PLOT: On Halloween night, 1978, no one is safe from Michael Myers. Become the Boogeyman or fight back against the face of evil itself in Halloween.
REVIEW: I should probably get this out of the way right from the start: I’m an easy mark for anything Halloween. I’m also an easy mark for asymmetrical multiplayer games. I find myself playing them more often than your standard long-form single-player game these days.
I was introduced to the franchise through Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Since then, Michael Myers has been one of my favorite horror icons. So when IllFonic and Gun Interactive announced Halloween: The Game, an asymmetrical multiplayer game built around John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, I was already on board.
Thankfully, after spending time roaming Haddonfield both as Michael and as one of the civilians trying to stay alive, I’m having a great time with it.
That surprised me a little because some of the early reactions were pretty negative to mixed. You can read our earlier review here. But I played with the Day One Patch installed, which addressed several problems players had been reporting before launch, including matchmaking issues, NPC pathfinding, crash fixes, achievement tracking, scoring, stamina balancing, and making escape locations easier for civilians to discover.
Whatever state the game may have been in during Early Access, that simply hasn’t been my experience.
Matchmaking has actually been one of the biggest surprises. I can jump into a lobby and get a game going almost immediately. Of course, the massive launch probably helps. More than 500,000 players jumped in across PC and consoles within hours of release, while its Steam debut was the biggest yet for an asymmetrical horror game. For a game like this, especially at launch, that matters a lot. There’s nothing that kills the mood faster than sitting around waiting forever for a match to start. Once it does, Halloween will understand exactly what people want out of a game like this.
IllFonic and Gun Interactive are clearly fans of the horror genre. I still miss the days of Friday the 13th: The Game, and I continue to play The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, so this style of horror game is already very much my thing. But Halloween doesn’t just feel like another asymmetrical game with Michael Myers dropped into it.
It actually feels like Halloween.
The atmosphere is probably its greatest strength. The suburban streets, houses, lighting, sound design, and music all work together to make Haddonfield feel like the place we remember from Carpenter’s movie. Story Mode takes that even further with a grainy visual texture that helps give everything the look and feel of the original 1978 film.
This is what sets it apart from the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Story Mode is essentially an extended tutorial for playing as Michael, but I think its short length works in its favor. I normally prefer longer games, but at a little over two hours, give or take, this feels like the right amount of time. It teaches you how Michael works, lets you enjoy the atmosphere, gives you some scenarios inspired by the film, and then gets out of the way.
The multiplayer is obviously where the game is meant to live.
Playing as Michael is just fun. Instead of reducing him to nothing more than a big guy with a knife, the developers found ways to translate what makes Michael scary into actual gameplay. His ability to disappear and reappear around Haddonfield becomes part of how you stalk players, while the heavy breathing, music, and sound design go a long way toward making you feel like you’re actually playing as The Shape.
There are also plenty of environmental kills scattered around the map, which gives Michael more variety than simply stabbing everyone over and over again.
The civilian side is more involved than just running away, too. You’re searching houses and businesses for weapons, keys, and supplies, helping residents, contacting police, finding escape routes, and trying to work with the other players while Michael is somewhere nearby.
It’s the unpredictability where a lot of the fun comes from. Sometimes everyone works together perfectly. Sometimes everything goes to hell within minutes. Even a terrifying encounter with Michael suddenly becomes hilarious because another player does something completely stupid. That’s what makes these kinds of multiplayer horror games so entertaining.
There are definitely areas that could use improvement. The game does a much better job teaching you how to play Michael than it does explaining the civilian side. I must admit, I was pretty lost at first.
I also wish some of the main characters had better likenesses to the original actors. Laurie Strode is the biggest example. She looks more like Vera Farmiga than Jamie Lee Curtis. Considering how much attention was clearly paid to recreating the atmosphere of the original movie, that can be a little distracting. The voice actors, however, do a great job with their characters and help sell the world even when the likenesses don’t always hit the mark.
There are some rough edges, and I don’t think anyone should go into Halloween: The Game expecting a huge single-player experience. This is first and foremost an asymmetrical multiplayer game. If you’ve never liked that style of gameplay, Michael Myers probably isn’t suddenly going to change your mind. But if you already enjoy these kinds of games, this one feels like it was made for horror fans.
My experience has simply been much more positive than some of those early reviews suggested. I’m getting into matches quickly. I had a lot of fun with Story Mode, Haddonfield looks and sounds like Haddonfield, and playing as Michael actually makes you feel like Michael Myers.
Most importantly, when one match ends, I usually want to jump straight into another.
If you’re a horror fan, a Halloween fan, or someone who still misses loading into Friday the 13th with a group of strangers and watching everything immediately fall apart, Halloween: The Game is going to be right up your alley.
There’s always room for improvement, but the Day One Patch was already a good start. Hopefully, future updates continue to build on what’s here because I could easily see myself returning to Haddonfield for a long time.
