Subway Midnight (PC) Review

You take the role of a - two-dimensional - passenger on a weird, dimly lit - three-dimensional - subway train. You start walking from car to car, with each "room" feeling stranger than the one before it. Not only that, but something is clearly following you. "It" is never shown, as the camera always looks forward, towards the front end of the train where the hero walks to. The atmosphere gets more and more menacing, and then "It" finally catches up on you. Congratulations. You are dead. As if public transportation didn't have enough problems already…

Was the whole thing any scary? Not really. This more like a very spooky Nintendo title. That being said, through some very good art and sound design, it manages to be unsettling. Bizarre passengers that look you with their dead eyes and creepy smiles; strange light and shadow play; and, finally, the sound of approaching danger. Unfortunately, the atmosphere gets a hit each time the protagonist moves from one car to another, which is actually the bulk of the gameplay.

A great deal of time is spent on walking from A to B… and nothing else. You - slowly - walk from one side of a car to the other, while taking a good look at your surroundings. You reach the next car. You do the same, only this time you see posters about missing children. You reach the next car. Walk some more, see something "weird," and move to the next car. This isn't immersive. This is tedious, and atmosphere-breaking. Sadly, atmosphere and visuals are all there is to enjoy here.

In terms of "goals," the player is tasked with helping ghosts of those missing children, which translates to doing a lot of puzzle-solving. No, that's not right. The correct way to write that down is "puzzle-solving." The things that must be done for one to move on are usually very simple, and chore-ish. Collect X number of Y and use them in Z before something bad gets close and eats you, or use A in B in the correct way, so that the door opens, and other, generic stuff. Even when puzzles get a bit better, the experience doesn't really change that much.