There is something I find deeply comforting about sci-fi horror. Maybe it’s because I was raised on science fiction almost literally from birth. As I grew older, I got more and more into horror as a genre, so you can imagine how I felt when I watched Alien for the first time.
I must be clear that when I say comforting, I don’t mean that I want to be trapped on a spaceship with an alien capable of wearing people like a Halloween costume. More comforting in the sense that no matter how advanced humanity becomes, we apparently still insist on building dimly lit corridors with flickering lights and absolutely catastrophic workplace safety standards. Even Star Trek: The Next Generation, set in a plush 80s hotel and conference centre in space, had rocks that would explode out of panels and consoles.
Directive 8020 fully understands this.
The latest entry in Supermassive Games’ Dark Pictures Anthology throws out dusty villages and haunted houses in favour of cold metal hallways, suspicious crew members, and the overwhelming feeling that absolutely nobody on this ship should be trusted. It’s a real mix of Alien, The Thing, and an HR incident waiting to happen.
One interesting shift with Directive 8020 is how it handles its central threat. Earlier Dark Pictures games had more tangible monsters, generally linked to a certain mythology. This time round, the monster is as much the atmosphere as it is the real monster. Uncertainty and paranoia are big things in this game. It’s still recognisably part of the anthology’s structure, so experienced players will probably see the broad shape of it coming, but the way the antagonists are framed pushes things closer to mistrust and ambiguity rather than a simple “this monster is hunting me”.
With the atmosphere being a big part of how the bad guy works, it does most of the heavy lifting from the get-go. The ship feels oppressive in exactly the right way. Not huge and grand like Star Trek but a bit more functional, like a believable spaceship, with it being set about 40 years in the future, the technology on display adds to this. Without getting too spoiler-heavy, a disaster happens, and the ship gets a bit roughed up, setting up why every corridor feels slightly too dark and every room slightly too quiet. It’s Alien, if Alien were less grubby. As the game progresses, the paranoia builds thanks to the combination of the damaged ship plus the shapeshifting monster, creating rather tense and unsettling feelings.
And then there’s the sound design. Supermassive has always been good at making you nervous about opening doors, but Directive 8020 turns every metallic creak into a personal attack.
The performances help massively too; a fair few of the face models have returned from previous games, which makes sense considering the anthology theme. Look at the TV show American Horror Story as a good example of reusing actors for different roles each season. Lashana Lynch (of MCU and James Bond fame) is a strong addition, and alongside the rest of the cast, she helps the crew feel a little more grounded. I particularly enjoyed Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s voice acting as the game’s most antagonistic human.
There is still some horror-movie stupidity sprinkled throughout, because of course there is, but people mostly react like actual humans rather than walking decision-making disasters. Although, at times, that is a detriment. If this crew is meant to be the best of the best, why are they still making obviously terrible choices?
Gameplay-wise, this is still recognisably a Supermassive game. You walk around slowly, investigate things, make dialogue choices, occasionally fail a QTE because your thumb briefly forgets how buttons work, and try desperately to keep everyone alive.
The stealth sections are, overall, alright. They work well for the most part, especially when the game leans into paranoia rather than outright action. Creeping through dark corridors or crawlspaces while something stalks nearby is properly tense. There’s an episode where a lot of what you do is crawl around an air vent system. The first note I made was, “I feel like Captain Dallas about to get ‘got’ in the Nostromo crawl spaces.”
That said, there are some drawbacks. Firstly, the stealth sections are quite predictable. The enemy moves to a set pattern. Once you know that pattern, you can easily plan around it, though this gets harder as you ramp up the difficulty. Secondly, the enemy always seems to know when you’ve moved to a different section, regardless of whether they’ve seen you. While that worked in Alien: Isolation, where the Xenomorph’s ability as a hunter eventually tracks you down, it sort of doesn’t land the same here when the enemies have such rigid routes.
Finally, they can drag a little. Directive 8020 is not a particularly fast game, and replaying sections can become slightly exhausting if you are the sort of person who immediately wants to see every possible narrative outcome.
Which, unfortunately, is exactly what I did.
The brand-new Turning Points system lets you jump back to earlier decisions and explore different paths, which is a genuinely great feature for this kind of game. Naturally, I immediately started treating the timeline like a science experiment. The problem is that sometimes you go back thinking you are following one specific route, only to realise twenty minutes later that you accidentally picked the wrong conversation option three scenes ago, and now everyone is miserable for entirely different reasons.
Eventually, I decided to stop using the Turning Points altogether so I could experience a complete playthrough. The temptation to go back and fix your mistakes as they happen is strong, but you do not really know how your decisions will change the story. It might be better, or it might be much worse. I would advise first-time players to just complete a run and avoid the Turning Points system entirely. Once you’ve finished, go nuts with it and experience everything the game has to offer, including around 40 different death scenes, because we all know that Dark Pictures games are mainly about watching idiots die in a variety of increasingly creative ways.
Outside the horror, there are some genuinely nice, quieter details too. One character appears to have an asexual pride flag among their belongings, subtly implying they are asexual without turning it into a giant exposition dump. It is a tiny bit of environmental storytelling, but it helps the crew feel more believable and lived-in.
Accessibility is also solid across the board. Subtitle customisation, colour-blind options, QTE tweaks, difficulty adjustments, and different play styles are all included. You can tailor a lot of the experience, including threat marker colours and gameplay intensity. Streamer mode is here too, because modern horror games now fully accept that somewhere on the internet, somebody with a rather silly handle is screaming at a webcam while being chased through ventilation shafts.
Ultimately, Directive 8020 does not reinvent Supermassive’s formula. If you have already bounced off previous Dark Pictures games, this probably will not completely change your mind. It feels like they could have pushed the formula further beyond just the Turning Points system. It’s solid, but not revolutionary.
But for fans of cinematic sci-fi horror, this feels like the studio finally settling comfortably into its spacesuit. It is tense and atmospheric, occasionally clunky, but consistently engaging. If you had trouble with Alien: Isolation because the whole thing meant changing your underwear, restarting your heart, and rocking back and forth in a brightly lit room too often, this is probably the better game for you.
For me, wandering through “haunted” spaceship corridors while questioning everybody’s humanity is still a pretty good time.
