Midnight in Salem Thoughts
Oooh it’s been too long since I did one of these posts wow here we go we doing it again. Don’t think there will be any major spoilers but putting it under a cut just in case.
So uh.... overall, that was pretty bad. I will say it was better in some ways than I imagined and worse in ways I wasn’t expecting.
The Good/Likes:
--Music was surprisingly decent. My guess is they probably just outsourced this portion so it was pretty likely it would turn out good, but it did set the vibe well.
--Elaborate plot. I don’t think it was perfectly executed by any means, but HeR definitely was trying to create a more grown up and more detailed plot than in the past.
--I liked that they had a “Read text only” option for some of the old fashioned-y script-y text that’s sometimes on documents. I did not like that there was a typo in one of the text-only versions. That’s just sloppy.
The Bad/Dislikes:
--The graphics are really bad. Like it is true that the trailer is HeR picking out the 2 best minutes of content and even those were bad. The animation of characters is so sloppy, and the lighting of the environment is cartoonish.
--Navigation is rough. It’s a hybrid between point and click and free-roaming and it just becomes awkward and difficult to get to one specific point in a room using the system. Yet even with that, there were a lot of times where puzzles involved finding very specific items/locations to click on in a room which were virtually impossible to do using the interface.
--Not enough puzzles. I think I can count on one hand how many actual puzzles that took some thought were in the game. 90% of the game was wandering around and talking to people which brings me to:
--SO MUCH DIALOGUE. Thank the Lord we were able to skip through the dialogue because not only was the dialogue lengthy, it was so much filler. So much dumb banter between the Hardy Boys and Deirdre, or Nancy just recapping to a suspect what she already learned. And combining that with sloppy animation makes me think HeR just added dialogue for the sake of adding game time. If the animation had been good, I would’ve at least felt like HeR was just committing to this being a character-heavy game. But this just feels sloppy and lazy.
--It’s all very linear. Everything is really straight-forward with what you should do next and who you should talk to, etc. There’s not the same wandering and exploring freely that happened in the old games, and that definitely made the game feel shorter.
Overall thoughts:
Uh...It’s alright. It feels like an Adventure Company game made in like 2006 that I’d play in between Nancy Drew game releases. It’s something to do, but there’s no charm, and I’m definitely not excited about the next game. Speaking of which, is there gonna be a next game? I would be surprised. I’m really curious what HeR’s long-term plan is for financing, since I’d suspect that the inclusion of the Hidden Staircase trailer as an extra was probably them just selling what was basically ad-space in their game to get some cash.
