The Midnight Stroll is a fantastically poignant type of expertise. It’s one stuffed with distress, heartbreak, and sorrow — all personified by the sport’s impeccable claymation visible design. Nevertheless it’s one you’ll want to let wash over you earlier than its true brilliance begins to indicate — and for us, it nearly by no means managed it.
The Midnight Stroll follows the story of The Burned One (the participant) and Pot Boy, as they enterprise to Moon Mountain to unfold flames and reignite the solar. However on their journey, the duo will uncover “tales”: tales starting from a city of decapitated heads to a craftsman pushing his daughter to rule when all she needs to do is dance.
Once we first booted up the sport, we have been impressed by its distinct visible model. The claymation impact is fantastically achieved, and any screenshot of the sport may come straight from A Nightmare Earlier than Christmas or The Corpse Bride. Twisted, malformed buildings, crooked wave-like mountains, decomposing beings with raspy voices — it’s masterfully achieved.
The creature designs will doubtless stick with us for a while. The Grinners are notably nice as their Cheshire cat smiles are as chilling as their unblinking eyes. However, it’s additionally the animation model that encapsulates the clay design even higher, with twitchy motion and crunching sound design bringing The Midnight Stroll’s inhabitants to life.
Nevertheless, regardless of its visible brilliance, the sport actually fails to grip you in its opening hour or so. It’s a quite simple recreation mechanically, with rudimentary stealth sections and little or no participant involvement past commanding Pot Boy to mild candles. In case you’re like us, you’ll discover these early hours lack the hook.
Fortunately, although, one thing occurred as we wrapped up our first story, the place we realized of a violent historical past between the heads of Nobodyville and a creature referred to as the Molgrim. Whereas haunting and eerie in design and essence, one thing lovely emerged from The Midnight Stroll’s type of storytelling, which included gravelly narration and slow-panning visuals swept up in a melancholic rating.
From then on out, The Midnight Stroll simply clicked for us, the place we weren’t fascinated about the missing mechanics or the simplistic degree design. Every new degree of the sport introduces a brand new space that lets us discover a hauntingly lovely vista, embrace a narrative very often centred round grief, and have the rating wash over us. The rating genuinely offers Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a run for its cash, with probably the greatest soundtracks you’ll hear this 12 months.
Whereas The Midnight Stroll is solely playable in flat display, a whole lot of its magic is delivered to life in VR. This can be a recreation made with PSVR2 in thoughts, and it goes past immersing you in its visuals. There’s the standard jank that comes with the medium, which we’ll get into, however simply the sport’s coolest characteristic is a blink mechanic.
Used to both hear for hidden objects or activate glowing eyes which may open passageways, you possibly can shut your eyes on the press of a button, or on Sony’s headset, bodily shut your eyes. It results in some really chilling moments, like luring horrid creatures in the direction of you and shutting your eyes simply in time as you hear their screeches. Or our favorite: having your setting change round you within the literal blink of an eye fixed.
This mechanic combined in with darker ranges, which require you to carry a match up for mild, makes for some nerve-wracking sections amidst the emotional turmoil of its world. It’s by no means fairly as engrossing as a number of the spine-tingling moments in different VR titles like Metro Awakening, however we cherished it nonetheless.
Sadly, the VR model of the sport does undergo some technical drawbacks. For one, the visuals will be fairly tough, with character fashions adorned by jagged edges. This solely actually involves the forefront in the course of the recreation’s model of cutscenes, the place it strikes away out of your first-person perspective. Fortunately, this isn’t a difficulty for probably the most half, with lots of the recreation’s ranges and vistas leaving us in awe of their crooked magnificence.
Nevertheless, there have been a number of sections — primarily within the early hours of the sport — that led to irritating glitches and full restarts. Lit matches may at occasions freeze in place, particularly when utilizing the cannon. Ultimately, we discovered that the cannon would trigger the matches to wiggle round earlier than being consumed, however it was clunky, awkward, and never clearly signposted.
Then, in some sections the place Pot Boy is required to mild candles, the button immediate merely wouldn’t seem. We needed to change to flat display one time to amend this. Fortunately, outdoors of the primary hour or so, this didn’t occur once more.
In case you’re searching for a smoother expertise, then the flat display model is there for all who fancy it. We reckon the flat display model nonetheless brings throughout the emotional core of its expertise, however it does lack the sting that VR provides. Its creatures simply aren’t as imposing and its vistas aren’t as awe-inspiring. And whereas that is not all the time a dealbreaker — it’s par for the course with VR versus flat display — the visuals are very a lot part of the id of The Midnight Stroll, so the flatscreen model simply isn’t fairly as transferring.
Conclusion
As we rolled credit on The Midnight Stroll, any points we had technically or in any other case had lengthy since pale away. As an alternative, what stood out to us was the sport’s haunting world stuffed with pensive storylines, impactful visuals, and an emotionally weighty rating.
In case you’re anticipating an interesting survival horror gameplay expertise, you gained’t discover it right here. That will have been what we have been searching for as we first performed the sport — particularly contemplating the VR format. However what we bought as a substitute was memorable, transferring, and evocatively melancholic. The Midnight Stroll isn’t a recreation we’ll neglect anytime quickly.
