Midnight Nowhere
This game first surfaced a good
year or so back. The graphics looked good and the story line was
definitely not a cookie cutter adventure game. A number of preview
copies were sent out around the gaming community – but the dialogue
was Rumanian with English sub-titles and the documents and signs
were un-translated. As best we could tell – it seemed a dark,
futuristic game with a great deal of promise.
Having finished the game, I
wish I could say the game was good, fair or even just tolerable. Not
that case. Instead, this game gets a big thumbs-down from me. If
that is all you need to know – don’t bother with the rest of the
review. If you want to know what happened with this game – read on
at your peril.
The Good
Yes, I know – it seems
contradictory. But, Midnight Nowhere had it’s share of high points.
In fact, my initial impression of the game was very positive. I
liked the demo and was set to have a good time with this game.
The graphics that impressed me
in the demo, in fact were even better in the game. They have a
surreal look and feel to them, which is unique and appealing. As you
wander through the game, there are a large number of objects and
places to look at, interact with that aren’t essential to the plot
or game advancement. You get glimpses of violently torn apart rooms
and still figures hanging or crumpled in death just out of reach.
All of this created a mood that was disturbing – but entertaining. I
don’t mind a dark horror tinged game in the least. The look of the
game is base line industrial generica, but the posters, their neon
swatches of color and other items add a great dimension to the look
of the game. The faces of people on posters and photos are all
slightly off, nightmarish even. I wondered as I played, if perhaps
the whole thing was a nightmare and not real to the character at
all. The music added a whole other layer to the atmosphere and I
really enjoyed myself, at this early point of the game.
The story was fairly original
and at times riveting. There were many plot possibilities, that
passed through my mind about where the game was headed and what had
been going on in this hospital of horrors. The ending – though
rushed was acceptable and made sense.
So the real issue is – with
such a unique story line, great graphics, ambiance and other
positive factors, how did this game not only lose my interest; but,
cause me to dislike it? Well let’s see, where do I start?
The Bad…
In the beginning, you find
yourself climbing out of a body bag. You have no memory of who you
are, where you are or how you got there. This part of the game was
pretty good. With all the obvious carnage and violence, it seemed
fairly crucial to figure out fast, who you were and what was going
on. I had a number of tasks to complete, challenges to overcome. It
is essentially an “open the door” get to the next level – multi task
game. I liked the game at that point and was fairly engrossed. So we
get to the next corridor and there are a number of locked rooms. No
problem, I figured my way into a few of them, started accumulating
inventory items and had a good impression of the game so far.
But that is pretty much where
the puzzling stopped in terms of variety. It was not just one door
or even 4 doors – but an endless stream of one locked door, broken
door, jammed door, tied off door after another. And there would be
multiple locked doors in every new area – so it was difficult to
tell which couldn’t be opened til later, or held the keys to the
other locked doors or might never be opened at all in this game or
this lifetime. I can say that I actually like locked door puzzles,
but a whole game of them is a little dull after a while.
Now there is another aspect of
the game, that truthfully, didn’t disturb me a great deal or ruin my
gameplay – BY ITSELF. The language in the game is definitely on the
rough side of the spectrum. Now there are a many adventure gamers
who will find that reason enough to take a pass on this game. You
definitely wouldn’t want to play this with your kids. But I suppose
I got acclimated after the first 20 times and – well this guy is
obviously not a polished good guy. He looks and acts like a soldier
or undercover cop out in the field. SO I just sort of shrugged and
moved on. Then there are the soft porn graphic pictures. Again, I
went huh? Hmm ok. They were less than what you would see in Playboy
or even many fashion mags these days, but they did get more
realistic and graphic as the game progressed. There is a chapter
where you are in a prison cell with some definite low lifes, so it
seemed logical to the plot – if unnecessary. Again, many gamers out
there might easily add this aspect to their list of reasons on why
not to buy this game.
What did it for me are the
ugly parts of this game, which when factored into my gaming mood –
made all the annoying stuff go from annoying or noticeable to
grating. SO the terrible parts of the game created a cascade effect,
where my view on the game got worse and worse til I wanted to stop
playing and smash the game.
The Ugly……
Getting back to the
interactive part of the graphical environment. Though, I truly liked
the surreal imagery and the many items you could look at and
interact with. Many of these I could have also done without. The
posters themselves were pretty funny. One in particular, dealt with
the risks of drug use and had a person who was eventually killed,
because a machine operator who hated drug addicts ran the guy over.
Juvenile – probably – but I laughed hard at a number of these public
service type posters. However, your characters comments were many
times stupid and annoying and after a while just started ticking me
off.
Which leads us to the
dialogue. I have mentioned the choice of language, but what really
got to me were the comments the guy makes as he examines his
environment. A great deal of your quest for “door opening devices”
and/or items that will lead to “door opening devices” involves
searching and examining dead bodies. Conveniently – they are
liberally strewn about – so you have a lot to look through. What was
annoying, became irritating and moved onto obnoxious - were these
little comments. One dead woman would have been great, “with a
little more silicone.” Another was a princess, but he couldn’t
explain that one if he took her home. This guy never ran out of a
new way to smack down a dead woman. After the 15th
reference to a cold shower, steaming the mirror and whatever phrase,
to say the same thing – I just got pretty tired of the lack of
creativity in the dialogue. 20 times might have been slightly
humorous – maybe – but 100 times and you just want to shoot someone.
To get another perspective, I had my 14 year old give it a whirl –
and he got bored and cranky sooner than I did. He asked, if 12 year
olds had written the dialogue. Hmmm, Maybe they did?
This aspect was ugly, but what
really kindled my growing disdain, were the eternal pixel hunts and
the interface, which added a whole new level of pain to this endless
searching.
The interface uses a sort of
throwback mechanism – like those used in early LucasArts games.
Instead of an automatic interactive cursor, you have to manually
click up top to change it’s function. If you want to pick up
something you have to click “grab” to enable that function. Even
that wouldn’t have been too bad, if the interface had been
consistent or the cursor would have lit up on items of interest. It
did – BUT only if you had the correct function selected. In other
words, if there was a close up needed to get at an item and you had
“grab” selected, when you slid your cursor over the area – nothing
would happen. And what function would get a response - wasn’t
consistent. I spent more time trying to figure out which function
would allow me to do what the game clues and my own logic told me
should be done than I did just doing it. For example, there is a
radio in the game. I needed batteries. Seemed like a logical source
for such a thing. Except no interface seemed to work. “look” just
got the same comments. “Grab” didn’t work. Finally it came down to
getting a WT – seeing I had been right for the last hour and using
some weird combo to get the thing, and access the battery. And that
was just for one lone inventory item and of course you needed two
batteries. This occurred endlessly through out the game. A chair had
a very important item – but 12 passes over that chair showed nothing
there to interact with and I was stuck for quite a while. It wasn;t
until I inadvertently had a different function selected fot the
cursor – that it suddenly reacted with a glow on that spot. Add in
the fact (that should have been a positive) that this was one fairly
long game with a large number of environments to access and explore,
well it didn’t take long for me to no longer care how or when I got
to them.
Not only is there an over
reliance on pixel hunting, many of the separate “hot spots” were so
close that it was difficult to tell there were more than one in a
given location. Even when you ‘knew” there were more items to
discover in a given spot – it could take painfully slow panning and
clicking over and over again to trigger the right hot spot.
SO for those who think the
seedier elements of the game are the reason for my low opinion,
think again. They were just the icing on a bad cake. This game could
have had a Jane Jenson driven plot and this interface would have
made me see red.
The End of the Road
I would say don’t get this
game unless it is bargain basement priced and only if you have a WT
in hand to help you find the hot spots in the game. Even then – be
prepared to search and re-search the same area to trigger them.
However, for people interested in collector’s items – you might get
it. I think it will have a hard time getting published in the US,
given the language and sexual content. Now I think that should not
be an issue – for games have and will be developed for adults only.
But if the consensus (right or wrong) is that only kids buy games,
then this one will have to have a “mature” or adult only rating here
in the states. That will make it a very hard game to carry in
stores. I doubt the developers would want or even be able to change
the game enough to qualify for a more kid friendly rating – so it
likely will be a UK only purchase for those who want the English
version. Those quantities dry up fast – so I see this game fetching
huge prices on Ebay and the like in a year or so.
Other than curiosity or a
collector’s investment – I say save your money for other games.
Final Grade
Graphics, music – A
Story –
C
Interface and game
play – F
Fun with game – D
Bottom line grade: D-
I played this game on the
following system:
Pent 4 - 2.6 GHz
XP home edition
512 RAM
Nvidia Ge Force 5200
128 Mb video
SB Live sound card
design copyright ©
2004
GameBoomers
Group
