A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Review
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead drops you into the frightening world of the hit film franchise.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (Credit: Storming Games / Saber Interactive)
Developed by Stormind Games and published by Saber Interactive, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead adapts the hit feature film franchise into a first-person horror game. The gameplay mechanics effectively immerse the player in the film's world of silent survival, but the game fails to reach the heights of suspense and human drama of the movies.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead takes place after Day One and a few months before the first film. It features new characters and locations and does not reference people from the movies. The game focuses on Alex Taylor, a young woman living with a group sheltering in a hospital. When a tragic accident puts her at odds with the community’s leader, she and her father decide to flee. Aside from brief flashbacks to the first day of the invasion, the game follows Alex on her journey four months after the creatures land.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (Credit: Storming Games / Saber Interactive)
I’m not always fond of stealth games. Still, I found this game’s approach novel because the stealth is exclusively based on sound, as you might imagine, based on the film franchise’s premise. Make too much noise, and the creatures will find you and kill you. You must walk slowly and take care not to step on things like broken glass or crunchy leaves. I spent most of the game wandering around crouched because it’s quieter. It almost felt like cheating.
Being silent is complicated by Alex’s asthma, which you keep under control with inhalers and pills, a limited resource. Physical exertion, dust, and the stress of being near the creatures all bring you closer to having an asthma attack. In the default medium difficulty, it didn’t add too much of a challenge. Only a single sequence at the end of the game used respiratory distress mechanics in a way that created real stress for me.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (Credit: Storming Games / Saber Interactive)
One of the game's most effective features is giving you complete control over physical tasks like opening doors, panels, and drawers. All these things make noise, so it’s essential to be careful. You hold down a button and then use the thumbstick to control the opening speed; I’d often have a short moment of panic if squeaking hinges made noise. The most stressful use of this mechanic by far is when you must lay down heavy wooden planks to cross small gaps. You must use the thumbstick to control how quickly you drop the plank, lest it slam into the ground. Of course, handling the heavy wooden plank also aggravates Alex’s asthma.
There are several sections in the game where one of the alien creatures is actively patrolling an area you must pass. These are some of the best parts of the game. You can usually take multiple paths, offering a degree of creativity for traversal. You can throw bricks or bottles to throw the creature off you and take calculated risks about making noise by doing things such as breaking glass windows or setting off bear traps that might be in your way. These sections are excellently designed playgrounds.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (Credit: Storming Games / Saber Interactive)
I couldn’t help but be reminded of the excellent Alien: Isolation. I think it’s a lot more successful in creating fear around the creature than this game, which is unfortunate. It might be because rather than having the risk of a creature showing up at any time, The Road Ahead either has a creature you can see patrolling all the time, letting you get accustomed to it or has it show up only if you make noise, giving you far more control than you have in Alien.
The game nails the creature’s look with excellent modeling and animations. Unfortunately, it’s the only enemy you’ll encounter, but that fits in with the games for the most part. It may have been interesting to also encounter human antagonists outside of cutscenes. I’m reminded of how scary the Working Joes were in Alien: Isolation and how The Last of Us effectively creates compelling gameplay by making the player deal with zombies and human enemies simultaneously.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (Credit: Storming Games / Saber Interactive)
Earlier in the game, you get the phonometer, a device you’ll hold most of the time. It helpfully displays two meters—the first measures the level of ambient noise and the second the loudness of sounds you make. If your actions are quieter than the environment, you’re usually safe. It’s a creative way to help the player, and I used it extensively. You have the option to play without it in harder modes, which I think would probably be a far scarier experience.
I didn’t find the game’s story as compelling or moving as the stories in the films. I think the root of the issue is that Alex spends most of the game alone, while in the movies, you have characters in danger together more often. The game’s central human conflict would be much more affecting if Alex spent more time dealing with it around other characters rather than alone through her journal entries.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead (Credit: Storming Games / Saber Interactive)
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is visually stunning, thanks primarily to excellent texture work and lighting design. I felt fully immersed in the game’s realistic environments, though I wish they weren't so desolate. The visuals are complemented by great sound design, which you’ll be paying very close attention to, thanks to the game’s core gameplay mechanics.
While A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a fun experience that never wears out its welcome in its 8-10 hours of playtime, I was rarely truly frightened in the way I’ve been in similar games. It’s a very good adaptation of the source material into a playable experience, but I wish it went just a little bit further.
A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is available now on PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: PS5
