Who said movie tie-in games were dead, eh? Sure, they tend to not come out at the same time as the movies anymore, and their longstanding legacy as mere “shovelware” may undermine whatever qualities they have, but the keyword here is “vigor”. Intent is never detached from passion, and inspiration forms in so many different ways, which is what A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead aims to prove.
This is the latest title from Italian developers Stormind Games; a new story set within the Quiet Place universe, and fresh off the heels of the warm reception of the most recent film, A Quiet Place: Day One. This isn’t Stormind’s first foray into the horror genre either, as they were responsible for the rather underseen Remothered games that came out in 2018, and 2020, respectively. If anything else, The Road Ahead is looking promising.
You play as Alex, a young lass who is hiding from the nearly-invulnerable “Death Angels”, along with her father Kenneth, her partner Martin, and Martin’s mother Laura. Taking place 4 months after the aliens crashed down on Earth and ravaged the planet, Alex finds out she’s pregnant with Martin’s child, the aftermath of which causes a fissure between the 4, driven deeper when Martin sacrifices himself to save her from a Death Angel attack.
It seems like a pretty heavy plot, right? There’s a lot of human tension on display, not unlike the themes present in the films. With that said, I have to get into the story – not just because of its similarity to the plot of the first film – but because of its rather asinine explanations for conflict. There seems to be dropping off points for logic as characters hedge all their bets on Alex being the supreme negative force in their post-apocalyptic shambles of a life.
There are a lot of pieces put in place before and during the game’s chain of events that are explained so briefly, and without a tertiary mention until it’s brought to court. Halfway through the game, Laura goes into a tirade about Alex being a disaster case that’s never really set up, or proven true as time goes on. Hell, the game seems to promise human raiders at several points which never comes to fruition either.
As for the gameplay, it’s a throwback type of horror situation: A first-person game of hide and seek with the Death Angels, similar to your Outlast’s or Observer’s in that there’s no way to really fight back against your foe. You are practically a walking conduit of noise at all times, which The Road Ahead executes with an immense variety. Flares, wind-up flashlights, puddles of water, autumn leaves, tin cans, barrels, doors that have not been lubricated once since they were put into place, latches, and so on and so forth.
It’s certainly worth commending the number of ways The Road Ahead wants you to think about soundplay, even if it is to the point of completely arbitrary nonsense. The level design suffers as you can see the clear path of intent with each new area, where Death Angels can focus on sound traps, although as time goes on, that becomes an issue for the Death Angels too. When they’re forced into a playground to be a constant threat, there’s a good chance that their monstrous hit boxes will create sound by themselves, spooking them constantly.
The crowning jewel is the microphone gimmick, inspired by the Alien: Isolation mechanic, and working exactly the same. If you have a microphone plugged into your controller or PC, then any noise made will be picked up by the game, and will be a direct source of noise for the Death Angel to grab. In execution, it plays out exactly how you’d expect – that is to say, a reminder of how little The Road Ahead trusts you with it.
In Alien: Isolation, the Xenomorph wasn’t stupid, but they were still bound by the game's rules and structure. You had time to escape if you accidentally just belched into the microphone after necking the last bit of your rum and coke. In The Road Ahead, any large amount of noise is immediately met with a game over, and I’m not talking about the Death Angel merely spawning in – the game will wrestle control from you and force a death, regardless of where you stand.
This is another one of those double-edged sword situations, where unless the game explicitly states it, safety isn’t guaranteed; a noble cause that reminds players of the hopeless situation. At the same time, however, The Road Ahead doesn’t trust the player with a single inclination that isn’t explicitly set up by the game itself. Constant tutorials regarding mechanics, text logs everywhere which reinforce said tutorials, before AND after it’s been stated.
Throughout your average 5-hour long playthrough, you will be bombarded with these gameplay-interrupting tutorials – right until the very end of the game – a total of 51 times, which is frankly insane. Whenever you perform a contextual button press, camera control will be wrestled from you. Whenever you enter a new area, chances are you’ll be forced to look at the scary thing. There’s an objectivity presented as fact which I personally cannot stand, and I’m not scared, just annoyed.
There’s one other unique mechanic The Road Ahead possesses, and that’s inhalers. Early on, it’s revealed that Alex is an asthmatic, and regularly needs one-time-use inhalers so as not to trigger an asthma attack which can point Death Angels in her direction. If one does happen, then I think you have to pull off a brazen QTE, and I use the word “think” because, despite two playthroughs, I couldn’t get one to trigger once through natural gameplay.
It’s such an overwhelming experience to sit through, and I don’t use that word lightly. Constant demand to vary the gameplay up, none of it ultimately providing the same solution as simply crouch walking. It even breaks the universe’s own rules at a certain point, with no other explanation than to justify a truly pathetic emotional climax that it doesn’t earn, which I feel sums up the entire experience perfectly.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Review | Final Verdict
The Road Ahead feels like it demands to be a fearful experience, to be a heart-wrenching story to listen to, and rarely will it put the work in to prove that. It’s a slog to sit through even at 5 hours long, it’s a haunted house ride that provides a teleprompter when it wants you to be scared, and it refuses to let you see the game with your own eyes.
Not unless there’s a tutorial on how to open them, at least.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead was reviewed on Xbox Series S with a copy provided by the developer over the course of 11 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.
Review Summary
Pros
- Mechanically varied
- Voice performances are solid throughout
Cons
- Soundplay is muddled, busy, and glitchy
- Level design is rudimentary and constrictive
- Monster AI is incredibly stupid
- Soppy narrative fails to provide emotional weight
- Alienating lack of player control