2018’s A Quiet Place film kicked off the ongoing horror franchise that is all about deadly alien monsters invading Earth and hunting down anything that makes too much noise, forcing humanity to be very quiet at all times or die. I’ve never seen the movies, so I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the new video game, The Road Ahead, set in the same horrific universe. Luckily, The Road Ahead is a standalone story and a solidly creepy, tense, but not too overwhelmingly scary horror game worth playing this Halloween season.
The Road Ahead features characters and events not seen in the films, so for fans of the franchise you get an entirely new take on the Quiet Place’s post-invasion Earth. For folks like me who haven’t seen the movies, the game doesn’t expect you to have seen past films or fully understand what’s going on in this world. The game explains just enough about what’s happening and provides enough context that I never felt lost.
In The Road Ahead you star as Alex, a young woman with asthma who, in the opening moments, loses her boyfriend to one of the alien monsters after discovering she’s pregnant with his child. This doesn’t help her relationship with her BF’s mom, who already blames her for the death of her husband and becomes disturbingly aggressive when she learns that Alex is carrying the last member of her family. So Alex and her older father escape their clutches, but in doing so get separated—that means an asthmatic, pregnant, and mourning Alex must make her way alone through the alien-infested world to reach some semblance of safety.
I really appreciate that The Road Ahead doesn’t rely solely on the alien monsters to add tension and intrigue to the game. Instead, they act more as an ever-present background threat—similar to how George A. Romero used zombies in his movies—as a small group of people fight for survival while trying to deal with a lot of trauma. But don’t be mistaken, the blind and nearly indestructible aliens are always around and ready to pounce on you if you get too loud or careless.
Similar to Alien Isolation, you aren’t really fighting the monsters in Road Ahead. Instead, 90% of the game is focused on avoiding them by being very quiet and careful. This is done by moving slowly, avoiding surfaces that make a lot of noise—like broken glass or water—using items as distractions and even pouring out sand to create safe paths to walk on, like in the movies. (I’ve seen the trailers!)
Most of my time was spent carefully tiptoeing around metal cans and piles of leaves. Even opening a door or turning a valve to solve a simple puzzle is nerve-wracking in a universe where one loud squeak or bang can get you killed. The game makes you slowly pull, push, and turn doors, vent openings, valves, dresser drawers, and more using your controller’s analog stick. Make a single mistake, like carelessly trying to run out of a warehouse or fling open a door to safety, and you’ll be attacked and killed in one hit.
Thankfully, when this happened to me, the game’s checkpoints were frequent enough that I never lost too much progress. Still, whenever I accidentally kicked a can, I froze in real life and hoped the creatures wouldn’t get me.
Alex’s asthma plays a big part in the game and takes the place of a traditional health bar. Because the monsters in A Quiet Place are incredibly lethal and kill you instantly for being too loud, the devs couldn’t use a traditional health meter like in Resident Evil or Silent Hill. Instead, you have to manage your stress and asthma. Running too much or carrying heavy objects for too long will start to strain your lungs, as will getting too close to the monsters, which causes Alex to stress out.
If Alex pushes herself too far, she can suffer an asthmatic attack, which could get you killed depending on where you are and when it happens. So you need to manage your asthma with inhalers and pills found around the world. I don’t suffer from asthma, so I’m not sure how accurate Road Ahead’s depiction is, but it adds an interesting and tense wrinkle to the game’s most harrowing moments.
The Road Ahead isn’t a very long game—most players will be able to finish it in about five to six hours, but that’s perfect. It tells a compelling story that keeps you moving forward and knows when to call it and not stick around too long and run the concept into the ground. Good scary games tend to work better as shorter experiences and the devs behind Road Ahead seem to get this.
While this new Quiet Place game isn’t the most innovative or scariest game I’ve played, it’s a very well-made and tense adventure that had me more terrified of metal cans and broken glass than any random zombie I’ve encountered in Resident Evil. Who knew trash could be so scary?
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