So is Moons of Madness actually scary? Well, sort of.
The nightmare sequences are the best in the game. It was a poor introduction to an awesome monster, but thankfully the other monsters fare a little bit better, even though they aren’t really challenging. One of the first monsters you’ll encounter, simply known as the “Thing in the Mist”, was laughably bad after you start briskly walking away from it.
The horror element of Moons of Madness is split into two major components: the physical threats and the cosmic entities that twist reality. A dull mid-game boss fight that was comprised of annoying quick-time events is the only time the game comes really close to having any sort of combat. There isn’t any combat in Moons of Madness, at least not in the traditional sense.
For the most part though, the core gameplay will revolve around exploration. You walk around an environment with a trusty gadget that can scan the environment and interact with all sorts of things, solving small puzzles or interacting with computers to gather information and indulge yourself into the world that is set up, occasionally coming face to face with terrifying threats. The easiest comparison to make of what Moons of Madness is or looks like, is to compare it to SOMA. As someone who has never played (or even heard) of that game before, I found Moons of Madness relatively easy to get into but most of the plot threads featuring Orochi ended up feeling slightly confusing. Orochi, a corporation in the Secret World universe, is the same on that owns the Mars base, for instance.
#METACRITIC MOONS OF MADNESS FULL#
Moons of Madness shares a universe with another Funcom game known as The Secret World, and is full of Easter eggs and discoveries that should please fans of that title. So even though you aren’t truly alone, with semi-regular dialogue through the radio, there is a strong sense of isolation and loneliness. Even though you do have a crew with you on your Mars base you will rarely see them, as they are off doing their own jobs by the time the game starts. I was hooked onto the cosmic horror aspect of the game from the getgo, and that was easily the strongest part of the experience. Some of the twists are rather predictable and some aren’t, but the execution and storytelling was always solid. As the cosmic events start changing things, conflict arises in the crew as they start questioning what is real and what is not. The story here is brilliant, with a strong emphasis on world building and a deeper lore that gets revealed as the game progresses. In a desperate battle for survival, Shane must find a way to stop the infestation and discover the truth behind the nightmares before it’s too late. Things start to go wrong and the nightmares everyone is having become reality, with the infestation getting rapidly worse. When you wake up, you head out on a routine mission to re-align some solar panels and prepare for the arrival of the new crew. After a nightmare sequence that has the base overrun by tentacles and a mysterious figure roaming around, you wake up with everything seemingly fine. You play as Shane Newehart, an engineer for the Trailblazer Alpha Mars base owned by the Orochi Corporation.
0 kommentar(er)
