Directive 8020 from Supermassive Games brings us the latest entry in the beloved The Dark Pictures anthology series. Learn more in Directive 8020 review!
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Directive 8020 from Supermassive Games brings us the latest entry in the beloved The Dark Pictures anthology series. With Earth dying and all of humanity basically running out of time, a colony ship is sent to Tau Ceti f, located 12 light years away from our planet. The Cassiopeia could very well be the last hope of humankind! The crew is to orbit Tau Ceti f as they gather important information that will be required for the other spaceship that is six months behind them. That way, once the second ship arrives, they will be ready for landing. Due to a meteorite hitting the ship’s hull, you must spring into action and find a way to repair any damage before things get really, really bad. Plot twist: the Cassiopeia ends up crashing onto the planet!
This Rated M for Mature narrative-driven sci-fi horror experience will have you playing as five different characters who must work together to try to survive after a major threat reveals itself on the spaceship, sending the group onto Tau Ceti f, where you’ll need to find a way to survive as you evade or fight the alien that will attack you. This organism has the power to mimic its prey, making it extremely dangerous. All of the hard work of the crew and all of the trust they’ve gained over the years? Gone in an instant. It’s an adventure that you can take on your own, or by having others join either in local or online co-op.
This is the fifth game in The Dark Pictures Anthology series, which got its start with Man of Medan back in 2019. Each of the games has five different characters to play as, with one leading actor usually featured in the game’s cover art. Man of Medan features Shawn Ashmore, who you might know from Animorphs, Cadet Kelly, X-Men, The Following, and The Rookie. Little Hope has Will Poulter as its lead actor, who you know from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Maze Runner series, We’re the Millers, Midsommar, and Death of a Unicorn. Ashley Tisdale is the main actress in House of Ashes. She’s known for The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, the High School Musical movies, and Phineas and Ferb.
The fourth game, The Devil In Me, featured Jessie Buckley as the lead actress. You’ve seen her in Doolittle, The Lost Daughter, War and Peace, the Fargo TV series, as well as Hamnet. For Directive 8020, the main actress is Lashana Lynch. You’ve seen her as Maria Rambeau in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, James Bond film No Time to Die, as well as in Bob Marley: One Love and The Woman King.
Up until The Devil in Me, the games were published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. This stopped with the spin-off Switchback VR, which, as the name suggests, was released for PlayStation VR2 in 2023. Directive 8020 also technically marks the start of the second season for the anthology, even if Suppermassive Games decided to drop this moniker to let the game live and breathe as the standalone experience it is. You know, as is the case for all other previous games in The Dark Pictures Anthology.
From 2019 up to the aforementioned spin-off, games were released yearly, which means it’s been close to four years since the last main entry. Suppermassive Games did work on two other games during that period, with Behaviour Interactive publishing The Casting of Frank Stone in 2024, and Bandai Namco Entertainment releasing Little Nightmares III last year after the studio took over the series started by Tarsier Studios.
This release offers four difficulty settings: Forviging, Challenging, Lethal, and Custom. The Forgiving difficulty setting will allow you to focus on the game’s story, since real-time threats won’t be an issue. The Challenging difficulty setting offers the standard experience, tailored to push you into always being on high alert, but without things feeling unfair. The Lethal difficulty setting bumps things up considerably, lowering the chance of parrying attacks. As for the Custom difficulty setting, it will allow you to adjust the challenge for quick time events (QTE), QTE warnings, parry recharge, threat indicator, and the threat indicator color.
The game will also offer you two main modes: Explorer Mode and Survivor Mode. Explorer Mode will allow you to, well, freely explore the game’s branching story by giving you unlimited use of Turning Points. Turning Points are a gameplay mechanic by which you can rewind the action and basically fix your mistakes as you please. Say a character – spoiler alert! – has stopped functioning in the same manner that a character that is alive does. Well, you can use a Turning Point to fix this! As expected, Survivor Mode removes rewinding by using Turning Points, which means that your actions and choices will have consequences that you must deal with.
This adventure is played from a third-person perspective, so you’ll be taking control of your character by using the left analog stick, as you use the right analog stick to control the camera as needed. Interact with objects, points of interest, and other characters by pressing the X button. Pressing up on the D-Pad will show you where your next objective is, so that you can rush toward it. You can use your flashlight by pressing the R1 button to light up the way, so that you can get a better view of your surroundings. There’s also a scanner you can use with the Square button.
You can also use the Messenger system by pressing the Triangle button. This will allow you to receive messages from other crew members as well as communicate with them. You’ll have different options for the overall tone of your answers, so be sure to pick what best fits the current scenario… or not! These will also have an impact on your character traits and how they develop.
Run by pressing the L1 button, and crouch by using the Circle button. Crouching is VERY important in this game, since it will allow you to sneak around while making less noise, so that hopefully the creature can’t find you. You’ll still have the option of pressing the L1 button while crouching to move a little bit faster, but be sure to use this wisely! But what happens if you’re trapped and can’t sneak past or outrun your enemy? Then you’d better have a way to attack it so that you can escape before it’s too late!
Once the intro cutscene is over, you’ll be presented with your first choice. Due to the impact on the spaceship, you’ll have to decide if you must speak with the ship’s computer – known as the Oracle – or if you and your companion should handle things on your own. You’ll soon realize that, as mentioned before, your choices will have consequences, affecting how the story unravels and which branching paths you’ll be able to explore further. You’ll be using the left analog stick to choose from the available options.
The game will have several QTEs for you to react to. These will be sprinkled here and there to keep you on your toes, and will require that you press the Square, Triangle, Circle, and X buttons based on the instructions you receive. Fail to complete a QTE before the timer is up, and there could be some serious consequences!
Trophy-wise, this one features a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to add to your collection. The list is split into 19 Bronze trophies, 5 Silver trophies, and 6 Gold trophies for you to work on. What will you need to do for that shiny Platinum trophy? On top of the trophies that will pop for completing the 1st episode and completing all 8 episodes in the game, there are also trophies for completing the story on Survivor Mode. There are also trophies that are of the hidden variety, and given the game’s nature, I won’t be spoiling them here! If you’ve played other games in The Dark Pictures Anthology series, then you probably have a good idea about what you’ll need to do.
Directive 8020 brings us the latest entry in the beloved The Dark Pictures anthology series. With Earth dying and all of humanity basically running out of time, a colony ship is sent to Tau Ceti f, located 12 light years away from our planet. The Cassiopeia could very well be the last hope of humankind! The crew is to orbit Tau Ceti f as they gather important information that will be required for the other spaceship that is six months behind them. That way, once the second ship arrives, they will be ready for landing. Due to a meteorite hitting the ship’s hull, you must spring into action and find a way to repair any damage before things get really, really bad. Plot twist: the Cassiopeia ends up crashing onto the planet!
It’s a game that’s certainly paying homage to the beloved The Thing, the 1982 movie from John Carpenter starring Kurt Russell, in which a group of researchers in Antarctica runs into the titular Thing, an extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates, other organisms it finds, which means that no one in there is safe since they can’t know who they can trust.
The Turning Points gameplay mechanic allows you to review the events for each of the eight episodes that the game has to offer, so that you can see where each branching point takes place, and then decide if you should go with a different choice that can alter the game’s story and potentially lead future encounters toward a different outcome… whatever that may be. You can have unlimited access to Turning Points by choosing the Explorer Mode, or you can go with the Survivor Mode and then have Turning Points unlock once you complete the game.
You can customize your experience by choosing between the Quality and Performance options from the graphics menu. Quality will target 30 frames per second at an overall higher resolution. Performance will target 60 frames per second while lowering the resolution and graphical fidelity. You can also adjust motion blur, film, grain, and chromatic aberration, and enable or disable HDR if your display supports it.
On top of that, there are some accessibility options to consider, which can help gamers of all skill levels enjoy this game. You can enable having a single action button, removing QTE timeout, using a simplified font, enabling or disabling subtitles, as well as adjusting the size of subtitles, messenger text, and choice text. Directive 8020 launches tomorrow on PlayStation 5 with a $39.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Directive 8020 review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Supermassive Games.
