By "dark", I mean pitch black, to the point where your HUD also vanishes, but your flashlight lights everything up. Too bad it also lights yourself up, making you an easy target for someone else. And thus the dilemma and a surprising, suspenseful gameplay loop. Do you want to see and risk being killed, or stay in the dark and ambush those who felt tempted?
Revolver shots are one-shot kills, so you are expected to use stealth to avoid this. If you hit a wall, the edge of the screen will light up a little to let you know. The only way to really navigate is with the flashlight on, which also lights up your HUD and a map.
Sound is very important to this game, being the primary way to pinpoint people in the dark, using footsteps, opening and closing doors, voice chat and, most obviously, gunfire.
There are a few game modes with something for everyone. Your standard team death match and free-for-all are here, and there’s a wildcard variation that gives you cards to change the mechanics of the game. There’s a loot mode where you have to combine parts of skulls together and cash them in for money, and a team-based mode where demons have to stop the others from banishing evil totems. And to round it off, a solo or co-op mode versus bots where you have to survive the night while getting progressively more cursed.
The main problem with this game is simple: there’s not enough players. I stayed on public search for about 30 minutes and found a grand total of 0 players. Though this was almost to be expected. This is not a standard multiplayer game where you can boot it up and play with random strangers. You have to bring your own friend group or go to the Discord and try to get something going.
The game thankfully tries to remedy this issue by giving you free "guest passes", allowing others to play without paying for the game as long as you are the host. Unfortunately, you’d have to have a Playstation Network account to play the game or use the free guest passes. Thankfully, I managed to get two others to run through the game’s modes with me, but at least four people didn’t want to go through the hassle of creating and linking the account. Removing the PSN requirement would go a long way to ease the barrier of entry.
Bots do exist to play with, but they only work in the wildcard game mode. Playing with and against bots is fine for a while but nothing is quite like the friendly competition experience. But if you don’t get enough people for it to be lively, then something just feels off. Having three people over a two-story mansion just makes it feel empty, so instead of a high-stakes stealth-em-up through the dark, you can just sprint around without a worry, turning it into more of a twitch shooter.
Midnight Murder Club is a fun time, undoubtedly. It’s a great game with no real flaws by itself, decent mechanics and flow with enough variety to keep people coming back. But it’s the same philosophical problem as a tree falling with no-one to witness it. If a game is great but you can’t play it, is it any good? Is it even a game at that point?
If you don’t have a willing friend group, then don’t pick this up. The solo modes and bots just aren’t worth it. But, if you have them, you’ll have a blast with this one.
