A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead Review – We’re Here

It’s spooky season and we’re all on the lookout for a great horror game. While Silent Hill 2 is deservedly taking up a lot of that attention, perhaps there’s another new game that’s worth your spooky time. A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, the latest hide-and-seek horror game from Remothered developers, Stormind Games manages to be one of the better horror games of 2024.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead places you into the world of the blockbuster horror series, mostly set some four months after the initial invasion of the aliens. Alex, the character you’ll control, learns she’s carrying Martin’s child. Under any normal circumstances, this would be cause to celebrate, but babies make a lot of noise, and in this world, noise gets you killed. So Alex must sneak her way to a safe location before giving birth. Making the task more difficult are the complications of each character’s relationship with each other. Martin’s mother, Laura, who, following some mysterious events, hates Alex and only puts up with her because her son loves her. Alex’s father, Kenneth, is also around to help guide Alex on her journey.

Character Personality Trait +1

The characters are what really make A Quiet Place’s story work. Each character feels fully fleshed out, with believable back stories that have impacted their view, not only of the apocalyptic situation they find themselves in, but of each other. Villains, if you can call them that, aren’t mustache-twirling psychopaths. Instead, they’re layered with motivation and morality hang ups, and this is true not only of the writing, but the voice performances as well.

Navigating the world of A Quiet Place requires you to do so stealthily. Movement is slow. Almost painfully slow, but considering the subject matter and the near-constant threat of the monsters, it does a lot for increasing the tension. Everything must be done methodically. Opening doors, drawers, and walking all are done by barely leaning the stick forward. I played on PS5 and I would imagine this is going to cause some issues with a mouse and keyboard, where typically movement is either sprint, run, or walk. Just walking doesn’t really cut it.

You’re tasked with moving ever so slowly, while watching out for things that can increase the volume of your movement. You’ll be avoiding puddles, leaves, and broken glass and approaching one of these is a really effective way of adding tension to an already tense situation. A Quiet Place even implements a clever gimmick that listens for loud noises in your room using the DualSense’s built in microphone. Admittedly though, I kept this featured turned off outside of testing (I’ve got dogs and a toddler…).

Layered on top of this, Alex suffers from asthma, which kicks in while overexerting herself, crawling through dusty warehouses, and finding herself face-to-face with the monsters. If Alex’s asthma gets too bad, she’ll have an asthma attack, which forces you to complete a QTE to keep things under control. Luckily, you’ll find tons inhalers around the world, as well as conveniently placed pill bottles that help alleviate symptoms. This overly-gaminess stretches out into level design as well. See, littered around the world are things that Alex can run into and kick, but not everything she runs into will make noise – just the ones covered in red paint. Similarly, if Alex can mantle or drop down off of a ledge, it’s been conveniently painted yellow. While I can understand why this is implemented (it is a game after all), I cant help be feel it detracts from the immersion that is otherwise really well handled.

This all leads to A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead’s greatest issue… it’s just too easy on the normal difficulty. Alex creates a tool early in the game which measures the noise she makes compared to the ambient noise. Certain places are louder than others, but overall simply moving slowly is enough keep your volume down, even in the aforementioned puddles and glass. It’s always very clear where you’re supposed to be headed. All of the hand-holding ultimately really detracts from how scary the game is. A good horror game makes you feel helpless. Consider the opening hours of Resident Evil 7, when you’re being stalked by Jack Baker. Finding your way around the house is difficult. You get to points that are blocked and have to backtrack to find keys or parts to a puzzle. There’s almost nothing like that in A Quiet Place. You’ll find dead ends, sure, but getting past them typically means just looking for an opening nearby. And that opening always leads to the solution. The fact that there’s a big, scary monster lurking somewhere nearby doesn’t really impact the situation because usually you can just not move and it won’t bother with you. On rare occasion, I did find myself having to back away slowly as it approached me. Those moments were genuinely great.

Yet, despite these criticisms, I couldn’t help but press on. The story is just that good. The gameplay worked well enough to keep me engaged for the 6 hours it took to complete. I wanted to know why Laura hated Alex. I wanted to meet back up with Kenneth because he felt like a father to me. I had to keep my unborn child safe. All of this works so well. Fans of the films should find themselves right at home with A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.

Verdict

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead shines in its character depth and gripping story, pulling you into its apocalyptic world. Despite some immersion breaking decisions, it manages to create tense, methodical moments of stealth that kept me on edge. Fans of the film series, and horror fans in general, will likely find it to be a creepy experience worth their time.

Score: 7.5/10

Pros:

• A gripping story, worthy of the Quiet Place name
• Deep characters with grey motivations
• Tense atmosphere that relies heavily upon methodical stealth

Cons:

• Overly gamey mechanics break immersion
• Overly easy at times.

A Quiet Place: A Road Ahead review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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