PlayStation 3-exclusive Until Dawn exposes its horror parody roots
"If you go down in the woods today."
Sony has demoed its recently-unveiled PlayStation 3-exclusive Until Dawn, offering a glimpse underneath the covers of its teen slasher parody.
The game, due sometime in 2013, will maroon players in the dark, fog-ridden forests of Mount Washington, and the ski lodge owned by one of the teens' rich parents.
Eurogamer witnessed a playthrough of one of the game's early chapters, entitled "If you go down in the woods today".
Until Dawn takes place entirely from a first-person perspective, with gameplay shifting between members of the group. Each of the troupe acts the same (alternately scared, horny and American), and controls the same, too - developer Supermassive Games has chosen to keep player interaction limited.
The PlayStation Move controls require players only use the top Move button and trigger. You can hold the button to make interactive objects glow, and pick up and rotate items with a twist of your hand. Regular controller support is not planned, Supermassive confirmed.
You'll be using the controls for such things as dusting snow off sign-posts, rattling a torch to get its batteries working and, at one point, starting to undress a character's girlfriend.
While it's not on-rails, the action and story sequences are largely linear, with puzzle-solving sections interspersed by long trudges through the outdoors.
It's here that the shlocky dialogue is at its worst, where players are entertained by the never-ending rambling of the on-screen characters. A "Hollywood writer" penned the script, although Supermassive aren't ready to reveal their identity. Whoever it is, they deserve applause for such (deliberately?) awful lines as "It's so cold right now my tongue will get stuck to your flagpole".
The story is as predictable as expected - the chapter in question sees an amorous couple exiled ("sexiled") from the rest of the party. After a scare-filled journey to a private cabin the pair are ambushed, their amorous liason cut off as the player's girlfriend is dragged out by an unseen prescence.
Whether the characters survive is up to your own actions throughout the game, as a plot-line littered with horror traits (an ancient Native American curse, for example) plays out.