Back in 2014, I was a day one Until Dawn player.
The idea of my decisions shaping which characters lived and died in a horror setting was quite appealing to me, and the game more than lived up to expectations.
Since then, Supermassive has released many games in the same vein, from The Dark Pictures Anthology, to The Quarry.
Despite this, none of these games have quite lived up to the game that started it all.
There was even a remake of Until Dawn by a different studio a few years back, but that also paled in comparison.
Nevertheless, I was quite excited to play the latest installment Directive 8020, because it seemed like it would be Supermassive’s version of John Carpenter’s The Thing, one of my favorite horror movies. 

After finishing it, I would say that Directive 8020 presents interesting choices to go along with that vibe, but also some rather tiresome gameplay.
Set in the far future, where Earth is dying, the story follows the crew of the Cassiopea, who have been sent to survey a distant planet which is humanity’s last hope for survival.
However, along the way, the ship is struck by an asteroid carrying an unwanted visitor.
From there, your choices shape the narrative across eight chapters, determining who among the crew lives and dies.
This crew consists of the five playable characters Young (Lashana Lynch), Stafford (Danny Sapani), Eisle (Lotte Verbeek), Cooper (Anna Leong Brophy), and Cernan (Philip Arditti), along with a few other characters, who are all standard enough as the cast.
I liked and wanted to save them, although there was nobody I was overly attached to.

The story is a bit of a slow burn, with the intensity only really kicking off in the last three chapters.
As for certain twist and turns the story takes, I found them riveting, both narratively and thematically.
I actually started a second playthrough immediately after my first so I could see the foreshadowing for these twists.
I also did it so I could try to save everyone, as I got two of the five playable characters killed on my first playthrough due to my choices.
The choices are not the only thing that can lead to character deaths because there are also the quick time events, which are incredibly easy to mess up on the hardest difficulty.

Directive 8020’s gameplay is not just limited to quick time events for there are also stealth sections in the game, although, by the final mission, I really wished there were not.
These segments are extremely simplistic, with the enemies following scripted pathways and being incredibly easy to avoid.
The stealth mechanics are also practically identical from Episode One all the way to Episode Eight.
This would not be too much of an issue if they did not repeat ad nauseam.
I quickly grew tired of them and it makes the final few episodes quite the slog to get through when it is stealth section after stealth section.

Overall, though, I would still say Directive 8020 is a solid experience.
The characters are decent, and the story is well told with plenty of twists and turns, making a second playthrough to spot the foreshadowing worth it
It still does not beat Until Dawn but at this point I think nothing will.
I will just have to wait and see if the long awaited Until Dawn 2 can live up to the original’s status but, given that a different studio is also behind this game, I have my doubts.