The Dark Pictures Anthology series of horror games by Supermassive Games now has three games under its belt and by all accounts, more are on the way. Now that there are a few games to work with, let’s dive into sorting through them all and coming up with a ranking of the best games in The Dark Pictures Anthology series.
3. Little Hope
Best Dark Pictures Anthology Games
Little Hope is the second game in The Dark Pictures Anthology, but it lands last on our list of the best games in the series. Not only did it not take any steps forward really from Man of Medan, but it actually regressed in most ways as well.
Little Hope follows a group of students and their teacher as they become stranded in an abandoned ghost town known as Little Hope. A mysterious fog prevents them from leaving and they are soon hunted by vicious monsters that stalk the town.
It’s not a bad game by any means, and there are some genuinely scary and tense moments. However, Little Hope relies heavily on jump scares to up the fright factor on scenes that were otherwise not very scary. It also has a very strange story, with three different plot points that appear very loosely connected and then are finally connected kind of out of nowhere in the end in a very unsatisfying way.
It might have the eeriest setting of all three games, but that’s about all it has over the other two.
2. Man of Medan
Best Dark Pictures Anthology Games
Man of Medan kicked off The Dark Pictures Anthology series and it did a serviceable job. It had a tough act to follow, though, as it was similar to Until Dawn, a popular horror game from Supermassive, but clearly didn’t have the same budget. Man of Medan is a lot shorter and not as polished as Until Dawn is.
That’s kind of the point of The Dark Pictures to be fair, though. They are budget titles designed to be shorter so Supermassive Games can crank them out faster.
Across the board Man of Medan is just a better game than Little Hope. It follows a group of young adults that are on a diving trip that goes horribly wrong and find themselves aboard a haunted ghost ship. It has an interesting plot that slowly unravels and gives you plenty of opportunities to feel smart and figure it out if you’re paying close attention to the clues scattered throughout the game.
The story comes to a satisfying conclusion and goes out with quite a few climactic moments for each of the surviving members of the cast. And finally, while it’s not free of jump scares, it relies on it far less than Little Hope, and instead is just actually creepy at its best moments.
1. House of Ashes
Best Dark Pictures Anthology Games
Ironically, although House of Ashes tops this list, it actually might be the least scary game that Supermassive has ever done. There are almost no jump scares, the setting (ancient Sumerian ruins) isn’t as conventionally scary as the other games they have worked on, and the plot is faster-paced and focused on action more than the other two games that have you plodding along most of the time.
However, House of Ashes is number one because it has, by far, the most cohesive plot and the most interesting cast of characters seen yet in The Dark Pictures Anthology.
House of Ashes follows a group of American and Iraqi soldiers during the 2003 Iraq War. A battle eventually breaks out between the two factions and shortly after the fighting begins, an earthquake sends the troops crashing down into an underground Sumerian ruin that is filled with an ancient terror.
You have two layers of interesting plot threads going on here in House of Ashes. The American soldiers have some serious drama even before being trapped in this ruin. There is infighting over bad intel that was supposed to lead to a weapons silo and a love triangle that threatens the group’s cohesion. On top of that, they struggle to figure out how they should approach the Iraq soldiers they are stranded with.
Earlier they were fighting them, and now they are forced to cooperate if they want to get out of the ruins alive. Because yeah, not only are they trapped, they are being hunted by a demon-like creature that seeks to rip them limb from limb. Like Man of Medan, if you’re thorough you can piece together what’s going on and get some interesting insight into the groups that have tangled with these beats before.
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