The Midnight Stroll is a superbly poignant sort of expertise. It’s one crammed with distress, heartbreak, and sorrow — all personified by the sport’s impeccable claymation visible design. But it surely’s one you could let wash over you earlier than its true brilliance begins to point out — 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 desires to do is dance.
Once we first booted up the sport, we had been impressed by its distinct visible fashion. The claymation impact is fantastically carried out, and any screenshot of the sport might 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 carried out.
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 fashion that encapsulates the clay design even higher, with twitchy motion and crunching sound design bringing The Midnight Stroll’s inhabitants to life.
Nonetheless, regardless of its visible brilliance, the sport actually fails to grip you in its opening hour or so. It’s a quite simple sport mechanically, with rudimentary stealth sections and little or no participant involvement past commanding Pot Boy to gentle candles. Should 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 discovered 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 stunning 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 excited 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 stunning vista, embrace a narrative very often centred round grief, and have the rating wash over us. The rating genuinely provides Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a run for its cash, with among the finest soundtracks you’ll hear this yr.
Whereas The Midnight Stroll is completely playable in flat display, a variety of its magic is dropped at life in VR. It is a sport made with PSVR2 in thoughts, and it goes past immersing you in its visuals. There may be the same old jank that comes with the medium, which we’ll get into, however simply the sport’s coolest function is a blink mechanic.
Used to both pay attention for hidden objects or activate glowing eyes which might 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 actually 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 surroundings 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 gentle, 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 liked it nonetheless.
Sadly, the VR model of the sport does endure some technical drawbacks. For one, the visuals may be fairly tough, with character fashions adorned by jagged edges. This solely actually involves the forefront through the sport’s model of cutscenes, the place it strikes away out of your first-person perspective. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem for probably the most half, with lots of the sport’s ranges and vistas leaving us in awe of their crooked magnificence.
Nonetheless, 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 might at instances freeze in place, particularly when utilizing the cannon. Ultimately, we found out 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 gentle candles, the button immediate merely wouldn’t seem. We needed to change to flat display one time to amend this. Fortunately, exterior of the primary hour or so, this didn’t occur once more.
Should you’re in search of 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 presents. 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 shifting.
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 a substitute, what stood out to us was the sport’s haunting world crammed with pensive storylines, impactful visuals, and an emotionally weighty rating.
Should you’re anticipating an attractive survival horror gameplay expertise, you gained’t discover it right here. That will have been what we had been in search of as we first performed the sport — particularly contemplating the VR format. However what we received as a substitute was memorable, shifting, and evocatively melancholic. The Midnight Stroll will not be a sport we’ll overlook anytime quickly.
