The title of this piece hurt to write. One of the greatest weekends of my life was when my best friend from college came to my parent’s house for the weekend to hang out. We swung by a local game shop and picked up the new release we were excited for: Until Dawn. After grabbing some Hot And Ready pizzas from Little Ceasers, and a couple of twelve packs, we went back to my place and settled in for an exciting weekend. We must have played Until Dawn three or four times; letting characters die in one run, live the next, etc.

A few years later, Supermassive Games would develop Hidden Agenda, which doesn’t get the love it deserves. Hidden Agenda, and Larry Fessenden, solidified my love for Supermassive Games. I ate up every Dark Pictures Anthology game that would come out in the following years, and The Quarry was my favorite game of 2022. In my eyes, I could never NOT enjoy a Supermassive game. (Also I was an avid Dead by Daylight player years ago, with around 300 hours logged.) When I learned that Graham Reznick (Until Dawn, The Quarry) wrote a game that Supermassive Games developed that happened to take place within the Dead by Daylight universe, I was excited. After eight hours (we’ll touch on that) I can only ask, what went wrong?

The Casting of Frank Stone takes us on an adventure through three different decades, following two groups of people. In the 80s we follow Chris Gordon (Rebecca LaChance), Linda Castle (Lucy Griffiths), Jaime Rivera (Andrew Wheildon-Dennis), Robert Green (Idris Debrand), and Bonnie Rivera (Díana Bermudez) as they attempt to film a horror movie in an abandoned steel mill. Robert’s father, Sam Green (Tobi Bakare), regularly patrols this Cedar Steel Mill due to an incident with a baby in the furnace room who was set to be killed at the hands of Frank Stone (Miles Ley). The second group we follow, set in the present, is comprised of Madi Rivera-Platt (Díana Bermudez), Linda Castle, and Bruno “Stan” Stanford III (Andrew Krueger). These three are brought to a mansion owned by Augustine Lieber (Hannah Morrish) for reasons that will become apparent all too soon. How do these two stories all come together?

You’ll have to play to find out.

If you are familiar with Supermassive games, then you’re familiar with their gameplay style. Multiple dialogue options affect relationships, which can dictate how later situations are handled; one missed quick-time event can take a character out of the story for good; collectibles scatter the map revealing deeper elements to the story; you get the drift.

The Casting of Frank Stone has every element of a Supermassive game, but it fails to hit the mark. Storywise, Frank Stone barely scratches the surface of anything resembling intriguing. Graham Reznick has proven his storytelling abilities over the years, from his video game writing, to Chilling Visions: 5 States of Fear, to his compelling show Deadwax. The story of Frank Stone feels empty for the overwhelming majority of the game and then does a complete U-turn and bombards with too much information. Reznick’s script focuses heavily on building the unique ambiance of a world that exists within the Dead by Daylight world before realizing it should try and tell an intriguing story of its own. That being said, the final moment of the game, before the post-credit scene, gave me chills. Without revealing too much, the game’s final scene makes all of the frustration and hassle worth the playtime.

Let’s discuss the playtime. A simple Google search will show an approximate playtime of six hours, which is longer than most of the games in the Dark Pictures Anthology. So why did it take eight hours for me to play this game? The answer unfortunately lies in the overwhelming amount of game-crashing, soft-locking, rage-inducing bugs. Nine different times I would have a character walk into me, or I would try and pass another character, and I would *somehow* clip into the other character, rendering movement impossible. My PlayStation 5 froze multiple times during various scenes, which forced many unsafe PlayStation shutdowns.

The worst time this happened was during the final chapter. You’re faced with the decision to either shoot one character or Frank Stone. When I made my decision, my game froze. Once the game was loaded back up, I was thrust into the game moments after my decision. That’s when I realized the game was moving at, what seemed like, .0001 times speed. At first, I thought this was a creative decision. After two minutes passed I realized it was not. I was stuck in a single scene of the game as it moved in mega-slow motion for over half an hour. This is just simply unacceptable. Once the scene was over, it went back to regular speed, but I had enough at that point. While I played through to the end, it was at great personal protest.

Why is every game nowadays released unfinished or full of bugs? If you expect people to pay 40 to 80 dollars for a triple-A gaming experience, it should be a triple-A gaming experience. Extensive game testing should have brought some of the bugs I experienced to light. Gamers would happily wait an extra week or two (hell, or three) if it meant we were getting a top-of-the-line experience. A bug or two is fine. Multiple experience-halting bugs that hurt the gameplay is sad. Over the past few years, we’ve learned how under-the-gun developers are. Some are forced to work insanely ridiculous hours to produce content at levels we’ve never seen before. (I’m referring to devs as a whole and not Supermassive.) One thing I appreciate about Supermassive is how I’ve never had an issue like this with any of their games before, and that’s why it hurts so much to write this.

If there’s anything I have learned from playing modern triple-A games is to expect the worst. It’s what we’ve become conditioned to expect.

As stated earlier, I have quite a few hours in Dead by Daylight and still watch tons of Dead by Daylight content. Even with the amount of information I know about the Dead by Daylight universe, I still felt left out. Whenever I read a note or saw what I knew was supposed to be an easter egg, I just knew there was a Dead by Daylight reference going over my head. It’s clear the references weren’t meant for people like me, but I still couldn’t help but feel left out. That’s not a negative critique of the game, per se, only how I felt.

Acting-wise, it’s clear who is a voice actor and who is a screen actor. People like Rebecca LaChance, Díana Bermudez, and Andrew Wheildon-Dennis have extensive voice acting credits and it shows. They are clearly the [acting] highlights of The Casting of Frank Stone. Everyone else feels like they’re reading from a script they were handed an hour before they went into the booth. Until Dawn was a diamond amongst dung, it’s one of the few times screen actors expertly transitioned to voice actors for their performance. The decision to not have a cast full of experienced voice actors ultimately hurt the game’s number one vehicle for storytelling.

The Casting of Frank Stone ended up being an unfortunate experience for someone who is a diehard Supermassive Games fan. It’s far from the worst game of the year, but there’s no way it could crack my top 10 this year. I think I would enjoy more Supermassive/Behaviour Interactive games within the Dead by Daylight universe as there are so many fun angles they can take. And with the number of licensed characters Behaviour has, who knows which horror icons we could get in the style of a Supermassive game! I hope that Frank Stone is just a stumble into what could be a great new direction for Dead by Daylight and Supermassive. That said, I’m still looking forward to purchasing The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020 day one.

Remnant II came out of the gate strong in August of this year by selling one million copies in their first week—a feat accomplished by only a few games. As a huge fan of the first Remnant, I was beyond excited to sink my teeth into Remnant II. I was not disappointed. Harder bosses, greater attention to detail, and a near-endless amount of weapon and gear combinations make each new campaign/adventure mode reroll feel fun, unique, and engaging. With the immediate, and somewhat continued, hype behind Remnant II, it was clear Gunfire Games would have to take it up a notch with their first DLC. 

(Image courtesy of Gearbox Publishing)

Remnant II is Back With An All New DLC

Remnant II: The Awakened King adds a few new pieces to N’Erud and Yaesha, but the real bread and butter lies within the stone-laden hellscape that is Losomn. Each world has a charm of its own, and I’ve rerolled N’Erud and Yaesha maybe around six or seven times respectively. Losomn, on the other hand, has been my comfort world. Something about the derelict passages full of Grenadier and Oil Drans illuminated by lanterns and bonfires just fills me with pumpkin spice vibes, and I’m here for it. Hearing that Losomn would get the DLC treatment was an even bigger Fall treat than I had hoped. 

The big question is did their one-shot idea work? Remnant II’s procedural generation shuffles any playthrough between one of three worlds. From the world you get when starting/rerolling you are given a random starting location. Having The Awakened King start as a one-shot adventure was possibly the best route they could have taken. There are still a few different endings you can get, which is nice, however, I appreciate being told a linear canonical story to the lore already built from the base game. That being said, you will not find every new DLC item on your first playthrough, so rerolling The Awakened King is a must.

After putting roughly 20 hours into The Awakened King, I got a good deal of DLC-related items. One of my biggest personal gripes initially, and I hoped it might be addressed, was ring and amulet management. There are over 100 rings and no way to sort them. I don’t even have all the rings, by my count, I have 75, and it’s beyond intimidating to take the time and read every single one. Point aside, in The Awakened King, there are few rings and amulets for you to find, and nearly every one I found felt new and unique enough to try out at least once. At least one hour of my 20 hours on The Awakened King consisted of running around and getting large groups of enemies on me before equipping the Death-Soaked Idol, activating the Ritualist’s skill Miasma, and unloading a full clip of the XMG57 Bonesaw with Hot Shot. It was a bloody entertaining time. 

(Image courtesy of Gearbox Publishing)

Does Remnant II’s New DLC Continue the Trend of Difficult Gameplay?

Remnant is known for some intense, and usually quite difficult puzzles. As someone who isn’t the most forward thinker when it comes to puzzles, and playing solo, I was quite nervous to encounter my first [of many] puzzles. The puzzles within The Awakened King feel somewhat slapdash and a bit thoughtless. Difficulty-wise, they range from immediate answer to wracking your brain only to realize the dumbest option might have been the best option all along (I’m looking at you, Ethereal Manor). Again, as someone who isn’t great with puzzles, this worked for me, but some of the puzzles might let down someone who’s looking for a real challenge. 

We’ve covered a few topics here, and it’s time to talk about what really draws everyone to the Remnant franchise: the bosses. First, there’s the Sunken Witch, a tall, dark, foreboding enemy thrashing a four-pronged ship’s anchor in a tight corridor. For this boss battle, it seems more daunting than it is. The Sunken Witch’s move set is fairly easy to time and at most will take experienced players one death to complete. Both Befoulded Altars find themselves to be a decent challenge due to the layout of the enemy’s lair and the barrage of Dran Fiends and their giant fart balls. I ran these two altars with Handler as one of my archetypes, and the majority of the time the Dran Fiends focused their attention on the dog, so they were easy enough. Bruin, Blade of the King, was the most enjoyable boss and the one that tested me the most. Prepare to dodge a lot, because for someone named Blade of the King, it sure uses a lot of projectiles! And, finally, The One True King. The final boss of The Awakened King. Honestly? The One True King was the easiest final boss of the entirety of Remnant II. However, the fight was incredibly fun, and I almost threw it at the end of my first run just to do the fight again, it’s just…not that hard. 

It’s the journey that matters! Souls-like games have always been tricky for me, as I’ve always struggled with them. Remnant II is a game I beat running solo, even though it was very difficult. When coming across a boss like The One True King it’s not the difficulty that matters. What really matters to me is: Does the fight feel fun? And does the fight feel like it fit within the story? Even if some of the bosses in this DLC were easier than previous Remnant fights, I was so engaged by the story that I didn’t mind it. 

Remnant II: The Awakened King was not only an incredibly fun 20 hours, it got me back into Remnant II. Occasionally, over the past month, I’d hop on for an hour or so and jump into someone else’s world. Now, I’m fully back in rerolling each world and mowing down enemies. The direction Gunfire has taken the story is absolutely fantastic, and I cannot wait to see what they plan to do for the second Remnant II DLC. 

Remnant II: The Awakened King is available now for purchase. Check it out!