Halloween: The Game Review – A Mixed Bag of Candy

The best way I can describe Halloween: The Game is that it’s a bag full of candy from trick-or-treating in a town that might not be the best place for it. As such, what you get from that bag when you reach into it could be a treat that you relish, but might not get the next time you stick your hand in it. Putting you in the shoes of Michael Myers is obviously a sample of the former, but spend a significant amount of time with the deranged man, and you begin to see some of the latter.

For a title that has a single-player campaign that’s faithfully modelled after one of the most iconic slasher films in entertainment history, offline bot matches, online matches against other players, and a gameplay loop that’s quite compelling when it clicks, my biggest surprise was how much its own innovations hold it back from being a truly entertaining experience.

"There are clever mechanics in place aimed at balancing out the power fantasy that stepping into the shoes of popular culture’s Stalker Supreme can bring."

Michael himself is the best starting point in this context, with the game recommending that you play its story mode to familiarize yourself with how things work. I was grateful for the suggestion, as this isn’t a game you want to head into blindly. Halloween’s take on Myers is quite interesting and an intriguing twist on his persona, with the game giving him abilities that make him larger than life (or death, in his case).

As such, you’re never in doubt about the terrifying threat he poses, and the evil that permeates his soul is presented in interesting ways. You’ve got his Shape Jump and the abilities associated with it, all of which serve to help him navigate the world with a speed his victims often find superhuman. Is it a logical explanation of what he can do? Of course not. Is it fun, though? That’s a resounding yes!

It lets Michael enter a sort of shadow world where the colors are distorted and light and sound operate differently. He moves completely unseen while in this state, his victims unaware of his presence even if he’s standing under a street lamp right in front of them. That’s useful in building up your Stalk, a meter that nets you better rankings once you fill it out while also coming with gameplay advantages that make hunting victims easier.

Shape Dash and Killer Sense are other abilities that join Shape Jump to ensure that Michael’s getting to where his kills are faster, and being able to get past any obstacles in the way with relative ease.

There are clever mechanics in place aimed at balancing out the power fantasy that stepping into the shoes of popular culture’s Stalker Supreme can bring. Light restricts his supernatural abilities, and it not only interferes with his ability to toggle his Shape Jump, but also with his Bloodlust meter, which you accumulate with each passing kill to tack on buffs to make subsequent ones easier.

"The line of sight mechanic that’s in place can be wildly inconsistent, and gauging when an NPC is going to spot you can be tricky. Also, Michael’s human form generates noise that his victims pick up on, but it’s often so late that the mechanic might as well not exist."

Disabling light sources is a great way to ensure you get to execute your victims without too much hassle. You could cut the phone lines around the buildings they’re in to ensure they don’t call for help but with the game encouraging indiscriminate killing as much as it does, you’re better off waiting for the cops to arrive as it gives you more victims to hunt.

Yes, there are Special Targets every time you step into the hunt, but getting to them and taking them out is so darn easy you’re going to be looking for new folks to terrorize more often than not. All of this is in service of letting Michael approach potential victims unseen which works for the most part, but the fact that you need to exit the Shape Jump state for the final kill throws up some issues. First off, the line of sight mechanic that’s in place can be wildly inconsistent, and gauging when an NPC is going to spot you can be tricky. Also, Michael’s human form generates noise that his victims pick up on, but it’s often so late that the mechanic might as well not exist.

Clearing each chapter in the story unlocks new abilities, like one that places a yellow beam of light in the world when you’re in your Shape Jump state. It points you in the direction of your next victim, letting you save a lot of time between your kills. Other abilities attune Myers’ senses towards his victims, letting him stalk them from the shadows before he steps out into the light to stage executions that are pretty tough to watch the first time you pull them off.

However, it’s here that things begin to fall apart a little. You see, Michael isn’t as nimble as you’d expect once he’s out of Shape Jump. He moves slowly, relying on an awkward grab to get hold of his victim before he can kill them on the spot with a quick-time event that requires different combinations of face buttons for various unlockable executions. You could also drag them around and use the environment to end their lives as painfully and brutally as possible. You know, an average day in the life of a slasher.

Get spotted, and you have a basic attack that lets you damage your victims, and a dodge to let you try and avoid taking any damage. It’s so clunky and annoying that you’re going to want to take a stealthy approach almost all the time, revealing yourself only when it’s the perfect time for the kill. But to make Michael’s human side as useless as it is while lending a supernatural air to the powers that actually let him be effective is kind of a hard choice.

"The story is more or less faithful to the film although its attempt to translate it to an interactive simulation is only serviceable."

You might argue that the game’s representation of him is great if you think about it from the perspective of his victims. He’s only human, but his relentless way of hunting down anyone he decides deserves his knife can make him seem more than that. But break things down, and I can’t help but feel it should have been the man who had the power, and not the monster. To me, what made Michael a monster is how he used his own innate abilities.

The story is more or less faithful to the film although its attempt to translate it to an interactive simulation is only serviceable, and I can’t see it appealing to anyone but die-hard fans of the franchise. Nevertheless, it exists and each of its six chapters does come with some replayability as you try to complete special objectives to unlock customization options and new characters to use in the game’s multiplayer modes. They’re sandboxes where you’re left to explore the level as much as you like before unleashing Myers’ signature style of brutality on the chapter’s target. There are bonus points for creative kills as well as for clearing challenges.

The entire thing could take you a couple of hours to clear if you pursue your targets with Myers’ single-minded determination but you’d be robbing yourself of a pretty significant part of the single-player experience on offer if you do. The victims from the films might be familiar to you, but it’s all the other residents of Myers’ ill-fated hometown who bring a bit of freshness to the experience, as you get to watch people going about their regular lives unaware of the threat that has just invaded their so-called safe spaces.

The NPC AI is a bit of a letdown, and you’re going to find yourself predicting their actions quite accurately once you spend a little time with the game. That’s a problem that stands out, as it further exposes how repetitive things can get once you get over the initial thrill of hunting people from the shadows as a character who is kind of a household name at this point. The maps are large enough to support the fantasy without being so big that you’re aimlessly wandering through them.

Higher difficulty modes are also available, all of which bring rewards to use with the game’s multiplayer modes. I was pretty excited to try Halloween’s take on online multiplayer with Michael and a bunch of civilians dealing with a literal life and death situation.

"Too much hunting as Michael is going to have you looking for something else to do too quickly for this one to be a great take on the character"

You get to select a preference for spawning in as either Michael, where you’re hunting your fellow players, or as one of several characters from the story, each with unique perks that can help them survive Michael’s onslaught. Tanya, for instance, has buffs that activate a noise lure that successfully gets Michael’s attention, while another character gets a massive boost to all of his stats if he happens to be the last one left alive on a map.

I’d have loved to test out how each of those perks worked, but the game insisted on spawning me in as Michael every time despite switching the appropriate settings around to indicate my preference to play as a civilian I’d selected. I eventually gave up after more than an hour of trying. Its gameplay loop as Michael can get repetitive very quickly thanks to the rather singular objective of killing everything you can.

The visuals are all right, as is the sound design. They’re great at recreating the unique vibe that the films have made iconic, but they don’t really stand out in a year of some very good lookers. The performance is stable for the most part, with solid image quality on my base PS5 without any stuttering or crashes. However, that was countered by bugs such as characters that randomly teleport across large distances and others such as Myers getting caught in the environment frequently enough that these issues cannot be dismissed as minor. It’s stuff that can be fixed, but its presence is worth noting.

I can’t really recommend Halloween: The Game to anyone who’s not as obsessed with the franchise as Myers is to his victims. I wish things were different, but Halloween: The Game isn’t getting the good candy from me.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.