Midnight Nowhere Review

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            Midnight Nowhere

Review by TogerMay 2004

In the spring of 2019, the City of Black Lake is locked in the grip of fear. In less than a month, the gruesome murders of 78 people by a serial killer have left the inhabitants panicked and the authorities at a loss. Sparked by mass evacuations and the need to catch the killer, the town is sealed off and all evacuees detained in special quarantine centers in the hopes of catching the person or persons responsible. Our hero awakens in the morgue inside a body bag with no recollection of how he came to be there or who he is. (I wish I could remember how many times I’ve played an amnesiac.) Welcome to Midnight Nowhere.

Traditional point and click with a third-person perspective, Midnight Nowhere is the latest game from Saturn+, who also brought us Jazz and Faust. The game’s premise—figure out who you are and what’s been happening and get out of your current predicament—is a simple one, but don’t let that simplicity fool you. On the way to puzzling various conundrums, you’ll witness vast amounts of carnage, gore, nudity and some truly odd attempts at twisted humor. This ain’t yo’ mama’s adventure game, so viewer discretion is advised.

Gameplay consists of the usual adventure gaming suspects: riffling through desk drawers, reading other people’s mail, chatting up a few NPCs, frisking lots of dead bodies and hunting up keys …  lots of keys. You won’t find sliders, mazes, towers of Hanoi or variations on memory games, just a treasure trove of doors needing keys. (There’s even that old paper-under-the-door-poke-the-key-out-from-the-other-side-with-a-pointy-object “puzzle”!)You’ll spend so much time looking for keys even the hero of the game will comment on all the locked doors.  I think they should have called the game Doors to Nowhere or Key Hunt because that’s how I felt after the umpteenth hunt for yet another key to open yet another locked door.

Oddly, movement in Midnight Nowhere is node-based—the cursor changes into a glowing green arrow—instead of the scrolling or panning usually associated with third-person games.  As a matter of fact, there is no panning at all in this game.  It’s as if the game originally started out as first-person and somewhere along the way they slapped an avatar in front of the backgrounds. Literally. There were times I couldn’t see where on the myriad bodies I was searching because our intrepid hero was always standing directly in front of whatever I needed to see, which brings us to the first nit to pick: hotspots.

Midnight Nowhere’s hotspots are plentiful—some objects even have multiple hotspots—but they’re not always conducive to helping you solve the issue at hand. Instead of the newer interactive cursor, the game is something of a throwback to “days of yore” in that it offers four icons that you manually choose in order to interact with your surroundings: look, talk, pick up, and touch/use. (Later in the game, you’ll receive a PDA as a fifth icon.) What would normally be a good thing—lots of objects and bodies to search—is turned into a tedious click-fest due to the fact that if you don’t have the correct icon selected, you won’t get a hotspot “hit.” There were a number of times where I knew what needed to be done, but the odd comments from the hero coupled with the icon issue invariably convinced me that my logic was flawed and halted my progress. In a couple of instances, not even having a walkthrough helped negate the problem.

I mentioned finding a PDA. Its purpose in the game is to record various clues as you progress through the rest of the game; however, be warned that it only records about 5% of the clues in the game, and whoever provided the handwriting for it used his feet and a fried chicken claw as writing implements. In one instance, the code for a door (what else?) is recorded incorrectly, causing all manner of violence on the part of this gamer. With another clue, at least one of the numbers appears to be written backwards!

Visually, Midnight Nowhere is … pretty … what an odd adjective given the game’s sinister undertones. The prerendered backgrounds are almost photorealistic and wonderfully dark and foreboding. Gallows humor posters are prevalent throughout the corridors; rooms are shrouded in shadow, ransacked and bloodstained.  In one room, a large blood smear went on for three screens, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what made the smear. Speaking of posters, I should mention that some of the posters are soft porn in nature, and I still haven’t figured out why. I’m pretty sure in most metropolitan morgues, you won’t find posters of naked women decorating the hallways, but I could be wrong. Was I offended?  Not in the least; although I’m still trying to figure out what they had to do with the story.

Music for the most part is unobtrusive and pretty much in keeping with the dark, edgy story. I ran into a couple of places where the music was incredibly loud, drowning out all of the speech, and nothing I did would fix the problem. That’s when I noticed that the music was on a short loop, and it got truly annoying.  Good thing the subtitles are on as a default. Ambient sounds are appropriate and well done.

Voice work for Midnight Nowhere isn’t bad. (One NPC does a horrible Edward G. Robinson imitation by ending all his sentences with “see?” He’d apparently watched the movie Little Caesar one too many times.) Considering our hero is suffering from amnesia and surrounded by death and destruction, the guy who voices the protagonist remains fairly calm. He even has the presence of mind to make bad jokes and tasteless comments. I don’t know if the comments were lost in translation or it was just the strange humor of the developers, but it seemed as if a lot of the comments made were in answer to some unheard conversation. 

Apart from the first paragraph, have you noticed that I haven’t said much about the story itself? It’s tough to talk about this game in specifics without giving away some of the story. When I wasn’t fighting the interface, I thought Midnight Nowhere sported a decent narrative. Sure, it had plot holes big enough for a double tractor-trailer truck, but it still had a twisted, gritty slant to it. No talking rabbits, visitations by aliens or slackers looking for love in all the wrong places.

Unfortunately, having to battle the interface made the game tedious, and I lost interest about a third of the way through. Taking several days’ break from the game didn’t improve my experience any, as I’d lost what little curiosity remained. And that’s a shame, because Midnight Nowhere started out with promise and then slowly fizzled into a dud. Luckily, the pretty graphics and curious plot line kept the game from garnering the FFC rotten egg. As it stands, it’s just mediocre average. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Buka Publisher: Tri Synergy Release Date: March 2004

Available for: Windows

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System Requirements

Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP DirectX 8 PII 500 MHz (800 MHz recommended) 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended) DirectX compatible sound card 8 MB graphics card, 16-bit color 8X CD-ROM drive 400 MB free hard disk space

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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