The Casting of Frank Stone Review: Dwindling Appeal (PS5)

Supermassive is back again with another interactive horror title. This time, however, they have teamed up with Behaviour Interactive, the developer of the popular Dead By Daylight video game. Regardless of how I feel about each Supermassive game, I will always support them. I loved Until Dawn, The Quarry, and other titles in The Dark Picture Anthology, but I realize that they often garner mixed receptions. Their newest title, The Casting of Frank Stone, is no different. 

I enjoyed the majority of my time with The Casting of Frank Stone, but there were things I wished were done differently. It’s ultimately a flawed entry that I would only feel comfortable recommending to some fans. This review of The Casting of Frank Stone will be spoiler-free.

The Casting of Frank Stone was released on September 9th for PS5, Xbox Series S|X and PC. 

See Also: Autopsy Simulator Review: A Star Gone Too Soon

Story: Past and Present

The Casting of Frank Stone probably has my favorite opening in a Supermassive title to date. It immediately builds intrigue through its straightforward premise. A police officer from the town of Cedar Hill visits a steel mill hoping to find information on a missing child. He begins to suspect that the mill doesn’t have the most reliable guard and ends up going in himself to check it out. I was hooked right away as the mill gave off an intimidating atmosphere from the start. The premise is simple but I wanted to find out the mystery behind the missing child and the strange mill. 

Let’s get that movie shot!

Right after this opening, we’re introduced to two sets of characters. I enjoyed how the opening branched off into two different storylines. One is set in the past, years after the event of the opening chapter. Three teenagers want to make a horror movie using the mill as a setting. As you can expect, things go sideways. The second storyline takes place in the present day. Three strangers arrive at a house, each being asked of something. The mystery behind this storyline kept me intrigued for the most part but I ultimately got bored of it. While the initial storyline of the kids making a horror movie intrigued me, I also ultimately got bored of it. It wasn’t because the idea didn’t work, but because the payoff only occurred in the last hour. 

Timelines

The Casting of Frank Stone jumps between these two timelines quite frequently. In some media, this would help with the pacing of the story. In this game, it only hinders it. Nothing scary or substantial happens until the end. It ultimately all feels like the story is purely set up in one timeline, and then jumps to another timeline to do more setup. As a result, the pacing suffers tremendously here. It doesn’t help that the dialogue here was lacking at times. I was unsure if it was the acting at first but I honestly think the actors did the best with the material they had.

I enjoyed this group more than I thought I would. Stan is pretty funny.

The story does come together and makes sense but I can’t help but feel there was an opportunity wasted here. There could have been more of an intriguing mystery or uncomfortable foreshadowing. There could have been more consistent scares or tension. None of that was present until the end. I want to reiterate that I didn’t hate my time with The Casting of Frank Stone. It’s just that, with the interesting premise that it had, it ultimately came together too late and felt underwhelming. Frank Stone should have been more present and much scarier. 

Gameplay: And…Action!

The Casting of Frank Stone follows other Supermassive titles in terms of gameplay. For those unfamiliar, you will control a variety of different characters through some life-and-death scenarios. You traverse through these terrifying environments and make decisions on what to say and what to do. Saying the wrong thing could impact your relationship with a character while doing the wrong thing could potentially get you killed. Players will also have to successfully perform small puzzles and QTEs (quick time events). These QTEs could prevent characters from anything between, tripping to getting their head sliced off. In this game, these QTEs were always the same button, but I had to press the button at the correct time. 

Supermassive tries expanding on the gameplay here to middling results. In The Casting of Frank Stone, players wield a camera. This camera allows players to see upcoming threats and dispel them. This was initially a cool concept that I couldn’t help but feel was criminally underexplored though. Every encounter was the same and lacked tension as I was always well aware in advance when a threat would show up. There was an attempt at making things more difficult when the threat blew my camera in a different direction, but that only required me to readjust the camera. There was no difficulty or sense of tension here.

I wish there was more variety here

What I think The Casting of Frank Stone does well is presenting different scenarios for players to explore. An example of this was when a character momentarily passed out. I had the option of checking their journal which I took. This later unlocked another option in dialogue when talking to that character. Little details like that added to my curiosity about what things would look like in another playthrough.

Graphics and Audio: Cinema Gold

Like the rest of this package, the graphics for The Casting of Frank Stone is rather mixed. While characters and environmental details continue to impress with each new entry, some of the animation continues to suffer. Supermassive knows how to make a damn good-looking game, but when the game moves, it doesn’t always do so in such a pretty way. Eyes are the main culprit here as they have difficulty portraying life. It’s not in every scene but it’s in a handful of them. A majority of the time, they seem to look anywhere but where the person they’re talking to is. It doesn’t help that the characters continuously move their head around when talking to an exaggerated degree. I’m not sure if that’s done to hide lacking facial animation but it took me out of a lot of conversation. 

The environments in this game are gorgeous

I also did have 2-3 instances of an odd graphical bug where a character’s neck would twist. This seemed to happen if I started a conversation with someone and then moved away. I also had some scenes, mostly in the later half of the game, that would abruptly end with a cut to black and then continue with characters in slightly different places as if the game was figuring out what scene to portray next. It wasn’t anything game-breaking but something I should mention. Other than that, however, The Casting of Frank Stone ran smoothly with no frame drops. I enjoyed the moody atmosphere of the Mill and the mansion in the present day.

Immersive Music

One of The Casting of Frank Stone’s best aspects has to be the soundtrack. The music in particular exaggerated an atmospheric feeling of dread in the mill and mansion. The creaking tiles of the floorboard in the mansion to the metallic chimes heard in the mill. Although I never feared what was going to happen in the mill, the background music contributed to the atmosphere and at the very least, immersed me in the story and location it was set in.

Are you interested in The Casting of Frank Stone? Have you played it already? Do you agree with this review of The Casting of Frank Stone? Let us know!

The Casting of Frank Stone was reviewed on PS5.