Brought to fetid (un)life by the same fine folks at Supermassive Games who brought us Until Dawn and more recently The Dark Pictures Anthology series of cinematic horror games, The Casting of Frank Stone is another like-minded affair which unfolds within the sprawling universe of Behaviour Interactive’s wildly successful Dead by Daylight and very much zeroes in on the mythos that acts as the backbone for the latter. Put simply, The Casting of Frank Stone is a decent enough morsel of familiar horror shenanigans that will hold a greater compulsion for those that are already well immersed in Dead by Daylight and its surrounding lore.
The Casting Of Frank Stone PS5 Review
A Decent Enough Horror Offering That Dead By Daylight Players In Particular Will Enjoy
Unfolding around Cedar Hills, a seemingly sleepy town that has been forever stained by the murderous acts of serial killer Frank Stone, The Casting of Frank Stone weaves a story steeped in violence as it focus on two groups of protagonists across a sixty year time span as they come to grips with both Frank Stone himself and the legacy of evil that remains decades later.
From the 1960s to the 1980s and then extending to the present day, The Casting of Frank Stone’s time-tripping narrative sees our group of protagonists – together with some of their immediate descendants in the later periods – attempt to unravel the mystery behind the creeping darkness surrounding its titular killer and those who seem hellbent on bringing him back and tearing the very fabric of reality itself. Centering around a film that was shot by a bunch of young and predictably silly amateur filmmakers at the Cedar Mill where Frank Stone wrote his legacy in blood, the whole notion of a group of naïve and fairly annoying youngsters rooting around a place, which is quite clearly spooky and filled with obvious badness, has been a cliché for years and The Casting of Frank Stone does little to flip the script on this most shopworn of story setups.
Thankfully, things soon take a turn towards cosmic horror as events begin to tap directly into the supernatural elements of its Dead by Daylight setting and it’s really here that The Casting of Frank Stone does some of its best work from a storytelling perspective. A big part of this is that The Casting of Frank Stone isn’t afraid to cut loose and really dive into the cosmic terror and reality bending horror that Dead by Daylight trades in and as such, this helps to elevate its narrative above the usual jump-scare ridden and schlocky slasher style scenario that we might otherwise have gotten.
Speaking of Dead by Daylight, it’s abundantly clear that while The Casting of Frank Stone can be readily enjoyed by folks who have never seen or played the former title before, it is also very much intended as a love letter to those Dead by Daylight fans who have long wanted to take a headlong dive into the themes and lore that have long underscored that game. And on that note, The Casting of Frank Stone certainly does not disappoint, boasting not only a harrowing narrative which delves into the enigmatic backstory of the Entity – the reality bending cosmic horror which the killers in Dead by Daylight are tasked with sacrificing hapless survivors to – but there are all manner of Easter eggs and references galore that fans of Dead by Daylight will surely get a kick out of.
From glimpses at the classic campfire (you know the one), stacked wooden palettes aplenty and creepy, collectable dolls that act as effigies of the various killers from Dead by Daylight, The Casting of Frank Stone goes out of its way to fully entrench itself in its source material. Heck, there’s even a full-on replication of the power generator repair mini-game, complete with the skill bar radial and accompanying sound effects to boot (there’s even a silver trophy for nailing the skill checks, too!).
At its core, The Casting of Frank Stone embraces the same gameplay mechanics as previous efforts from Supermassive Games. This means lots of walking around the various linear environments, picking up the odd item here and there, interacting with the scenery and making story branching event choices together with the odd QTE whenever the action kicks off. If you’ve played Until Dawn or any of the Dark Pictures games you’ll find a lot of what The Casting of Frank Stone has to offer to be very, possibly overly, familiar indeed. This isn’t to say that The Casting of Frank Stone is ‘bad’ per se’, but rather that it safely sticks to a well-worn formula rather than striving to do something a little more fresh or different.
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Also mimicking the previous offerings from Supermassive Games. The Casting of Frank Stone boasts local co-op functionality thanks to the sort of ‘pass the controller’ mode that has been seen in The Dark Pictures games. Even though the addition of this mode is hardly groundbreaking, playing The Casting of Frank Stone with a friend, with the lights off and with plenty of snacks nonetheless cements itself as an enjoyable way to pass an evening or two all the same.
That’s not to say that The Casting of Frank Stone doesn’t have a few little tricks up its sleeve, because it very much does, it’s just that these tricks aren’t nearly enough to make a meaningful difference to the package as a whole. By far the biggest new feature that The Casting of Frank Stone brings to the table is the Cutting Room, a highly useful feature for aiding repeat play that allows you to hop back to previous points in the story to alter outcomes, unlock different story branches and uncover collectibles that may have been missed the first time around.
Beyond the Cutting Room, The Casting of Frank Stone also plays into its amateur filmmaking themes with the player having access to a classic Super 8 camera that, due to a particular event happening halfway through the game, can be used to spot supernatural creatures and banish them to the abyss. Ultimately though, this camera mechanic feels underdeveloped. It would have been compelling if more was made of the camera being leveraged to show things that the naked eye cannot see – like secrets and such that would peel back and reveal new areas in the environment. Alas, something of a missed opportunity then.
From an audiovisual perspective, The Casting of Frank Stone also fares about as well as the previous game from Supermassive Games, The Quarry. What this means is that you end up with highly detailed environments and great material work married up with stupendously detailed character models with faces that boast stretching wrinkles, taut veins, a range of imperfections and proper eye and mouth movements. Also just like The Quarry before it The Casting of Frank Stone fairly rigidly sticks to a 30 frames per second frame rate with no additional performance modes. Now, while this might prove disappointing to a few folks, the fact remains that the decent motion blur coupled with the cinematic presentation of The Casting of Frank Stone (and the fact that it’s hardly a twitchy action game that demands super quick response times), means that 30 frames per second is just fine in this particular case.
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Sadly when it comes to the audio side of things, The Casting of Frank Stone doesn’t fare quite so well. Though the soundtrack is appropriately foreboding as one would expect from a horror-tinged affair such as this, the voice acting is pretty wooden and stunted for the most part, which is a shame given that the multi-era setup and story of The Casting of Frank Stone is otherwise pretty darn compelling overall.
Though The Casting of Frank Stone doesn’t make any sweeping changes to the formula etched out by the likes of Until Dawn, The Quarry and The Dark Pictures Anthology, it does manage to effectively marry up that formula with the universe of Dead by Daylight with impressive results. Notably, the usual flaws also apply here, with The Casting of Frank Stone beset by the same plodding horror adventuring, wooden dialogue and mostly annoying cast of characters that are usually the hallmarks of similar efforts. If however, you’re fine with all of that and just want another handsomely made Supermassive Games romp then The Casting of Frank Stone will surely appeal. Should you be a devoted Dead by Daylight aficionado though, feel free to add a point or more to the score and dive in.
The Casting of Frank Stone is out now on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.