Before we start, I have a confession: I’ve never seen Halloween.
Despite being a huge horror movie fan, it’s just one of those series that passed me by and I never thought to catch up. Despite this, I feel qualified to comment on Halloween: The Game as I’ve spent hundreds of hours in the (hugely underrated) Friday The 13th: The Game and have played just about every other asymmetric horror game going, even when they only tend to last about a year before the audience abandons ship. In short, I like to think I know what makes a good entry in the genre. Halloween: The Game has some cool ideas but unfortunately sits towards the bottom of the rankings for this small genre that I love so much.
Let’s start with one of those interesting ideas: the inclusion of a single player campaign. The genre’s always had an issue with onboarding, usually resorting to a tutorial mission or, in some instances, a set of text tutorials to teach you the bare minimum. Halloween: The Game includes a 5 stage single player mode complete with cutscenes that takes you, as Michael Myers, from his asylum escape through to visiting his childhood home and stalking the neighbourhood. It’s a nice idea in theory but in practice it’s just not something I’ve ever wanted from one of these games. It’s such a short campaign, barely lasting an hour, and the gameplay is clearly better tailored to a multiplayer experience than trying to force them into contrived single player missions, that I’d honestly rather have just had a set of text tutorials to teach me the ropes. There are challenges here to encourage replayability but I’m really not sure if anyone’s going to bother.
My biggest gripe, however, is that the single player only shows you how to play as Michael Myers, with nothing to explain survivor mechanics, not even text tutorials. This is baffling to me, considering you’re going to spend far more time as survivors than you will as the masked man stalking them. It’s almost insulting: if they can’t be bothered to explain any of the mechanics to you then why should you spend the time trying to teach yourself?
Thankfully the multiplayer experience is slightly better than the single player. Playing as a survivor you’ll find yourself and a handful of other players trapped in a neighbourhood with Michael, but things deviate here quite significantly from other games in the genre. Whereas previously you had Jason/Predator/Killer Klowns actively hunting down players, a lot of Halloween: The Game is spent focusing on NPCs. Michael Myers will be stalking and killing them while survivors are convincing them to hide, calling the police (which summons NPC cops to deal with Michael), and finding escape routes that then require several steps to be used. It’s a bit of a gear shift, as despite there being a madman on the loose, you actually want to delay your escape as you’ll earn more points for helping the NPCs.
I applaud IllFonic for doing something different in a genre they helped pioneer but I’m not sure this is a route that particularly appeals to me. In a few of the games I played, Michael was so focused on NPCs and cops that I never actually saw him. I just ran out the clock and survived the night, which wasn’t the tense thrillfest I’d been expecting. Likewise, in the matches I was more involved in, a lot of time is spent on the phone to police or speaking to NPCs, using a rather mundane set of QTE’s to convince them to come and help or hide until the cops arrive, respectively. It was very rare I saw other players, and even rarer that we interacted. Instead you’re forced to escort NPCs to and from the exit points, which is about as fun as it sounds.
It’s genuinely disappointing. Me and my pals put hundreds of hours into Friday the 13th, and every match was a standoff with Jason. We’d be frantically scrambling to put the car together, searching for radios so we could stay in contact and playing characters as makeshift classes based on our perks and gear. I don’t see that happening in Halloween: The Game. It feels like a multiplayer game where people play near each other rather than with each other, and frankly I found it quite boring.
I’m not saying there’s nothing happening in these games either. There’s tons of systems, with survivors getting tarot cards that grant buffs, and tools for both attacking and causing distractions. There’s even bikes to pedal around on and grief Michael Myers with. There’s a nice minigame mechanic for dead/escaped players too, allowing them to bestow perks on survivors still in the game that also encourage you to stay in the lobby while others finish. On Michael’s side there are some really nifty ideas around his role as a stalker: you’re rewarded for creeping on people, and by looking at them for extended periods of time you increase their fear level which in turn opens them up to more brutal, higher scoring executions. It encourages you to be a looming presence, staring at survivors through windows rather than just cutting the phone lines and barging in.
As mentioned, the cops show up too, which brings an element of stealth for Michael, requiring you to hide the bodies you’ve killed to avoid alerting the police to your location. Ultimately though Michael himself doesn’t feel that fun to play though. This focus on NPCs just slows you down in a game where you should feel like an unstoppable force, relentlessly stalking, hunting and slaughtering a gaggle of other players.
A lot of similar games come out in rough shape and Halloween: The Game isn’t any different. I had numerous crashes and general jank, such as the character’s hair disappearing in the menus. That said, the game is fairly smooth on PS5 and it sounds like more patches are on the way to improve stability and quality. Don’t expect anything particularly special in terms of visuals or performance, but I’d say it’s better than a lot of its contemporaries when they launched.
Halloween: The Game has some neat ideas but is, regrettably, a fairly uninteresting entry into a genre that’s had some of my favourite multiplayer experiences over the last decade. IllFonic deserves some props for trying to do things differently but the incessant focus on interacting with NPCs undermines what should be a frantic time with other players.
