A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Review

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead has submitted itself to the horror genre at a time in the year when its shortcomings are going to be more evident than ever. This year’s Halloween video game champion has been the Silent Hill 2 remake, but horror fans have also been treated to silver screen critical successes such as Terrifier 3, Heretic, and Smile 2. The spooky season is in the air, which means only the most worthy stories should be granted passage. 

Since A Quiet Place is a franchise that has consistently released quality films that are enjoyed by critics and audiences alike, I had high hopes for A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead. However, based on the lack of pre-launch marketing, and upon discovering that the review code would not be available until release day, I started to grow hesitant. Whenever there’s a hold on a code, it makes you wonder if there’s some cause for concern behind the scenes. 

Nevertheless, it’s important to go into a game as unbiased as possible, so I did my best to leave my reservations and anticipations at the door. While I believe A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead does a decent job at recreating this universe, it lacks in some pretty crucial ways. 

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Fits the Brand, But Is Way Too Basic

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is the first video game entry in the franchise, which was developed by Stormind Games and published through Saber Interactive. The title adopts the same basic principles of the films, and incorporates them into the game, but the final result is less than riveting. 

As I started playing, I was intrigued by the way it throws the player right into the story, and I loved the aesthetic of The Ranch mission soon after. The background tension-building music paired with the abandoned farmhouse on a stormy night had all the elements of a game going in the right direction.

The first few story beats were a little questionable as they felt way too similar to the first A Quiet Place film, but I went with it hoping that was the least of my worries. Over the next few hours, the red curtain started to be pulled back and I began to have a few disappointing revelations. 

The first revelation I had about A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is that the characters in this story are incredibly generic. The interactions between them are limited, and while I can appreciate a game that builds on the lore with collectible documents, it’s no excuse for a lack of good dialogue.

This title never dives deep enough into the emotion it is trying to elicit, and instead, the characters often feel static and predictable. The voice acting is solid all around, and never breaks immersion, but the plot is a bit contrived and left me feeling very little connection with the playable character, Alex. 

My second realization is that a game set in A Quiet Place universe that follows the established rules too strictly ends up being a “be careful what you wish for” situation.

Around 95 percent of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is simply moving your analog stick as slowly as the game will allow without getting caught and killed. And yes, I realize that sounds like the accomplished purpose of the game, but when even slow movement can be too fast to avoid detection, enjoyable tension becomes tedious terrain within a few hours.  

There were many times in this title where I would simply temp its limits just trying to get to the end of certain sections faster. I spent around nine hours completing it, and some of that was spent trying to collect documents, but inevitably, I gave up because the thought of walking around each map at a snail’s pace seemed grueling.

There’s very little in terms of combat to relieve the monotony (aside from one flashback), and when you get caught by the creatures it’s not sudden and frightening, it’s a canned collection of cutscenes I started skipping just to save time. 

Another disappointing aspect of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead that took me by surprise is that the microphone detection system feels like an afterthought. One of the key selling points of the game is that you can choose to have the creatures detect you through noise made into your microphone. However, there’s no calibration to help adjust to your specific environment, controller, or headset, other than manual scales in the settings. 

Some microphones are more sensitive than others, and so it would have made sense for such a significant feature to fit each user. And, since sound detection is so sensitive in the game, it would have been a valuable tool to avoid having to constantly adjust. I tested out this feature a few times, and while it’s a novel concept, after the cutscenes kept muting my mic, I eventually forgot about it, and left the mechanic behind. 

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Doesn’t Offer Much Challenge 

Perhaps you don’t mind the slow-moving pace or have no care for calibrated microphone mechanics, but if you’re hoping for fresh puzzles think again. A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is contagious with yellow line fever, where nearly everything you interact with is bright yellow. It’s not hard to find where to go, and there were a few times when it felt like I was getting ahead of the game. A lot of the interactive elements like throwing bricks and turning valves all felt overdone to the point that it was hard to enjoy them. 

I also found that asthma being the quasi-health system was a bit odd, especially since inhalers aren’t one puff and done. It was certainly a creative idea, but feels a bit unnecessary and unrealistic. It’s also not something that was a problem or required much strategy in terms of avoiding death. There’s a surprising number of inhalers just lying around in the apocalypse (at least in normal mode), to avoid death. 

The sandbags make walking anywhere fairly easy, and they last for so long you can get through many of the areas without a problem. There were occasionally times when I would make noise while walking on sand and wonder why the game was selling me out, but for the most part, it eliminated the need for mapping out strategic routes. 

There Are Few Positive Attributes Worth the Attention

The best thing about A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is the environment and the tone of the game. As I previously mentioned, I thought the background music held tension very well. There’s certainly something to be said about the way the developers brought this world to life, even if I didn’t find it particularly compelling. There are absolutely going to be people who love how true this game feels to the world, even if I think it could have been more exciting. 

The title does a lot to try to keep the game interesting in the very short amount of time it has the player, by continuing to introduce new mechanics frequently. The game even exchanges your flashlight in a way that will slow you down even more. I personally didn’t love the way the title feels like it’s reinventing itself through the gameplay, but I can appreciate the ambitiousness in that creation style. 

Another thing that I definitely support is the way that the playable character is more spatially aware of her surroundings. In a lot of video games, when you’re squeezing between two noisy objects it’s nearly impossible not to hit one and send the bad guys in your direction. However, in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead it’s easy to avoid knocking into objects when you’re obviously not moving towards them. 

Final Thoughts on A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead

As someone who is not only a fan of the franchise, but who loves solid gameplay, I ultimately wasn’t impressed by A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead. I’ve seen some players expressing their love for the game, and I think that’s fantastic, because gaming is art and we all appreciate things differently, but for me, this one just didn’t hit. 

It’s aggressively linear, agitatingly slow, and often puts you in impossible situations. When a creature catches the noise you make and comes running, there’s nothing you can do to avoid the inevitable other than set your controller down and wait for it to find you.

If you accidentally hit it with a brick…you’re dead. If it spawns basically on top of you…you’re dead. If you recharge your flashlight too fast…dead. But you can have a whispered conversation in a room where you can’t even open a door normally, and that surprisingly won’t kill you. 

I didn’t hate this game, but I didn’t have fun with it either. It’s one of those titles that I think will eventually work great as a free monthly game on a subscription service someday, but lacks in substantive storytelling and engaging gameplay to make it something great. 

What do you think of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead? Does the story and gameplay miss the mark or is it a good time? Make sure to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.