A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead

Video games based on movies are usually hit or miss – mostly misses, though. Still, from time to time, a veritable hidden gem appears to prove gamers wrong. A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead aims to be one of those unique games based on films that's actually good – but does it succeed?

With a solid foundation for a stealth horror video game already in place, The Road Ahead looks like the perfect successor to games like Alien: Isolation. Though the stealth horror genre has been in decline, The Road Ahead feels like a proper revival for it. Still, a few bizarre design choices keep this game from reaching its true potential.

Silent Survival

Much like the movie, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead has players surviving a hostile environment plagued with blind monsters with hypersensitive hearing. These creatures might look mindless, but they're cunning, laying ambushes for the player, just laying in wait until they accidentally make a sound.

The Road Ahead, like Alien: Isolation, forces you to avoid combat at most – if not all – times. A direct confrontation with the creatures is out of the question. The only choice players have is to use their environments wisely, laying traps and distractions for the monsters.

Tools of the Trade

Much like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a first-person survival horror game where avoiding any combat is your main objective. Well, that and, you know, surviving the monsters. To make sure your character lives to fight another day, you'll need to use any tool you come across in the desolate wastelands of civilization.

Remember the motion tracker in Alien: Isolation? That tool was a lifesaver that helped you detect the Xenomorph aboard the Sevastopol station. In A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, you'll instead use a makeshift noise detector. This device allows you to monitor how much sound you're making – and also how close the creatures are to your location.

You'll also come across everyday items that might help you dampen your sounds, like bags of sand you can use to mask your footsteps. On the other hand, causing too much ruckus while scampering for resources can prove rather dangerous for your character's health, so to speak.

Lights and Shadows

While the gameplay of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is, for the most part, solid, the presentation looks like a blast from the past – and not exactly in a good way. The visuals look dated for a game released in 2024. I know that might sound subjective, but even some of the basic asset packs for Unreal Engine look better than this game.

When we have modern horror classics like Resident Evil 7: Biohazard as a blueprint for what first-person horror games should look like, it's almost surreal that a game now can look as barebones as The Road Ahead. While the creature designs are good enough and they resemble their movie counterparts adequately, The Road Ahead does a much better job of creating an engaging soundscape than it does delivering top-notch visuals.

Pros

• Lots of tense gameplay moments
• Sound design can be incredibly good
• The monsters look just like the ones in the films

Cons

• Lackluster visuals
• Clunky controls
• Some visual and AI glitches can break the immersion