IllFonic’s Halloween showcases their love not just of horror, but of the nuances that make a horror franchise great. Plenty of tidbits and Easter eggs are scattered throughout the game that fans of the movie franchise will appreciate. Especially with Nick Castle returning as Michael Myers. That said, much of this entry into their 4v1 capsule falls flat for me.
I was unfortunately left feeling very disappointed in the controls, animation, and overall finesse of Halloween: The Game. The game feels rushed and unfinished, and the promise of a single-player mode is a glorified extended tutorial. Understandably, the game itself is a multiplayer experience, but for fans of the dynasty that is Michael Myers and his grizzly kills, this just felt like a dated, reskinned Friday the 13th: The Game.
Halloween Haunt In Haddonfield
I will start by saying that Halloween is my favourite horror franchise. It is what started me down the path of horror as a whole. I know this movie like the back of my hand. We also have not had a Halloween game since 1983 (shout out to the Atari 2600 game). So when IllFonic announced they were creating a game where you play as Michael Myers (or his victims), with not only their consistent and familiar multiplayer but also a single-player mode, I was locked in. Hook, line and sinker. However, I would be lying if I didn’t say the single-player experience left much to be desired. At its core, it is a tutorial. Plain and simple.
Each of the six chapters showcases different techniques for using Michael and the kills he performs as you progress through familiar story beats from the original film, all while being narrated by Dr. Loomis. Starting from his intrepid escape from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium (why on earth did they just blur his face? Feels lazy) all the way to the penultimate moment of hunting down Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night. Needless to say, I was disappointed. It is, at the same time, too long and too short. Too long to be just a tutorial and too short to really get into the minutiae of what makes the first Halloween movie great.
Understandably, its whole purpose is to showcase what can be done with Michael; of course, it sets up each chapter as little areas to coax you into specific kills and how his abilities, like stalker mode and turning into the shape. It left me feeling like it was incomplete, like there had been more, but it was left on the cutting room floor.
There are some major beats of the original story in Halloween, but a lot of it felt like copy-and-paste from the previous chapters. Enter an area, hunt down civilians, find specific special civilians and kill them in a specific special way, all while evading the cops and performing tasks that unlock cosmetics. It all felt very pedestrian, just a vehicle to teach the player new tricks inherently for the multiplayer aspect.
The multiplayer, though I am limited in my experience with it, is exactly what you’d expect from an IllFonic game. With a time limit on your shoulders and three friends at your side, you have to escape from Michael Myers before time is up. To do so, you have to locate a vehicle in the world to escape. Search for its components through the houses in the neighbourhood. By locating things like gasoline and car batteries, you must repair a car to escape before Michael finds you.
Players can also find things to defend against Michael Myers, like flashlights and flares. There may be additional ways to escape from Michael, but I have only completed instances with a vehicle, so I cannot speak with utmost certainty. You can also make phone calls. It is paired with a small mini-game of button inputs; the better you do, the better the phone call and the more police will come to your aid.
Each playable character has its own traits and specs that lend themselves to different playstyles. These can include a sixth sense, athleticism, and better combat. Players can also rescue other NPC civilians to protect them from Michael Myers. Another player controls Michael Myers, who spends their time hunting the players and the civilians down one by one.
Death has come to your little town, Sheriff
If he does end up killing victims, it builds a bloodlust meter that will unlock abilities for him. There is also a progression element for Michael, where players can customize his loadout. Additional cosmetics can be discovered by doing specific sequences in the single-player campaign. I found the multiplayer somewhat cumbersome, but I’m also not the target audience for this type of game.
I am notoriously terrible at multiplayer games, and found I struggled to keep up with the other players. I also had matchmaking issues (this could also be because of timing) and lost connection – and that is not limited to just the multiplayer. My game crashed several times, including one time where it basically killed my console and shut it all the way down.
As Michael, the finishers and stalking elements are what really shine here. There are so many choices for environment kills, from fireplaces to fridges, motorcycles to fence posts. If you can imagine it, it might just be there in the game. Not dissimilar to the phone call element of civilians, there is also a button input sequence to kill a victim while you hold them hostage. Pushing the right combination in the right order triggers the finisher. But you can’t hold onto your victim too long, or they might just get away. While using the stalking function, you see through Michael’s eyes. You can locate telephone and electric boxes to cause dread and cut victims off from others.
It also alerts you to sounds made by civilians and where they are hiding in homes; these are denoted by pulsing circles of light. By staring at potential victims through the mask, you can inspire fear, raising a fear meter for more intense kills. I will be honest: this mechanism didn’t always work, as sometimes I could just grab hold of a character and perform a higher-level kill while close to the environmental object without building up the meter.
Illfonic also introduced a function that lets Michael Myers become The Shape, a shadowy spectre form that gives you access beyond locked doors (as long as there is no light source nearby) and faster traversal across the map. I found this helpful because, traditionally, Michael Myers is the embodiment of the term stalker.
He is slow and lumbering. So by becoming this shadowy form, you can vanish from sight and evade not only potential victims’ line of sight, but also police officers that may appear if the player just leaves bodies lying around. I did find this Shape function a little complicated; one time I used it to get past a locked door, but the interior of the home was lit, so I couldn’t drop the shadow form and couldn’t exit the house.
This Isn’t A Man
I found Michael’s controls overly complicated. Between hunting down victims, stalker mode, shape mode, the use of weapons, and the traversal, it felt like there were too many ideas unfolding here. Civilians felt a little chaotic while trying to find items to fix a vehicle or defend themselves, all while keeping an eye out for Michael Myers and other rescuable NPCs. Michael, however, has almost too many options at his disposal, while the civilians had so few.
Controls felt clunky and slow, and more so than you would expect from the slowest serial killer in slasher history. A mistimed lunge sent Michael stumbling, losing his chance to catch the target. While going through single-player, I didn’t feel I had enough of an introduction to Michael’s mechanics, aside from a small on-screen blurb. As far as I know, there is no tutorial for the civilians, so you’re learning as you go. I was left feeling frustrated trying to grab a victim and move through them, or fumble between the use of weapons and the environment for kills, sometimes not being able to even pin a victim against a wall. It really was too much for one evil character, and I think less would have been far more successful.
I found Michael’s controls overly complicated. Between hunting down victims, stalker mode, shape mode, the use of weapons, and the traversal, it felt like there were too many ideas unfolding here. While going through single-player, I didn’t feel I had enough of an introduction to these mechanics, aside from a small on-screen blurb. It was frustrating to try to grab a victim and move through them, or fumble between the use of weapons and the environment. It really was too much for one evil character, and I think less would have been far more successful.
The voice acting in Halloween is tremendous. Dr. Loomis, Laurie Strode and her teenage friends sound nearly identical to their movie counterparts. But something feels strange about their animations. They aren’t bad; they just look like balloons, in the sense that if I took a pin to them, they would deflate. Michael Myers also sometimes looked a little bobblehead-like, like the mask was too big on the model. I didn’t personally experience any glitches with the character animation itself, but there was some clipping through walls and the environment. Thankfully, a day-one patch is en route to address many of these issues.
Verdict
For lovers of IllFonic and asymmetrical multiplayer games, those who loved and felt the immense loss of Friday the 13th: The Game, I have no doubt you will enjoy Halloween to some extent. Personally, I don’t believe these types of experiences are extraordinarily enjoyable. I was hoping that with the game itself being based around the Halloween franchise, it would sway my opinion.
IllFonic was trying to rebuild the excitement around the now-shut-down Friday the 13th: The Game, but failed to expand past that. Halloween feels dated and slow, leaning more on nostalgia and the love of horror than on community growth, gaming mechanics, and development. I think they could benefit from a stronger single-player experience to bring more excitement to the multiplayer aspect, but honestly, it’s missing that magic.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
