Directive 8020 review: A new breed of sci-fi horror

Directive 8020 is a welcome return for the Dark Pictures series.

After a near four-year hiatus, The Dark Pictures Anthology is back with a creepy new tale. In Directive 8020, Supermassive Games leans on classic sci-fi horror concepts as it delivers one of the series’ most polished entries.

Who can you trust?

Directive 8020 follows the crew of the Cassiopeia, a ship traveling to Tau Ceti f in hopes of deeming it habitable for human life. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, the crew quickly finds themself under the deadly threat of an alien lifeform that can perfectly mimic other creatures.

It’s a classic sci-fi setup that’s inspired by movies like John Carpenter’s The Thing. Throughout the story, you’re constantly faced with the question of whether or not a character is who they say they are. Most of the game’s biggest decisions are framed around this idea, rewarding players who pay close attention to character behaviors and actions. Even if some of the impostors are painfully obvious, it’s quite fun that Supermassive has layered a game of Among Us onto their standard narrative structure.

Branching narratives have been the bread and butter of Supermassive Games ever since Until Dawn, and Directive 8020 spotlights this feature in a brilliant way. The game introduces Turning Points, a feature that uses a flow chart to illustrate every branching path and the decisions that led to it.

I was obsessed with Turning Points during my playthrough. In other Dark Pictures Games, it could be difficult to tell if you’d seen all of the potential outcomes of a situation, but Directive 8020 lays it out in a way that’s easy to follow and encourages experimentation. I was blown away by how many ways the storyline could evolve based on my decisions. The game does a great job of communicating which decisions led to which outcomes, and you can easily tap a button to rewind or use the Turning Points screen to revisit a precise moment.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dark Pictures game without lore being disseminated through journals, pictures, and video logs. It’s all compiled in the Secrets menu and then broken down into more specific categories. A small touch that I really appreciated was that every secret has a brief one-to-two sentence summary once you’ve viewed it, meaning you don’t necessarily have to read or listen to entire logs to get the gist of the information if you don’t want to. Collecting secrets felt worthwhile, too, as they paid off once some of the game’s larger reveals began to hit.

Directive 8020 managed to surprise me on multiple occasions, and I was creeped out throughout most of the experience. That said, I found the characters here to be hit-or-miss. There were a couple of crewmates I grew fond of (shout out to Lashana Lynch as Brianna Young), but I never really fell in love with any of them. In other Supermassive Games, there was a deep level of stress when a character I loved was in danger, but I never felt that level of pressure with any of the Directive 8020 crew. It doesn’t help that there are some uneven performances mixed into the bunch.

An ultimate in alien terror

Directive 8020 continues the tradition of using quick time events during its cinematic sequences, with plenty of timed button pressing and furious tapping as I tried to keep as many characters alive as possible. However, there’s a lot of traditional gameplay where you take control of specific crew members as they explore the Cassiopeia. These segments include large open areas with secrets, puzzles, and stealth sequences.

The exploration segments in Directive 8020 are an improvement over previous Dark Pictures games. There’s full camera control, the ability to vault over obstacles and through windows, and a sprint button that is, in a shocking revelation, actually fast. The game also makes it known that entering an area will advance the story, giving players the opportunity to keep exploring if they’re not quite done with an area.

There’s a large stealth component, too, as several characters find themselves in an area with the alien at some point or another. There’s a whole lot of crouching behind counters and making noise distractions so that you can slip by the creature. I appreciated that the game didn’t send me back to the beginning if I got caught; the story continues regardless, and being spotted by the creature simply sends you onto a new branch in the narrative. That said, by the end of the game, these sequences grew a bit stale. They're not particularly challenging, just time-consuming.

A Dark Pictures evolution

Directive 8020 feels like Supermassive’s response to growing criticism around the Dark Pictures series. Those games always had a lesser-than feel when compared to the studio’s flagship titles like Until Dawn and The Quarry. This was due to both runtime and budget, with the Dark Pictures games looking and playing notably worse than the aforementioned titles. Directive 8020, however, looks and feels like a blockbuster. The gameplay is smooth, and there’s a heap of content to dig through. This is clearly the beginning of a new era for The Dark Pictures Anthology, one that I bet will space releases out so that there’s more time for development. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the Dark Pictures branding is hardly present in Directive 8020.

When I finished Directive 8020, I immediately wanted to replay it. I was content with the ending I got, but was fascinated by all of the other possible endings and diverging paths that led to them. There are so many permutations of the storyline and secrets to uncover; I know for sure that I’ve got a couple more playthroughs in my future. It’s the mark of a great choice-based game.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Directive 8020 launches on May 12, 2026, for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

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Review for
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020
8
Pros

• Turning Points are an awesome addition
• Fun sci-fi story
• Deeply replayable
• Sprint button is actually fast

Cons

• Underwhelming characters
• Stealth sequences get repetitive