Excerpt from the official website:

”Murders…
Dozens of horrific murders. People are leaving the town in panic.
The
police are bending over backwards to catch
the criminal; the military are putting cordons round the town…
but nothing can stop the maniac. New people are found dead every
day. Horror and death reign over the town…

You wake up and find yourself in a mortuary. The room, which you
are in, is in a mess. Dead bodies lie scattered all around you…
What am I doing here? What happened in the room? You cannot remember…
The answers await you at the end of your journey…

”
Midnight Nowhere” will immerse you in a world rich in atmosphere.
In this suspenseful, story-driven adventure you will solve numerous
puzzles and battle creatures of the dark to reveal the ultimate
mystery. Prepare yourself for the most thrilling experience in
a stunningly beautiful 3D world of suspense and horror!”

High Expectations Shattered

Those are the words that
caught my attention about a year ago. It sounded so apocalyptic
and thrilling. Though the amnesia plotline
has been used numerous times, there are not many adventure games
featuring an apocalyptic theme. Amber Journey Beyond and, one of
the most intriguing RPG games of all time, Planescape Torment are
some of the few. I was excited to hear the news that the North American
release would by handled by Tri-Synergy, the distributor of the highly
acclaimed adventures The Longest Journey and Runaway:
A Road Adventure.
It was the perfect scenario. Nothing could go wrong. With two previous ‘A’ titles
on their resume, it was looking as though they were going for the
trifecta. But, after playing for a few hours, all of my expectations
were shattered.

What should have been one intriguing adventure game has been tarnished
with vicious hotspots, tedious game concept, cheesy dialogue, and
worst of all: an extraordinary amount of nudity and smut that made
me sick to my stomach.

Vicious Hotspots:

Not long ago I wrote a
review of a game titled Serpenthead Revisited that also incorporated
numerous teeny tiny hotspots. Compared to
that game, Midnight Nowhere is the hands-down winner at hiding hotspots.
In one sequence I spent hours just to discover that a dead nurse’s
body had two different tiny hotspots. The hotspots are so small that
I never realized they existed until I found a walkthrough noting
hotspots on the left pocket and the neck. I was stuck for hours because
I was supposed to pick up an item from inside the left pocket.

This is not the only vicious
hotspot within the game. There are tons of them scattered around.
Unless you know for sure what you
are looking for, you would not realize that many of these hotspots
even exist. To make it worse, there are numerous items scattered
about that you can examine – posters, books, etc. – that do
not serve any function at all.

The game does occasionally try to help by using default icons for
certain items, but this does not work most of the time since you
then need to click on a different icon to manipulate the item. It
would have been easier if the player could just move his cursor around
the screen searching for items that can be manipulated without wondering
if the game is giving a false hint.

Tedious Game Concept

Midnight Nowhere utilizes
one of the most tedious concepts in adventure games: every action
has to be done in sequence. For example, in most
cases you will not be able to manipulate an item unless you first
use the ‘Examine’ icon. Even though the ‘Use’ icon
is available at the time and it is obvious why you want to use the
item on the screen, the character will not do anything unless he
first knows the identity of an object. You need to first ‘Examine’ an
object before you activate the ‘Use’ icon.

Another example is combining
inventory items. If you open your inventory while the ‘Use’ or ‘Look’ icons are highlighted,
you will not be able to combine two items in your inventory. Instead,
you must use ‘Pick Up’ icon on that item, click on ‘Use’ icon
and then click on the second item. The same thing applies if you
want to use an item on your screen. You must click on ‘Pick
Up’ icon, click on the item in your inventory, click on ‘Use’ icon
then use it on the hotspot on the screen. This is extremely tedious
especially as most adventure games allow you to utilize the ‘Use’ icon
directly. Yes, I know it makes much more sense to pick-up an item
first before using it, but come on, this is only a game and the poor
sequencing only leads to frustration. It should have been kept simple
and focused more on the puzzles not on how to manipulate inventory
items.

Some actions or items
within the game are not be available until you perform certain
actions first even though the objects are right
there. For example, in the jail scenario, the first time the main
character lands inside the cell, you can clearly see that there are
beds, a table, a stall, cards on the floor, etc. But, you can not
use the ‘Look’, ‘Use’, or ‘Pick Up’ icons
on those items unless you first talk with the inmates. The same thing
happens when you want to talk to one of the inmates a second time.
You will not be able to initiate a second conversation until you
have first used the ‘Look’ and ‘Use’ icons
on all of the beds inside the cell. This is really frustrating since
he then only says to choose any bed without any clue to ‘Use’ them
first before you could talk with him again.

Anyhow, a word to the
wise, if you find yourself stuck, make sure you have used both ‘Look’ and ‘Use’ on
the items.

Cheesy Dialogue

Sometimes, a so-so game
can be saved by brilliant dialogue. This is not in the case for
Midnight Nowhere. It is filled with cheesy
dialogue and foul-mouthed characters. It’s not clear whether
or not the cheesiness can be attributed to a bad translation from
the Russian language. Comments like “Only the Terminator could
access this room,” and ‘What’s with this habit
of your unscrewing everything that’s not screwed down,” are
just a few of the dumb responses your character will mouth when he
cannot perform a certain action. Even worse is you sometimes don’t
know if he is just making another lame comment or giving you a clue
for a puzzle. It was the fist time I ever wanted to just go inside
the game and just beat-up the main character.

Conversations with secondary characters finds even more cheesier
dialogue embellished with lots of unnecessary curse words. Often
they repeat the same information over and over again when you try
to talk to the character a second times and you are forced to hear
the same vulgar comments.

Sexual References Galore

Call me too conservative, old fashioned, or whatever names you want,
but the nudity and sexual reference images in almost 90% of the rooms
or items I encountered made me real sick. They are not necessary
for the game. They do not add any additional values to the puzzles
and to be honest, you could mistakenly think Midnight Nowhere was
a soft-porn game.

Sexual references abound. Look at a wall: it is plastered with pictures
of naked woman. Look on the bookshelf. Open a book and there are
sexual references or stories inside the book. Open a drawer. Guess
what, there is a sexual object kept inside the drawer. Go to the
bathroom. There is naked dead woman in the bathtub. Maybe if I go
to the school or another educational place there will not be any
nudity. Wrong again. Bottom line, no matter where you go or see inside
the game, you will find at least one sexual reference. . Finally,
I had had enough.

I’m not sure whether all characters inside the game is sex-maniacs
or it’s just me that it too conservative. It is never even
crossed my mind that a hospital would be decorated with scads of
nudity and sexual objects in every corner of the rooms.

I really think that this kind of display will at least turn away
some if not even most adventure gamers. I do not recommend that you
play Midnight Nowhere if you have a child in the room. Unless you
play by yourself in a locked room, or you are not offened by the
constant sexual references, then just ignore this game. There are
lots of better titles out there that handle adult subject matter
in an adult way without sex or nudity. Remember, you have been warned.

The Good Parts

What left to like in Midnight
Nowhere? Well, the atmospheric environment is really excellent.
Combined with the graphic quality (I’m
not talking about the sexual references), the background music nicely
builds the game tension. The chords are simple, but suitable for
a horror survival game. The creepiness of some of the images, such
as a hanging dead body in the hospital hallway, will give you goose
bumps.

Some of the puzzles are actually quite good and clever. Of course
like any other horror-based games, you will find lots of key-based
puzzle. But Midnight Nowhere makes it more complicated. The keys
are well hidden and not too obvious. Sometimes you need to examine
the environment before you realize that a key is hidden. Some passwords
or key codes are cleverly hidden inside notes. You are even given
couple of riddles to guess the correct password. Even though trial
and error will sometimes lead you to choose the correct answer, the
word will not appear on your answer list inside the conversations
until you have checked out all the clues.

Some puzzles solutions are quite gory. At the beginning of the game
you have to chop off a finger and later human heads to solve a puzzle.
Due to the mature content, I highly discourage this game for anyone
under 18 years of age.

The camera views are perfect
for nearly every screen. Even though you are sometimes shown a
limited fixed camera angle, it’s
done to build the tension of the scene much like a Hitchcock movie.

Midnight Nowhere is a
true point-and-click adventure game with no action sequences. There
is a gun in the game, but it is used to solve
puzzles not to kill people. There are also no timed sequences and
it’s a very stable game – I did not encounter any crashes.

The save game system is somewhat deceiving. There are plenty of
save game slots but you can only save another game by typing a new
name on the save game title box. It then automatically creates a
new slot.

Conclusion

In the end, the title
is prophetic. Midnight Nowhere will take you nowhere. Unless you
enjoy mature content, the game is not too much
fun. I am not one of those persons. It is too bad that a game with
some clever puzzles, a good story and creepy environments is ruined
by an over reliance on unnecessary mature content. This will be the
first time I given two different grades to a game. It’s up
to you to decide whether this game will suitable for you or not.

Final Grade:

D- as a final grade for the game as a whole
C+ as a final grade for its puzzles and story only.

System Requirements:

• Pentium II 400
• HDD 1GB Hard disk
  space
• Memory 64MB RAM
• Video DirectX Compatible
  Video card
• Sound DirectX Compatible
  Video Sound card
• CD-ROM 4X CD ROM drive