Co-op were still fun but felt a bit more tacked on. TDIM co-op was… not very good.
The one thing that I liked the most about this game? It gave you two objectives.
The first was the immediate survival of the 5 people you've been charged with taking care of, for the whole time you're in control. Everyone who had heard of Until Dawn knew how to do this.
But the second? You had to ensure that your party had a means of escape when it was all over:
-Retrieve the distributor cap without losing or breaking it, so you can leave the way you came in.
-Successfully send Conrad to cut and run for the help of the Coastguard, in which I also *LOVE* the concept of guaranteeing an early escape from the story for everyone's benefit or hindrance.
-Power up the radio and call on the military to save you. Y'know, unless you've gathered enough clues and put two and two together to realize the government wouldn't let you share their terrible secrets.
Little Hope tries something similar with Vince's forgiveness, but it only revolves around two dialogue choices you get at the church door. Too flimsy.
Unless the second objective was the hinted "character building exercise". Something many didn't seem to get despite characters suffering injuries for bad responses.
House Of Ashes? You get the choice of Salim's freedom at the very end of the game, but the choice for requesting air support comes in before you even get to meet the guy!
Maybe if the air support helos were waiting on the surface if Merwin fixes the radio, skipping the entire endgame? Maybe a character or two can take more serious injuries and can't hold out for a 5 hour wait for MedEvac?
The Devil In Me doesn't even have a second objective related to your party's survival, as far as I can tell.
Judging from the bearings, maybe it's possible for the boat keys to not be found, or the lighthouse to not be turned on? Perhaps the entire crew gets arrested if Mark doesn't take enough photos, or Charlie's "evidence" of being complicit isn't proven fake?
Maybe it's more of a struggle to find and keep tools/weapons that can be used to fight off Du'Met during the boat scene, ensuring each party member can escape the boat without getting cleaved by an axe?
I dunno, I just really like the idea that you need to focus on not just keeping them safe now, but also guaranteeing the future. Man Of Medan made a great concept of that, and I wanna see more of it with Season 2.
I do agree with you with the twist not being the best I personally think they should have had the boat be haunted and the monsters were just possessed people who slept because no one was there I liked this game but I think they should have had more endings like what happens to the boat if Julia dies from the bends and she’s on her own little hope was the worst for me
Not even Shawn Ashmore could make me buy this game...was very lucky I saw the Streaming first before I could buy this.
I played this and now just realized the gas was causing the visions. I thought it was just a spooky ship lol
I think this game would have benefitted if it took place from the original army's perspective. We had their points of view at the beginning. The knowing that you have no idea what is happening. Everyone is facing each other and for some unknown reason. They could've had build up in which you see the way the crew acts together before it all falls apart with then the ghostly appearances taking form. It would've been even more amazing if they incorporated mythologies and folk tales about the ocean into at least the hallucinations or actually had something be an enemy.
Also the ending that you get with Conrad returning to the ship and dying there because everyone escaped is so unfair and heartbreaking. You have a guarantied survivor that turns into a guarantee four man if the group does escape. It feels like then your actions are all for nothing.
It's too bad that they didn't play up the mystery of where the Manchurian Gold came from, beyond the references to Unit 731 - leaning more into the 'unsolved mystery' part of the story would have made the revelation in HOA that the Manchurian Gold chemical weapon was based on vampire parasite saliva an amazing payoff!
I think the main thing man of medan has going for it is its branching, it has the most branching in the series and actually makes it feel like a choose your own adventure game unlike little hope and house of ashes where it just feels like youre playing a premeditated story
While that's cool, everything still results in hallucinations though. While Little Hope is also lame, it at least was depressing.
And House of Ashe has a proper corporeal threat again.
@@Obbie40 The proper threats arent scary when you realize they'll leave nick, jason, and salim with small scratches that dont do anything and they'll kill eric and rachel in a heartbeat, makes the game feel unfair
@@dylanreed2581 Eh, Until Dawn had the main characters unkillable until a certain point and the threat leaves Mika and Sam unable to die until the last scene in the game also. I don't think Man of Medan is really that different either outside of Conrad.
I don't know about it being the worst, I quite disliked little hope, but thought they both had similar issues with their "twists", but I certainly think if the company hadn't previously made Until Dawn they probably wouldn't have convinced people to invest in the series and had the chance to get to House of Ashes. If I was totally unaware of a direct connection between this game and Until Dawn I would avoid any other games they put out, especially if I gave their second game a chance and it turned out to be Little Hope.
I think I just expected more out of a game about such a famous ghost ship story
I still believe Little Hope is worse. Yes it's gameplay is a big improvement but story wise and characters are worse then Man of Medan. At least it had many endings compared to Little Hope which really only has two endings.
This whole essay series is criminally underrated. Where are all the massive pictures fans?
While i dont think its worse than Little Hope, I'll agree that compared to HOA and UD it falls short.
However this game has one of my favorite moments in it.
Its where Brad is wandering the halls alone and he keeps walking in circles seeing the same hallway and corpse only it changes slightly each time.
It felt like a bad acid trip but without the drugs lol
You played as brad then? When I played I was controlling fliss during the looping hallway
@@deadmanprops704 I did play as Brad, his segment of being alone on the ship is probably my favorite part of the game
Definitely not a great start for sure. I mean, being a spiritual successor to Until Dawn was never gonna be an easy task, but when I first saw this, I was frankly shocked at how underwhelming it was. Subsequent entries were definitely better (though still nowhere as good as Until Dawn, in my opinion), but man, this one was just disappointing as all hell.
totally agree with you tbh! and honestly i do think in a big way it's because the setting felt so same-y for each character. so even when characters were split up in game, they were all still on or around the ship so everything just felt really tedious... i honestly think this game could've benefited from the time travel thing that they had in little hope, flashing back to the original case, because it would at least have kept the pace of the story a little more interesting imo...
It’s needed to do a shinning/ghost ship movie with this game. Where the gas make you think your back in 18??whatever with soldiers or your at a fancy ball party in the ship but a murder is in the loose and it’s fade in the two worlds from dark and fancy. Mix that with the pirates, shark and modern military mixing it up.
Also depth like one of the characters know there bury treasure and is extremely selfish and greedy but still cares about there friends, hot girl broke up with his bf and want to have fun and forget cuz later he vanish and people in town think she killed him after a bad public breakup with windows being broken. The smart nerdy guy doing his research to become a doctor and studying the ship that had rumors of a special vail to help his sick father tho again is scared of everything, our main girl love adventure and found out her dad disappeared in the war and want to find his journal for mom and herself for closure also the family Heirloom, make a love triangle with the funny guy but can become badass at the end also love adventure love mystery and movies.
Just felt it could’ve been easy add ghost, a lunatic killer on the loose, cursed ship, use the hallucinations situation like seeing your playable character die and later you see them later or died. Now you think is that person alive and time shift to confuse you and do that for most characters. The twist being the lunatic killer possesses one of your died friends but think it’s still alive and it’s chasing you in the boat also the ghost/curse ship is always vanishing so when you FINALLY escape and free you find out you went back in time of the war and that why you see similar people you recognized cuz it’s in a loop of being trap in the war or something.
In my head it make sense but adding every detail would be pages and I sim it down. Tho reading it back it doesn’t make sense but if I add the detail it will 😂
Every character does go crazy there are a few vail that heal you from the curse but very limited so you can choose to use it on that character or keep like the nerd guy for his dad. If you do go full crazy it just harder to stay alive as the curse ship throw wild things like your fear and make you hate your friends
The time loop making sense is the mom saying to our main character in the beginning like you remind me of my friend when your dad was at the war. She was just as crazy and fun till she just hated the water and boats and said it’s her biggest fear. Than she vanished. I think she went to LA like a one liner making pancakes talking about her dad and the war etc mid the one liner
I honestly watched it with so much excitement when it came out but then I got spoiled. It was about the monsters not actually being there. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t watch it. I did see a story explained but it was such a disappointment
Okay it's been years since I saw a playthrough of this game and I barely remember anything so I'm just basing my opinion mostly on this video, but I think the hallucination twist isn't bad actually. I saw that some people wish the ship was haunted or something like that but to me that would've been more boring. It's probably an unpopular opinion but I think haunted places are overdone and this is obviously not always the case but most of the time they're not interesting or scary to me, which is why I find the hallucinations scarier. Not knowing what's real and slowly losing your mind is scarier than fighting against real monsters with a clear head, at least that's what I think. Since most people realized the twist pretty early, I think it would've worked the best to actually have the player but not the characters know about it, but combine reality with hallucinations and make it so that you never know when you're actually in danger and when you're just seeing things. It would've been cool if we kept seeing danger everywhere because of our increasing paranoia and the hallucinations, and while we know that most of it isn't real, we also know that there _is_ a real monster/threat _somewhere_ on the ship. But I mean then again, I barely remember anything about this game so I don't know how well this concept actually would've worked with the setting and plot.
IMO devil in me was the worst game, man of medan beat it by a longshot, i say this because man of medan has a much better butterfly event and many endings instead of, death, live, mark agrees to offer, mark disagrees to offer
Personally, this game is my favorite from the anthology just because of the insane amount of variation and it’s stellar Co-op function. Playing this game with a friend elevates so much as I feel it was the only one that utilized that function to its maximum.
LH and HoA Co-op were still fun but felt a bit more tacked on.
TDIM co-op was… not very good.
I agree with you.
i actually like this one second after house of ashes. The other two are a bit meh to me
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