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Writer's pictureArielle Danan

House of the Rising Sun: Dark Pictures House of Ashes Review



Intro: When a game combines vampires, aliens and really pissed off war vets its bound to be an exciting and intriguing experience of a game. Dark Pictures Anthologies: House of Ashes delivers a strange and unique story in this third person, story driven game. From enemies to friends Americans and Iraqis must help one another fight in a different type of terrorist attack, one of the immortal variety.

A Boring Fun Game: Vampires are in sense get little to no love the way they should. Blood Rayne, Vampyr, Vampire the masquerade Bloodline and Castlevenia are the truly notable games that comes to my mind instantly when I think of vampire games. Now, if I were to list all the zombies’ games there are we’d be here forever. So, the fact that vampires are brought in, even in a story motif that glues concepts together, I think is wonderful for their exposure, so they get more light. But is it well done, that’s what we’ll find out today.

The story of House of Ashes creates a constant feeling of this strange back and forth between two stories. In one instance we see the Iraqis point of view, then the Americans point of view when they are all doing the same thing. Surviving. During the game, going through the same things, and quick time events as any other Dark Pictures game, this installment felt almost slower and more drawn out in a sense. Towards the end I was able to really feel the story more so and get a sense of how the characters interacted, but for the first half of the game it was incredibly boring and had minimal intrigue.


A new Twist on Vampires: Now here's the part where I was so excited, I was happy, I was filled with joy and slowly that joy turned into confusion, confusion turned in this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. Combining vampires and aliens in this game is a valiant effort and something that I feel if done right it could be incredible in the gaming sphere story wise. But the way aliens and vampires connected in this game made the whole experience strange and off putting. Some parts were really cool and made the game very enjoyable but the whole way in which vampires and aliens connected in this game felt haphazardly done and not fleshed out well in the slightest.


A New Dawn: bringing enemies together to exorcize a bigger threat is something that I feel is the main message of this game. We may not like certain people, but finding common ground is key for survival. The war on terror being used as a story plot point was interesting and at points done incredibly well, but combining that with vampires, and then aliens it just all felt messy and somewhat confusing. The ending during the credits was by far one of the more immersive parts (story wise) motives were shown as well as the consequences of your actions.

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