It’s often said that “in space, no one can hear you scream,” which without visiting firsthand, I can only assume that the endless vacuum of space would suffocate any sound. But what if something or someone is out there listening? If there is some malevolent being out there, it’s a safe bet that they heard my screams that seethed with anger when playing Moons of Madness, but it’s probably not for the reasons you’d expect.

It’s easy for me to say that Moons of Madness was high ranking on my most anticipated games of 2019, which rolled into 2020 due to the last delay of the console ports. From the moment I saw the initial trailer, I was hooked, and this only escalated once the game was in my grasp and ready to go as one of the first titles I could review that took advantage of the Xbox One X upgrades. You can only imagine my disappointment after patiently waiting for the game to download to find that the game ran like a dumpster fire that’s been casually sprayed regularly with gasoline. You name it – complete loss of audio, frame rates that barely met 10FPS, freezing, crashing, and completely ignoring my stunted progress were all lingering issues that followed me through the initial chapter. This was only remedied by completely uninstalling the software and reinstalling it twice after completing the first few segments on my S model (and then they reared their ugly heads again late into the third act).

Once I was able to actually get into the proper game, I was delighted to find one of the best looking horror games on the market, only rivaled by Resident Evil 7. From the industrial interior settings to the desolate nothingness of Mars, almost everything looks picture-perfect, regardless of which system you’re running the title on. When successfully running on the X model, you’ll notice more realistic shadows, lighting, and fog effects that never cease to impress. Overall, the game sets the visual bar really high, which makes the occasional one-off glitch or wonky animation stand out that much more like an eyesore.

Overall, the audio strives to hit the same high notes but falls just short of greatness, mainly due to the sleepy, disinterested way the protagonist delivers his lines. While the rest of the cast does their best to deliver solid performances, our lead can only deny what’s happening or ask ridiculous rhetorical questions so many times before the player questions whether this is a joke or a legitimate horror experience. This is overshadowed later in the game once the horror elements come out to play, with the token drips, thuds, and bangs that throw your nerves into a wreck, keeping you on the edge of your seat through the big reveal.

The narrative is a large focus in this, and it delivers a solid horror experience that gets bogged down due to an overwhelming amount of themes that get shoved down the player’s throat. There are a number of plot points including cloning, mental health, the Necronomicon, shady government agencies, strange medical experiments, aliens, and the list just keeps going. Even after seeing both of the endings, I am not 100% sure what I experienced or what was the root cause of all of the events within the game, primarily due to a lack of focus. It’s almost as if someone took the best parts of Alien Isolation, Resident Evil, and Dead Space, threw them into a blender and dumped the result on a countertop to mixed results.

Much like the majority of the horror games on the market right now, this is primarily a walking sim with some light puzzle-solving as well as hide and seek mechanics included for good measure. It starts off on the slow side, tasking you with fixing an alarming number of systems and tools around the Mars base you work from, slowly discovering the mysteries surrounding the inexplicable events plaguing the base and its inhabitants. The puzzles focus heavily on exploration and evaluating terminals and notes hidden within the world, working as they should with the exception of one of the final puzzles that froze repeatedly mid-animation, locking me in limbo until I reset the system. This issue bleeds into the area that shoehorns QTEs into the gameplay, where the game picks and chooses whether your attempt is successful based on luck, resulting in a higher number of deaths than I would have preferred, one of which occurred after the post-action cinematic was in motion.

The horror themes that are present are at their best when they are atmospheric, and much like your favorite B grade horror flick at the worst, as the game has no qualms with showing you the creatures in full lighting front and center. It’s a situation where less truly is more, and the most impacting bits are thanks to the ambient audio or when they play out in the quick flashes that make you question whether it was just a flickering light, or something running out of view as quickly as it appeared. Personally, I found the notes and diary entries from computers spread about to be the most terrifying aspect of the game, showcasing the author’s individual descent into madness.

Moons of Madness is a game that I would recommend to anyone with a love of horror, but with the disclaimer that it requires a lot of patience due to the slower than average pace and comes equipped with a plethora of technical issues that’ll have you cursing the sun, the moon, and everything in between.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Stunning Visuals That Look Even Better On the Xbox One X (When It Works)
• Realistic Ambient Sounds
• Interesting Narrative

Cons

• Bugs Literally Everywhere
• Some Ugly (Not in a Good Way) Antagonists
• Some Awkward Visuals
• Bland Voicing Acting from the Protagonist

Moons of Madness was developed by Rock Pocket Games and published by Funcom. It was released on PC, PS4 and X1. The game was provided to us for review on Xbox One. If you’d like to see more of Moons of Madness, check out the official site.

 

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