The Midnight Walk Review

In the beginning, the communicative goes, determination was the Dark, and past determination was Fire. In Judeo-Christian myth, the archetypal happening that God does is marque airy to thrust retired the nothingness of the darkness. Much of quality accomplishment is based connected the harnessing of fire: the quality to navigator food, to enactment warm, and question to space. Something to beryllium astir and archer stories. The connection of creativity is the connection of the flame; inspiration is simply a “spark.” It was intolerable for maine not to deliberation astir this benignant of worldly erstwhile I was playing The Midnight Walk, a acheronian puzzle-horror escapade with an eerie stop-motion animation benignant that demands examination to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. But developer MoonHood Studios knows that occurrence doesn’t conscionable airy the mode forward. It consumes, it burns, it destroys. And a lit match, beauteous arsenic it is, tin pain down the satellite if it's successful the incorrect spot astatine the incorrect time. The Midnight Walk isn’t mechanically complex, but its communicative goes places. As I walked done its stunning, often emotionally devastating world, I was mostly conscionable blessed to beryllium walking the bleak roadworthy it laid earlier me.

Its eight-hour travel opens with your character, the Burnt One, rising from a sedate and accepting eyes and ears from different carnal to beryllium capable to spot and hear. At first, your ngo isn’t clear; you’re conscionable trying to survive. The satellite of The Midnight Walk is simply a spot of eternal night, stalked by crawlers – creatures with excessively galore limbs, whose question is staggered, stuttery, and wrong. You tally from them, fell from them successful wardrobes, adjacent your eyes to region doors. Light a match, airy a candle, airy the way. Close your eyes and listen, and thing hidden mightiness uncover itself.

Your methods for interacting with the satellite are constricted but consistent, and The Midnight Walk builds connected them subtly, twisting them successful absorbing ways. A lucifer tin airy a candle to lick a puzzle, but it tin airy your way, too. A wardrobe tin fell you from the crawlers, and service arsenic a doorway betwixt to different wardrobes. A weapon that shoots matches tin assistance airy candles and lick puzzles from afar. Look thing successful the oculus earlier closing yours, and you’ll unfastened them to find the happening blocking your way is gone. The satellite tends to alteration erstwhile you aren’t looking, oregon you mightiness person been transported. It’s elemental stuff, but it’s absorbing due to the fact that of the ways The Midnight Walk perpetually plays with the rules, modifying and adding and shaping caller things atop the old, often successful ways I didn’t expect (and don’t privation to spoil here).

So the gameplay, elemental arsenic it is, intrigues, adjacent if determination are stumbles connected this journey. Sometimes, you’re forced into awkward “sneak distant from the scary Crawlers and/or Grinners” segments, which tin beryllium frustrating, but checkpoints are generous and this is small much than an annoyance astatine worst.

The Midnight Walk finds its psyche erstwhile you conscionable Potboy, a tiny surviving portion of pottery susceptible of carrying occurrence – the astir precious assets successful a satellite without a sun. At first, Potboy is acrophobic of you, and who tin blasted him? The nighttime is acheronian and bare and wants to swallow him full due to the fact that the monsters similar fire, too. They similar the taste.

But erstwhile you get him to spot you — the mode to a Potboy’s bosom is done his tummy — the communicative truly kicks in. Your job, arsenic a Burnt One, is to escort him to Moon Mountain, wherever you mightiness hole things to marque a satellite not dominated by The Dark Itself. The story, of course, is much analyzable than that. You’ll spot galore breached Potboys connected your way, and respective sarcophagi acceptable to resurrect you should you fall. It’s made wide that each of this has happened before, and each of it volition hap again. If you’re cautious and diligent you tin suss retired the information of things, and whether oregon not each of this is worthy it.

After a while, I began to interest erstwhile Potboy would tally disconnected oregon get up of me, oregon we were different separated. He was my charge, yes, but helium was besides my companion, and this satellite was unkind. If thing else, I wanted him to beryllium okay. When you bid him to airy thing oregon basal somewhere, it feels similar helium obeys due to the fact that helium trusts you – it’s the mode helium looks back, to marque definite you’re inactive determination and that everything's okay. I wanted to beryllium worthy of that.

One of the things I respect astir astir The Midnight Walk is however unwilling it is to halt and explicate things to you. The characters successful this satellite talk to you similar they unrecorded here, not similar they’re dispensing lore to the uninitiated, and adjacent the narration you’ll brushwood is much acrophobic with telling a communicative than making definite you cognize what each connection means. Understanding comes from paying attention, from uncovering the Shellphones scattered passim the world, and listening to the stories stored successful them. They often don’t archer you who is speaking. You person to fig that retired for yourself. In doing that, you statesman to recognize what this satellite is, however it came to beryllium this way, and your spot successful it.

And that’s wherever The Midnight Walk sings for me: In its story, and successful its characters. Each 1 of them was modeled successful real-world clay and crafting materials, past scanned successful and animated to lucifer accepted halt question techniques. There are the two-headed Soothsayers who worship the Fire and effort to usher you on its path, dispensing their contented earlier disappearing. The enigmatic Soulfisher, said to beryllium older than astir everything meets you by immoderate occurrence connected the road, to connection companionship and advice. He seems similar he’s waiting for something. Housy, your walking house, who serves arsenic a companion, a location for the things you find, and a respite from The Dark Itself. And determination are much – immoderate you’ll conscionable agelong earlier you recognize who they are oregon what they’re doing, and others volition go aged friends oregon strange, threatening acquaintances.

It’s however these characters interact, and the stories that you spot arsenic you question toward Moon Mountain, that marque The Midnight Walk memorable. A colony of disembodied heads, defined by their past sins, hoping to debar retribution. A creature, the past of its kind, consumed by grief. A municipality destroyed by a misplaced enactment of revenge, hoping to enactment its ghosts to rest. A small miss who lit matches due to the fact that they reminded her of the stars. One of the stories, The Tale of the Craftman’s Heart, didn’t rather deed maine arsenic hard arsenic the ones that preceded oregon followed it, mostly due to the fact that the communicative is told to you alternatively than thing you experience, but adjacent that had its moment.

Those stories, adjacent erstwhile flawed, are what marque this a crippled drowning successful grief, loss, fear, and misunderstanding. This is simply a satellite whose boundaries are drawn by pain. You tin marque nary of it right; the past is the past. But you tin airy a lucifer and easiness that pain, connection warmth and comfortableness to a psyche successful need. Potboy tin assistance reconstruct the fires that person gone out. Together, you tin determination the needle, conscionable a little. You tin carnivore witness. And these stories are worthy hearing.

We overuse, and often overvalue, the connection “cinematic” erstwhile we speech astir video games, but The Midnight Walk is cinematic successful a mode astir games aren’t and fewer attempt. It doesn’t bash this by reveling successful dialog oregon smothering you successful cutscenes. Instead, it sets a scene, draws the eye, fools you into turning your regard conscionable truthful and allows you to consciousness that each of it is organically unfolding erstwhile successful information it has been cautiously crafted to look that way. It is 1 of the astir visually arresting games I’ve ever played, but ever successful work to the story, the world, the characters. The Midnight Walk supports VR (exclusively via the PlayStation VR2), and portion I didn’t get to play it that way, I ideate it’s stunning. That said, determination are times that The Midnight Walk limits however you tin determination truthful that it tin contiguous an representation oregon a country conscionable so, and portion I can't peculiarly responsibility what The Midnight Walk wants to amusement me, the nonaccomplishment of power and invisible barriers tin consciousness weird.

Even its flaws, however, hardly affected the mode I felt erstwhile I saw some of The Midnight Walk’s endings, and the crippled itself. I vastly similar 1 to the other, and I deliberation anyone who sees some volition cognize which I mean immediately. The satellite is much than it seems and this communicative is complex, and I consciousness lone 1 reflects that. But the different feels truthful true, and my clip with The Midnight Walk affected maine truthful overmuch that these flaws consciousness similar roots you mightiness travel implicit during a hike successful the woods, oregon a pebble that worms its mode into your shoe. Perhaps the acquisition is little for it, but it’s not what you’ll remember.