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A Veteran Studio

I really love Supermassive Games’ library. They have made games such as The Dark Pictures Anthology (which I have reviewed all four of them), The Quarry and Until Dawn. In my opinion they have mastered the storytelling in video games in a form of ‘cinematic horror narrative’-like format. The Casting of Frank Stone is their newest installment and it is intertwined with the world of Dead by Daylight. I know Dead by Daylight series, but I must admit I have never played it. It is a game where you must survive a ravenous murdered in online environment.

The Casting of Frank Stone is not an online game. It follows the same format as the previous cinematic games where you must survive no matter what and do choices that will calculate your faith in the end.

The Plot

Cedar Hills, a town that is haunted by a bloody past of Frank Stone; a serial killer who took many lives. Years later a group of young filmmakers goes back to the haunting murder place to shoot a movie. Little they knew they gonna find themselves in a live and death situation, where seems to be no escape from.

The overall plot was… well, it was a lot actually. There was not one but two main timelines how the story was told; the past and present. The past was when the teenagers in the 80’s made the Murder Mill movie and the present was when a mysterious person wants to buy the original films and had invited people to her mansion. The story is kinda difficult to explain as it contains supernatural elements and twisted timelines, and of course not to spoil anyone. It reminded me a little bit of a recent game Alan Wake 2‘s plot, but only a little.

Did I like the plot? Yes and no. The story was interesting but it had so much going on in so little time. There were parts I liked and parts I didn’t. Honeslty I don’t know what to say about it, but it wasn’t the worst of Supermassive Games’ plots, but it wasn’t the best; let’s say it was OK. If there is some connections to the Dead by Daylight franchise, well, I cannot comment on that because I’ve never played those games.

Gameplay, Controls, Audio and Visuals

The gameplay was very much alike to other Supermassive Games. You move your characters around, do little puzzles and most importantly do choices and QTEs. The choices and QTEs will determine your characters’ fate; who will survive and who will die. Of course as playing the first time this game you cannot know what will happen after you’ll choose something, that’s why these kind of games has to be played many times again to get all the outcomes. In the game you’ll control almost all the cahacters one at a time, so there isn’t a main character, even though there was a few characters I’d keep as the main ones. Also, I thought timing for options/choices were little bit too fast for me to read the text, so I did some hasten decision there.

There was something other in the gameplay I didn’t expect and that was a weapon to kill of the monsters. It was a camera that you must shoot/film at the enemy. It wasn’t anything fancy and there was only a handful of moments where it was utilised.

I did find some the previous Supermassive Games’ gameplay and controls to be kinda clunky and awkward. In The Casting of Frank Stone they have tweaked them to be better. Clunky it was still, but much better. Even though I think I killed off at least two characters because of this reason.

Audio was good. If we don’t count some of the voice acting. Some of the characters were overacting and literally annoying, so much so, that I even hoped them to die off so I don’t have to listen them any longer. Every other way the audio in the game was very movie-like and good.

OK, here’s the deal; the game had some major issues visually and technically. I played the game through partially before the latest update and after the update the game had fixed some of them issues. Still, some issues did remain. Most prevalent was slow texture loadings and every time when the camera angle changed in cutscenes there was some quick pop-ins and slow texture loads. There was also issues with animations in some cutscenes. So overall the game needs some fixes still. But if we forget all those, I think visually the game looked good and current.

The Final Cut

The Casting of Frank Stone was OK-ish experience. I played this through in about 5 hours. I’m a fan of Supermassive Games but this must be my least favourite game of them. But if you think as a standalone game it is good and playable and most importantly; re-playable. Some of the visuals, gameplay and controls would’ve needed more time in the oven, but if these kind of things doesn’t bother you I do recommend The Casting of Frank Stone to everyone who likes horror movies or any other horror/supernatural genre.

The Casting of Frank Stone is available on PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S and Windows

SCORE:

3/5

“The choices and QTEs will determine your characters’ fate; who will survive and who will die.”

RELEASE DATE: September 3, 2024
GENRE: Horror
DEVELOPER: Supermassive Games
PUBLISHER: Behaviour Interactive
PLATFORMS: PS5 (reviewed)
Xbox Series X|S
Windows

 

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