{"id":13238,"date":"2026-05-11T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/05\/11\/directive-8020-review\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T14:00:00","slug":"directive-8020-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/05\/11\/directive-8020-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Directive 8020 Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Making the leap to space feels like a big departure from the usually grounded horror of the previous games in Supermassive’s Dark Pictures anthology series. But Directive 8020 reminded me that the sense of isolation, living in a bubble surrounded by forces hostile to human life, makes the dark beyond a great fit for this genre. Kicking off the second “season” of these self-contained tales of terror, the four-year hiatus after 2022\u2019s The Devil in Me<\/u><\/a> has brought a number of much-needed technical improvements and gameplay tweaks \u2013 though some of them are more well-considered than others.<\/p>\n

Directive 8020 follows the suspenseful journey of the Cassiopeia, a sleeper ship sent to scout for humanity’s first exoplanet colony. This is framed to the crew as humankind\u2019s last hope to escape a dying Earth, though clever little hints start to add up that suggest the company line might not be entirely truthful. There’s a lot of crawling around in vents and trying to get critical systems back online after unexpected crises arise, with both the art and the plot wearing their love for films like Alien and The Thing proudly on their space suits.<\/p>\n