A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Review (PS5) – Sound plays a major role in the horror genre. This involves not only sound effects from the world around you but also the sounds you make. Adding to the suspense, several games, like Alien: Isolation, even use microphones to catch any noise you make in real life.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead follows a similar formula to that. However, it puts its own spin on the gameplay loop. Is it enough to stand out among the rest?
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Review (PS5) – Walking A Tightrope In Silence
The Wrong Sound Means Certain Death
Just imagine learning that you tested positive from a pregnancy test. Then imagine that scenario in the middle of a ravaged planet infested with aliens that pounce on every sound they hear.
This is the situation main character Alex finds herself in. That’s not all, though. Add in asthma attacks, then combine that with seeing many members of her family killed by said aliens, including her boyfriend and baby daddy Martin. It’s safe to say Alex can’t catch a break.
Everything you do in The Road Ahead depends on your ability to manage the variables Alex lives with. In each moment, knowing that I need to not only save resources but use them regularly adds to the tension. Good horror games build into them some sort of limitation, like how classics in earlier generations benefited from limited control options.
Not with the controls, but in its own way, The Road Ahead forces you to limit yourself in tense moments. Not only do you need to stay quiet, but you also need to navigate areas with lots of water, leaves, and trash, all things that make noise when you interact with them.
Mind Your Environment
To help you manage, Alex invented a phonometer, which tracks both the volume of sound you make as well as the volume of your environment. As long as you stay quieter than your environment, the aliens do not hear you. This works practically like it does in Alien: Isolation. Fantastic sound effects vividly express the danger you put yourself in when you make a wrong move.
The unique factor in The Road Ahead is Alex’ asthma. She reacts to stress, dust in the air, and overexertion. Naturally, you encounter all of these antagonists frequently.
If she panics, the game gives you one chance to regain your center and control your breath. If you miss it, Alex receives the full consequences of a panic attack.
Oh, and remember that Alex is pregnant? She also gets nauseous from time to time. To manage both of these limitations, you need to find anti-nausea pills and inhalers.
These are all you have to progress through the story. If you increase the difficulty, resources grow more scarce and the aliens’ hearing grows more acute.
Occasional Uneven Pacing
In theory, these all come together to create a tense experience from beginning to end. In execution, it works for the most part, but over time, the experience grows into one closer to tense tedium than horror.
For a time-consuming game loop like this, a balance needs to be reached between successfully creating tension and the gameplay loop feeling like work. When tension goes down, tedium generally goes up.
With all of that said, tension generally remains high throughout the game, especially when you find yourself face-to-face with one of the aliens. At the same time, the situations you find yourself in don’t offer the kind of variations to keep the formula fresh the entire way. Often, you just avoid getting in the way of a patrolling creature and solve puzzles to progress.
In some situations, I caught the creatures changing behavior immediately when I reached a checkpoint. For instance, I reach the next section of an area, and I have completely passed by the alien. When I reach the next area, the alien immediately scurries over to where I am and starts a new patrol.
These creatures still intimidate no matter what – but seeing them follow scripted behavior kind of takes the edge off in a bad way.
Still, the overall pace of the game balances out a bit more through flashbacks. These act not only as emotional context but also as breaks from the tension. Gameplay-wise, these flashbacks are little more than walking sims, but the change of pace always feels relieving and never overstays its welcome.
A Unique Twist On A Tested Formula
The unique formula in A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead doesn’t quite do everything well enough to stand among the great horror games. At the same time, it manages to do exactly what it wants to do: create tension through limiting circumstances.
With that said, enemy patrols and sequences often feel more scripted than organic, which makes the gameplay loop feel tedious from time to time. The narrative keeps you moving, though.
All things considered, though, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead does enough right to warrant your time and money. Considering this game only sets you back $30, the final product does more than enough to justify its asking price.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is available now for PS5, Steam, and Xbox Series.
Review code generously provided by the publisher.