Moons of Madness is a reimagining of HP Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness but instead of some twisted mountain it is the red planet itself.
Funcom brings us the game Moons of Madness, intended as a science fiction thriller on the surface of Mars. A strange signal has be coming from the planet’s surface and a team has been sent to investigate. The signal has baffled the scientists from Orochi and they decided to keep the signal from public knowledge, especially after they determined the source to be from someone or something with some sort of intelligence. As a lowly technician you have limited information regarding the signal and your job is simply to keep the station running.
Keeping everything working properly becomes more irksome as setbacks begin to happen and weird things begin to occur. Maintenance tasks range from the tedious and believable to the downright strange like a flooded greenhouse. A greenhouse being flooded is normally a believable occurrence but on a planet with virtually no water where it needs to be rationed closely how did no one notice the leak quick enough to prevent the flooding?
Visually the game is quite stunning but lacks in the ambiance to be a truly horrific title. The puzzles do have a more realistic feel to some of their solutions which makes up for some of the tonal issues but even when trying to up the tension it feels more like the game wants to be scary but simply doesn’t know how. It’s like me and dancing, I’d love to be good at it but don’t have any rhythm or even know how to dance.
