Directive 8020 PS5 Review. Starting life in 2019, The Dark Pictures Anthology is developer SuperMassive Games’ showcase of horrifying tales usually involving teenagers and young adult hoodlums banding together to survive perilous situations often at night time, and where players can actively make decisions that change the course of how these adventures play out.
Directive 8020 is the latest feature in The Dark Picture Anthology series, jettisoning earth-based terrors and terrified teenagers for an isolating vessel amidst the expanses of outer space with a crew of mostly-sensible space technicians. Does Directive 8020 reinvigorate The Dark Pictures with an experience out of this world, or should we brace for a crash landing?
Directive 8020 Review (PS5)- A Surly Scary Space Opera
Following the crew members on board the Cassiopeia ship, we find ourselves tucked into the space technician exploits of British recruit Pari Simms, and a Canadian father of a daughter Thomas Carter. They, along with a band of colleagues and superiors are traveling to the planet Tau Ceti F to save humanity and colonize the planet. Things start off calmly as both engineers follow standard protocol by fixing the technical and structural problems that crop with a calm and sometimes joking demeanour. However, freakish happenings trickle in when Pari turns hostile without any warning and all of a sudden the Cassopoeia has turned into an uncomfortable interstellar expedition mired in mystery. Turns out the crew have been eviscerating each other, but not all is as it seems, and along the way you’ll find out about the grim reality of this dire situation.
In subsequent chapters you’ll meet other members of the crew including Captain Stafford, LaMarcus Williams, Brianna Young, Josef Cernan, Laura Eisele and Samantha Cooper among others, and each of them specialize in certain fields. For example, Samantha is a skilled medic, Laura specializes in engineering and maths, Cernan is a peace maker and understanding, and ambitious pilot Brianna doesn’t hesitate to share a joke every now and then.
This crew is definitely more mature than the posses in previous Dark Pictures games. The absence of machismo-doused teenaged and young-adult boys and clueless silly girls is definitely refreshing, but consequently they are quite dry and the desire to see them torn apart is lessened. Previous Dark Pictures characters were irritants, but at least we could control what happened to them, so if they annoyed us too much we’d ensure their demise was gruesome and exacting; it’d be just desserts for their obnoxious ego and posturing. Unfortunately for the characters in Directive 8020, their personalities are more likeable and it is therefore harder to crave and rejoice in their finality.
The story and happenings on the Cassiopeia are very evidently inspired by numerous sci-fi films from the 1979 horror classic, Ridley Scott’s Alien, to John Carpenter’s The Thing, as well as Andrei Tarkovski’s Solaris from 1972. Directive 8020 leans on the hallmark franchises to gripping and atmospheric effect, contributing meaningfully by serving up SuperMassive’s signature player-driven narrative, giving you control of all the important and critical decisions which bear both hope and grim consequences depending on your selections. It is up to you to either save the crew and enjoy a happy ending, or make decisions that prove costly and kills everyone on board-the choices are up to you.
Interactive Spacial Awareness
As an interactive narrative, there is plenty of watching what unfolds, but there are QTE segments that’ll keep you on your toes. When you are given control, you can either walk slowly around the ship, or you can tap L1 to jog, but as ever with The Dark Pictures games the sense of weight to your movement feels heavy and as such you aren’t able to dash around like a fully caffeinated buzzard, but this is in-line with the pacing of the experience, so try not to rush through everything.
When you are given control of which ever crew member the story dictates, you’ll be instructed to perform activities such as unjamming doors with an electrified device, finding passwords for terminals, and at one point you are tasked with conjuring up Diazepam by selecting the right ingredients. These actions can seem like typical video game fodder at times, but they serve as downtime before the real action heats up.
One thing you’ll be doing plenty of in Directive 8020 is stealthing around the Cassopoia, avoiding hostile facsimiles of crew members to find a way out of whatever danger zone you’re in, or following and slipping by them. While these stealth sections can be tense, they’re very slow and repetitive. Sometimes you might even get stuck not knowing what to do, but thankfully you can get yourself savaged by one of these monstrous copies and move the story forward- but if you wanted to save everyone you’ll need to know what to do in an instant, unless you utilize the rewind function.
Turning Points And Turning Heads
In a similar vein to Detroit: Become Human and various other interactive narratives with branching paths, Directive 8020 has its own diagram-laden system where you can select scenes and follow the choices you’ve made. The system is known as Turning Points, allowing you to revisit specific moments without the hassle of restarting the entire story again. You’re also able to rewind decisions if you didn’t get a desired outcome, so there’s little fuss if you don’t want it. Turning Points is not an original concept, but it certainly makes playthroughs much easier and enjoyable.
In addition to Turning Points, you can select whether you want to experience the story with or without the option to modify and change your decisions. Survivor difficulty ensures that decisions are final and you cannot rewind to save fallen crew members, so any damage you’ve done is final through a playthrough. However you decide to play Directive 8020, you can do so given great flexibility in your decision-making and you won’t need to traipse through worn ground to get the result you want.
All Spaced Out
The visual presentation and dread Directive 8020 gives off is definitely satisfying. Sure the interiors of the Cassiopoeia are like any run of the mill spaceship, but if you’re after those delicious Alien-like vibes, then you’ll certainly feel gripped. Character models follow in a similar style to previous Dark Pictures games and echo similar interactive dramas like the David Cage games, but maybe with a little less emphasis on replicating realism.
The voice acting is solid with a cast of characters who sound as convincing as they look. The likes of Lashana Lynch, Danny Sapani, Lotte Verbeek and Philip Arditti lend their signature voices to the crew, and they each do a solid job of making each personality stand out from each other. The music is foreboding as you can assume from the genre to which Directive 8020 adheres to, and each piece reflects the dread and desperation of the situation aboard the tainted space vessel.
If you’re salivating for a new interactive narrative horror game to play, Directive 8020 is a pleasing effort. The story along with the uncertainties related to the facsimile creature monstrosities will hook you in and keep you invested, even though when the game gives you direct control of the characters the experience can be mundane and chore-like. The over-reliance on stealth sections is understandable, but they are often too slow and require repetitious and careful sneaking to get by unscathed. Thankfully, the fact you can continue on with the story instead of failing is very relieving despite the potential costs to characters’ well being. It’s dingy and it’s not without some mutations, but Directive 8020 is definitely worth exploring-just expect the mundane along the way.
Directive 8020 is available on May 12, 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.
The review copy was kindly provided by the publisher.