A Quiet Place: Review of the Road Ahead – The Sounds of Silence

A Quiet Place: Review of the Road Ahead

Games based on movies have a spotty history. At their best, they take familiar stories and characters to new places. At worst, they are pale imitations that remind us how good the originals were. Like its characters in the game, A Quiet Place: the Road Ahead wisely avoids some obvious pitfalls. It is not a literal version of the 2018 film or its sequel, but rather an original story set in the same universe. Best of all, it recognizes its limitations and maybe just overstays its welcome a little.

What is that sound?

The basis of both films is essentially the classic game of hide-and-seek, mixed with Elmer Fudd's warning to be very very quiet. In this case, the goal is not to surprise the unwitting Bugs Bunny but to prevent him from being eviscerated by blind aliens called Angels of Death. A quiet place – the road ahead does not repeat characters from any of the films. It tells a much simpler story, focusing on a young college-age girl, Alex Taylor, her boyfriend, and a few other characters in the ensemble. Alex's goal is to sneak through the countryside long enough to reach the safety of a survivor enclave. Although there are some flashbacks, most of the game's action focuses on Alex in the present. There are some spoiler-level reasons why the stakes of Alex's survival are higher than just, you know, not dying.

Stealth games or stealth levels are a basic video game genre. A quiet place: the path ahead replaces being discovered with being heard. Still, anyone who doesn't enjoy stealth in games may not be comfortable with this game's reliance on moving very deliberately and often standing still while the threat passes. There are some strange design decisions, but if you accept the premise and story, the game can be exceptionally tense as Alex slowly makes his way toward his goal.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead does a good job of logically presenting its mechanics. Some surfaces like sand and ambient sounds like rain mask Alex's footsteps. The faster it moves, the louder it gets. Alex has a makeshift sound level meter that shows both ambient sounds and the noise he makes. You will spend a lot of time paying attention to both the sound level meter and everything in the environment.

Almost instant death

In addition to moving silently through an abandoned world full of debris, Alex has to deal with asthma. Moving through dusty environments or overexerting yourself can trigger an attack and the noise that accompanies it. So part of Alex's task is to find single-use inhalers and keep them well stocked. It's not usually a problem. As the game progresses and Alex explores new areas, the game introduces additional consumables, tools, and items that you can use to distract monsters or explore the world. However, aside from stealth, awareness, and discovering optimal routes to overcome the Angels of Death, Alex has no real combat tools or ways to fight.

A Quiet Place: The alien post-apocalypse world of The Road Ahead is well imagined. Everything looks appropriately ramshackle and abandoned with a heavy layer of lost hope over it. The game makes excellent use of environmental storytelling, and the presence of notes, graffiti, and other detritus makes more logical sense than in most adventure games. The alien design comes straight from the movies and they are just as terrifying as you would expect.

Naturally, sound design is at the forefront of the game's presentation. The music there is is subtle, tense and very discreet. The ambient audio is exceptionally well done and the game's small cast of voice actors do a good job with a fairly well-written script. I've somewhat downplayed talking about the game's narrative, but the story and most of the characters feel well connected to the world of the films, if not literally to them.

A room full of noise

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead has an optional trick up its digital sleeve. Turn on your microphone and the game will react to sounds around you and Alex. I tried. It's a great idea, but what I noticed most was how much horrible noise there is around me all the time. Still, perhaps the ideal way to play is using headphones and with the microphone set to a relatively low sensitivity.

The Quiet Place films had a remarkably simple but very effective narrative hook. A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a perfect, authentic recreation of the films' tone and tension. What holds it back is the lack of variety in player input during the game's roughly eight-hour runtime. Definitely not a great game for restless and impatient players. For fans of stealth-focused horror-adventure movies and/or games, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead effectively ticks a lot of boxes.