Moons of Madness

Excellent Lovecraft inspired walking sim / puzzler. Beautiful level art, well written and voiced story and some great set piece scares.
9 \ 10

Moons of Madness
Tides of the Elder Gods
Review
Once again Funcom expands its online MMO's lore - the formerly known The Secret World but re-purposed as Secret World Legends in 2017 - with a new interactive narrative experience in Moons of Madness which acts in exactly the same way as Funcom's previous effort, The Park. What that means is you are getting a heavily story-based experience with some light puzzle solving as opposed to one that includes combat and an overdose of action.
Moons of Madness wears its Lovecraftian inspiration with pride as you take on the role of an engineer sent by the shady Orochi Group of Secret World Legends to assist other scientists carry out their research on Mars. The games first hour or two, as you are introduced to the base station and the various maintenance tasks you need to carry out as part of your engineer profile are sublime. Even though most of the tasks are menial, there is a definite sense of dread you can feel building on the periphery because from the moment you arrive at the research base things start to go wrong as critical machinery continuously breaks down. One evening, after a particularly harrowing dream, your engineer awakens to find the station in the throes of a cosmic horror invasion.
As the player you will soon realise that it's no coincidence your engineer has found himself at this particular station as the games convoluted plot goes into overdrive. This is where narratively things start to get a bit messy. A lot of what is really going on is hidden away in text documents or emails that you can access from various terminals. Players will be required to read the lot of them and put most of the story into a logical sequence themselves. There are the occasional cutscenes and dialog sequences between characters to help you along, but a lot of them will remain stubbornly obtuse without the player piecing together the backstory, so pay attention to what it is your are reading else the final few hours of the game could end up making very little sense at all.
While Moons of Madness contains some great scares, particularly the sequence where you are being chased through the vents by a ghastly tentacled monster, this in itself becomes somewhat problematic. While there aren't a great deal of these encounters, as the game will mostly herd you away from imminent danger, the ones that are there feel like a missed opportunity to really ratchet up the tension because most of these sequences are horribly sign-posted in terms of what your engineer needs to do in order to survive them. This may lead to some of these sections becoming more frustrating than they need be, often requiring the player to play through them again because they died. There is no greater mood kill in a horror game than repetition so a few of these scary sequences end up becoming somewhat diminished. The game also suffers from some poor pacing at various junctures which I imagine will lead to quite a few gamer's tumbling out of the adventure citing boredom.

None of Moons of Madness puzzle solving is particularly challenging as most of the time you will either be required to access various consoles, calibrate and re-calibrate panels, bypass broken circuitry or spend your time tuning into radio frequencies. For the most part the puzzles are fine and the solution is never far out of grasp. There are two vastly different endings you can attain but due to the linearity of the game you may want to ensure you save near the end and experience both in one playthrough rather than play through the entire 9-10 hour adventure again just to see the second ending.
While Moons of Madness opens strongly, it simply can't hold that promise of initial dread due to some really poor pacing that constantly feels like padding, some really lacklustre voice acting, particularly that of the engineer who throughout the adventure sounds as if he is about to fall asleep on his two feet. The games plot is messy and far too convoluted with so many red herrings and plot devices introduced and then abandoned leaving the gamer with many unanswered questions by the time the credit sequence rolls around. While the game looks great graphically, with some of the later game environments being quite startling, it can also be a chore to play through. It's this uneven approach that eventually gets the better of this horror/sci-fi adventure. If you are a fan of all things Lovecraftian then I would say give it a try, but for most of you, you are all better off picking this one up when discounted.
One word or phrase to sum up the experience
Uneven
Performance/Bug related incidents
Nothing
Similar to games
The Park, Deliver the Moon, Conarium
Rating ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Moons of Madness was better quality game than expected, already bit too used to this genre being your crappy performance, ok visuals, tons of chasing, darker than night at childhood yada yada. MoM did look exceptionally much better than expected, did have at points crappy performance (just at pair of points), little bit of chasing and some darker places, but not pitch black.
One thing can truly appreciate in this title is that it doesn't over use same monster or theme. You don't run 5 hours while tentacle creature goes slurpislärpi behind you, instead there is portion of that and then several other different types of enemies through the story line.
Voice acting and story was well made and interesting also think the game is quite good in it's length, as it keeps it's themes interesting and nothing over stayed it's welcome. Once again the title doesn't basically present you another character or it actually does, but not in way you would go around with them solving the issues, instead you get the orders and communication over radio, but still at least meet/see them at some point.
It's pretty straight forward experience, but one can look environment and stuff around it for little infos and usual text logs, pc screens and such which give more bigger picture about what happened or is going on with pair of different endings based on your choice.

A fun walking simulator with mystery, intrigue, tension and the occasional jump scare. Graphics are *chef kiss*, and the story kept me hooked up until the third act where it gets a bit disjointed. Ended up feeling like a coagulation of set pieces from the cosmic horror playbook. The puzzles are few and far between and could be completed by a toddler, so naturally I struggled with them.
Definitely worth 5-7 hours of your time.. on sale.

Moons of Madness is pretty good. I do wish there were more rating variations on Steam. This Lovecraftian space-romp horror show isn't great but it does a decent amount of things right to keep you gripped till the end of its fairly short run-time. Half price definitely boosts my rating and there's some solid atmosphere and design choices throughout.
You play as Shane Newhart, a member of a team of astronauts and researchers who have established base camp on Mars. Right from the get go things are already slowly, subtly taking a wrong turn as Shane finds himself lost inside a cryptic fever dream that foretells some of the events to come. It doesn't take long for things to get worse; communications scrambling, strange growths cropping up around the base and evil creatures want to rent space in your head and tear claw through your hide.
You'll be running from one part of the base to another, fixing systems, solving puzzles, grabbing items, reading notes, taking the Mars rover to further away vistas and generally trying to find out what in the name of cosmic freakery is going on. When you're on the planet's surface you'll need to replenish oxygen, other times beasties will be chasing your hind end indoors and there's even a random boss fight to tangle with. If someone asked me to name one and only one of Moons of Madness' best qualities I would have to say it is the variety in gameplay. Some of the puzzles are generally fun to solve, I enjoyed the different terrain that you get to traverse and I had fun with the few actual threats that are thrown your way. You'll even have to navigate your way through twisted versions of Shane's childhood memories.
Accompanying the varied Martian itinerary are great animations for things like manipulating objects and computers, refilling your oxygen, climbing, etc. The graphics are well-done with Mars' outdoor areas looking appropriately vast and barren and the in game animation is some of the better I've seen in a not quite triple A horror game. Even when something might only require pressing a button, it sometimes feels as if you're doing much more. The plot, pacing and voice acting further drug me deep into the experience even if I feel the game's third and penultimate act is incredibly rushed and lets things down a bit. The first two chapters are noticeably longer and that leads to one of MOM's biggest flaws; it's quite short from start to finish.
I thought the enemies were fairly cool and that each later section provided some new foes to deal with. Only the boss sequence has any semblance of fighting (and a couple encounter with sinister guard droids during the endgame) that's done with quicktime button presses although you're equipped with a wrist scanner bracelet that does give you both the ability to vanquish some of the slimy plant creatures as well as tap into various security systems to help you evade some of the robotic monstrosities...I actually loved the scanner and it was another high point as some of the puzzle solving is done right on it and it feels like the game has a level of control to its puzzles that's slick and refreshing.
For me one of the most irritating parts of the game is anywhere that you're forced to run or drop downward, the consequences for error are rather unclear. You'll drop far distances sometimes and only hurt yourself, while a mere couple of inches forward can mean your certain death. The rules to the mechanic are shaky at best. In fact these sequences amounted to my only in-game deaths and didn't really make sense. That's the other wound to MOM's wings is the fact that other than some puzzles that require a bit of lateral thought to move forward, it's fairly easy even though danger is included. There are a few quicktime "battle" events but it's nothing that you can't pass on the first or maybe second try.
Additionally, sound's on point with this one and I thought the voice acting for all the main characters was mostly fair to very good. So as you can see there's a lot to like in Moons but some of the lesser gameplay mechanics, the short length and very easy action segments make this one come with caveats when you're considering to go with the full price. That part's completely on you and your wallet. For half the big money, I had a pretty good time with Moons of Madness.

All good, no bad. Just adding my +1.
+Graphics were very good.
+Sound/Audio/Music was excellent!
+Story was new (at least to me) and interesting. Made me think.
+All achievements work properly.
It was one of the few games were I found myself snapping screenshots all over the place. I highly recommend it for anyone who is into Lovecraftian lore. It's got a couple of very minor jump scares. It's not that scary but the environments do create tense situations.

Alright, let me get this out of the way... it's a short game, I beat it in under 6 hours, and that's with a few deaths and reloading checkpoints. Now, currently it's sitting in the Steam Store for $35 (CAD) which I don't feel is quite worth it, but if you can get it on sale, or if you got it for free as part of their promotion with Cyrano Story, then it's definitely worth it!
I had a blast playing this game! It is mostly an exploratory game with several puzzles, some stealth, but also has a lot of horror elements, frightening moments with jump scares, and even chase sequences. The puzzles aren't too difficult, and the atmosphere keeps you on your toes so there really are no boring moments.
The look and feel of the game is kind of similar to SOMA or Alien: Isolation. There was definitely some inspiration taken from those games, but also has its own unique elements.
If you're into achievements as I am, there are 23 easy ones to get completion with. One is missable, and has to do with stepping into an electric puddle and dying . The rest are story-based, with the exception of two different endings. If you reload the last checkpoint after finishing the game, just choose the other option and you'll have both. There, easy, perfection!
What more can I say? It's a fun game, it's short, not quite worth the full price, but get it when it goes on sale and you'll have a great experience!