When A Quiet Place was released back in 2018, it was actually considered to be a genuine breath of fresh air in the horror movie sphere. For once, it was a genuinely well-written story, with deep characters, and an actually scary threat, which made you tense from the moment the plot started, until its very end. As it’s tradition with anything that’s remotely successful in modern media, sequels were eventually greenlit, as well as games based on the engaging premise. We finally have a horror game based on making as little noise as possible. Does A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead live up to the premise and deliver the same horror experience? Let’s find out.

Set over 100 days after the Death Angels have invaded and wiped out most life on Earth, the remaining survivors have learned to live as quietly as possible. You play as Alex, a survivor suffering from asthma, who has also recently discovered she is pregnant. After the hospital safe haven is attacked, she sets out to find a new safe place, all the whilst avoiding hostile survivors looking for her, as well as the Death Angels that will attack on any sound.

If you’ve seen the movies, this is a very familiar plot; whilst it’s not adapting the movies directly, it takes some core ideas from them. It’s a decent enough story that sets the stakes right from the get-go and doesn’t hit the brakes at any point. The characters are decent enough, but not exactly memorable, but there’s plenty of drama, horror and death. It’s serviceable but nothing you will be remembering after the credits roll.

Much like its more famous namesake, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is about being as quiet as possible. The Death Angels are hyper-sensitive to sound; anything from the squeak of opening a door, standing on glass or knocking over a can will trigger them and have them rush to the area to investigate within seconds. Make too much sound and that’s an instant death, as there’s no way to escape. Whilst it would be nice to allow us to hide in a panic, the insta-death mechanic makes the Death Angels feel all the more threatening.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead

To help you get around the carefully crafted levels, you will gain quickly gain access to a noise meter that will highlight the ambient sound around you, allowing you to gauge just how slowly you need to crawl through the environments. Opening doors too quickly will attract attention. This is an incredibly slow game and does build tension nicely. In fact, this is one of the slowest games I’ve ever played.

Alex suffers from asthma and stressful situations will bring on asthma attacks. You will be going through a comical amount of inhalers and pills throughout the game. It makes sense as a gameplay mechanic, but the asthma mechanic as a whole feels woefully overtuned. Whilst it does make sense that lifting heavy objects or climbing tall ledges as quietly as possible may trigger attacks, being near a Death Angel also triggers the. It’s a neat idea, but the linear level design and AI can often be completely unforgiving, with the Death Angel stopping randomly for extended periods. It often feels like some of my deaths were completely unavoidable. However, I did learn that reloading checkpoints will completely refill Alex’s lungs, and with some fairly generous autosaving, you can use that knowledge if you want.

As such, this game is incredibly challenging even on the default normal difficulty. Sometimes, this can be aggravating, as the game design is balanced unfairly against you when in Death Angel zones. In some earlier areas, like the forest I feel like I got through purely because of luck rather than using any mechanics to my advantage. Once you do get used to the game’s mechanics, and what you can get away with, things really start easing up but some sections do get borderline frustrating.

However, there are genuine signs of creativity in the level design that really showcases the games best moments. A derailed train provides one of the game’s most tense and exciting moments. Whilst traversing, particularly dusty areas leads to moments where you are trying to move as fast as possible without making any sound. However; these are all fairly restricted and the game rarely lets you flex creativity.

Even though it’s a tired subject, the yellow paint pandemic goes a bit too far in this game; just about every interactive object has yellow paint splattered on it for no apparent reason. This is just incredibly bizarre, as the signposting in this game is good otherwise. In occupied areas, sand will mark pathways, and the game is fairly linear as well. And if you do get lost, a handy hint button has been implemented.

Otherwise, Road Ahead does paint a really solid picture. The Death Angles move at breakneck speed and look absolutely terrifying which is great because in the stealth-heavy encounters, you will be spending quite a lot of time looking at them. And I have to say this is one of my favourite monster designs that lives up there with the Xenomorph and I love how up close we can get with them. Incredibly well done.

Unfortunately, there are some rough edges. Often times objects scattered around the environment are placed specifically to give a maze-like structure rather than dropped in a panic. It feels a little fake and would have been nice to have a little more realism to the design and this shows up sometimes, like the booby-trapped trainyard. All of this gives The Road Ahead an uneven feel.

As for sound design, when it comes to A Quiet Place, less is more, and that’s the same here. One of the best aspects of the first movie was its sparse use of sound. This is replicated quite well here with plenty of well… quiet moments. Tension in the Death Angel encounters is heightened with Alex trying to keep her shit together with a more rapid heartbeat as she gets more anxious and closer to an attack.

However, it’s not completely devoid of dialogue. Padded rooms allow characters to talk in a soft whisper, whilst louder background environments such as a waterfall disguise louder sounds from the protagonist. This allows A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead to have more dialogue-heavy sequences without breaking immersion, and for the most part, it’s quite effective with decent enough performances.

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is a better game than I expected. It’s good, but it could have honestly been a lot better, even great. The developers have, for the most part, successfully managed to translate the movie’s unique and engaging premise into game form. However, uneven level design and repetitive gameplay holds it back from being truly great. I hope we get more from A Quiet Place, as there’s so much untapped potential in bringing it to gaming form, but this is a solid enough first effort.

Graphics: 7.5 Stunning Death Angel design aside, A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead looks solid enough but often feels a little fake.	Gameplay: 7.5 A tense incredibly slow paced adventure with a few hiccups that kill the pacing. The gameplay is slow-paced, but the overall loop actually makes up for a tense experience. A few hiccups do severely hinder the pacing, however.
Sound: 9.0 Sound is a weapon, but not yours. The Road Ahead recaptures that same feeling from the movie perfectly.	Fun Factor: 6.0 I won’t deny that there are some neat ideas in here, but the execution just isn’t there yet.
Final Verdict: 7.0

A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead was provided by the publisher.