The Casting of Frank Stone Review

ign.com:

Developer Supermassive Games once dared us to survive until dawn, now the interactive slasher movie specialist wants us to be dead by daylight in The Casting of Frank Stone. This story-based spin-off of the popular asymmetric multiplayer sneak-and-slash ‘em up attempts to flesh out a backstory for the malevolent source of all evil in the Dead by Daylight universe, known as The Entity. However, aging, quicktime event-heavy gameplay, dismally superficial combat, an underdeveloped cast of characters, and a complete absence of scares make for a six-hour slog that’s barely worth staying up past your bedtime for.

While Dead by Daylight’s character roster has swelled to include a who’s who of nightmare-haunting horror icons like Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and even walking internet memes like Nicholas Cage, The Casting of Frank Stone features an entirely original cast of villains and potential victims. This is very much to its detriment, since barely any of them leave much in the way of a lasting impression. Main monster Frank Stone (Miles Ley) certainly strikes an imposing figure in the story’s prologue, but he’s nowhere to be found for significant stretches after that. Instead, we’re saddled with a truly unremarkable cast in a tepid tale that pinballs back and forth between the filming of a low budget horror movie in an abandoned Cedar Rapids steel mill in 1980, and a clandestine meeting of strangers in an isolated English manor in the present day.

In both time periods, the plot takes a surprisingly long time to travel short distances, with only small amounts of horror and very little stress to be found amidst meandering conversations between the playable cast of eight characters. With the exception of the likeable Linda (Lucy Griffiths), whose dry sarcasm provides some welcome laughs on occasion and who is thankfully present in both eras, the rest of the leads are saddled with dialogue that’s often clunkier than a piano solo from Freddie Krueger, and