Test - A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead : Test: So frustrating that it takes your breath away

When I think back to my worst experiences in video games, the first thing that comes to mind is the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time and all the water levels of my gaming career. Immediately afterwards, however, there are stealth passages against invincible opponents who will knock you out of your shell at the slightest glitch and you have to endure the loading screen again and again.

If you can't understand this at all and feel real joy in such places (and water temples), then I have good news for you! A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a series of such “challenges,” topped off with a solid number of game-over and loading screens (and even has a terrible water level).

The franchise that the game is based on sounds like it was made for a horror title. When screenwriters of horror films discovered in 2018 that the human senses can be used to wonderfully build premises for films, A Quiet Place (if the monster Hears you, you're dead) directed by John Krasinski. The film now not only received a second part, but also a prequel this year. So it's high time for a licensed video game.

Stay a while and be silent

After an alien invasion, Earth has become an extremely quiet place. The two meter tall, spider-like aliens are not particularly willing to discuss things, but simply attack anything and anyone that makes too loud noises. By the time it was realized that the aliens are blind, but that their entire head consists only of ears, the majority of humanity (and all dogs) had already become victims of the invaders. The few survivors have to pay attention to every step, are only allowed to speak in whispers and should probably avoid Mexican food.

The young asthmatic Alex and her boyfriend have already been whispering their way through this apocalypse for 120 days when Alex discovers that she is pregnant. However, just a few minutes after she tells her boyfriend and father of her unborn child about it, he is torn apart by aliens (through Alex's fault). It's unbelievable what some people do to avoid having to take responsibility...

Alex's mother-in-law is angry with her because of her son's death, aliens are attacking their home, and her father heroically dies sacrificing himself for his daughter. If the last part seems a bit laconic and ironic to you, that's because the game simply doesn't care about the plot after the first two hours.

After the short exposition at the beginning, further plot development is simply omitted. There is something like a red thread, but it is so thin that it would easily fit through the eye of a needle that already has a camel stuck in it, and only serves to somehow bring the sneak passages into a somewhat logical order.

Towards the end you really notice how an attempt was made to artificially stretch the playing time with pointlessly complicated tasks. All of the characters' "problems" simply resolve themselves and the entire story can be summarized very briefly: Pregnant asthmatic Alex doesn't want to be eaten by sound-sensitive aliens. Everything said.

Now it's quiet in the box!

The gameplay, in turn, consists exclusively of a series of individual arenas. You enter a self-contained area and coincidentally, at exactly that moment, one of the eavesdropping aliens breaks through the wall to look for victims right now. The first time this happens, it's still really frightening, but after the fifth repetition, when you enter a new area, you're already anticipating that the cutscene with the random alien rushing in is about to happen, and A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead will never help you in this regard disappoint.

With the incredible speed of continental plates racing towards each other, you sneak through hospitals, train wrecks and deserted inner cities. Once you have completed one section, you enter the next closed area and of course your alien buddy decides to do the same at exactly the same second. Only a few times is a short, playable flashback mixed in without sneaking in between. But they are also the highlight of the game.

So that you always know how loud you are, Alex has a phonometer. This thing, soldered together from an audio recording device, shows you the current noise level in the area and how loud you are in relation to it. As long as your noise level doesn't exceed that of the surroundings, everything is fine, but if you make noise too often, that's it. So in addition to your hearing, you also have a visual output that you can use.

If your PC or console has a microphone, you have to be as quiet as possible in real life. Otherwise, a loud breath, a scream or a violent burp on your part will also cause Alex's death.

The second important indicator concerns the condition of Alex's lungs. If the asthmatic exerts herself too much or gets upset, it irritates her airways and, in the worst case, leads to a loud coughing fit, which in this world of course means immediate death. Impressive that someone with such a serious lung problem has actually survived the last four months since the invasion.

The Road Ahead is full of really good ideas that certainly sounded appealing in the planning phase. The constant threat creates tingling tension, due to the asthma and the associated item management of sprays and pills, every breath could literally be your last and thanks to the phonometer there is no argument as to whether you really deserve to die or not. Unfortunately, none of this works in the finished game.

Outrageous inconsistencies

Let's take the phonometer for example. On the one hand, the thing is completely illogical. How does the magic box know whether a sound 10 meters away belongs to the environment or was caused by a bottle I threw? However, you could still attribute this to the artistic freedom of video games without raising your eyebrows, if the game would otherwise do what it is supposed to do.

Instead, it only perceives things very selectively: my footsteps, yes, the roar of the monsters, not, the windows breaking, but not a pump roaring loudly in the background. So there are plenty of times when the display is more confusing than helpful.

The entire asthma system seems similarly strange. Right from the start you will be told that it is vital to avoid attacks and to calm your lungs in a timely manner with tablets or asthma sprays. So you always keep your eyes open for medication and in fact, single-use asthma sprays are on almost every corner in this world. Alex just refuses to carry more than three of them with him at the same time.

An asthmatic in a world where every wheeze could be fatal sees an inhaler lying in front of her that could save her life and says to herself: “No, I already have two of those.” From a gameplay perspective, this is of course completely understandable. If I have more than 20 sprays, the asthma becomes less frightening. The good solution, which wouldn't give me frown lines, would have been to limit the amount of medication depending on the level of difficulty in order to create a sensible balance.

These are all minor flaws on their own, but such clumsy gameplay design runs throughout the entire game. For example, you can't equip a flashlight and a phonometer at the same time because you have to hold both in your left hand. The same applies to smaller quest items or planks. It seems very important to Alex to always have her right hand free for inhalers, even if they aren't important enough to her to pack more than three of them.

But how else am I supposed to notice the shards of glass on the floor in front of me and at the same time pay attention to my steps? The first is extremely important because different floor coverings and things like leaves, sand or broken glass affect the volume of your steps. Plus, it's hard enough to watch where you step when you can't even see your own legs or feet in the first person perspective.

And when did we gamers actually agree that it's perfectly okay for batteries (of which you're only allowed to have a limited number) in video game flashlights to last a maximum of 15 seconds? One could go on with points like this for a long time, but suffice it to say that all the little things together are really annoying. The Road Ahead is unfair and extremely difficult in places even on the lowest difficulty level, but unfortunately not in the good Dark Souls way, but in a frustrating way.