I’ve said for a while now that horror games need to stop fixating on extra collectible documents and doodads just to lengthen gameplay. Perhaps this is all because of the lack of collectibles. It’s not a major complaint, but it did mildly hinder my immersion. The same goes for the power being out, the communications being down, and even the plant monster. The water filtration isn’t broken because it’s crap and you’ve done this a bunch before, it’s broken because someone has messed with it for the plot. Every time I came across another roadblock, the reasoning felt like the writer coming up with excuses for gameplay. But most of the puzzles didn’t feel like part of the world. Now obviously games need to have gameplay. My biggest peeve with Moons of Madness is that all of the puzzles are obviously just ways to make it feel more like a game and less like a movie. Hello, do you have a moment to talk about our great tentacled lord and savior? Moons of Madness is remarkably grounded for a game about a time-traveling witch summoning Cthulhu on Mars. There are no laser battles or exo-suits to take you out of the experience. Aside from the nightmare monsters and tentacles, the game does its best to stay planted firmly in reality. If Elder Gods did exist, this is most likely how we’d go about trying to study them. That being said, this is the most realistic take I’ve seen. It’s not the first time that Lovecraft has been analyzed through a more “scientific” lense. But in Moons of Madness, it’s more likely the result of careful experimentation or brute-force algorithms. The end goal in both cases is to commune with the chittering horrors from the borders of our reality. It’s science gone mad, not cultists performing ancient rituals. However, Moons of Madness takes a distinctly rational approach to horrors from beyond the stars. Needless to say, plenty of eldritch happenings are afoot. Things only get nuttier from the plant monster. Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays… You let one wrench get rusty, and before you know it you have a portal to R’lyeh. It’s really true what they say: in space, just one minor problem can spiral into a catastrophe. So you get the water filtration back online, only to awaken station’s human/plant hybrid that devours worlds. Fixing the panels restores power to the base, but that reveals that the water filtration isn’t working. Turns out, the station’s automated solar panels aren’t calibrated. Shane awakens one morning from a Lovecraftian Nightmare™ to find that things on Trailblazer Alpha are slowly making their way to tits-up. You’re more of a space handyman than a super serious science guy. Your mission is to make sure the lights work and the pipes aren’t leaking. Stationed on the secret Mars base Trailblazer Alpha, your mission is to find evidence of alien life for the Orochi Corporation. And to its credit, Moons of Madness does enough different to make it more than just, “another one.” You play as Shane Newehart, a space engineer with a troubled past. Don’t go fucking with a perfectly functional formula. Not that any of that makes Moons of Madness bad. Is that… poop? Or blood? Which one’s worse?
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