Midnight

Midnight for Wii U is similar to those mobile 2D golf games, only this one strives to be a bit more on the puzzle side of things. The Wii U is loaded with cheap, short, single-minded titles that aim to be satisfying distractions rather than awe-inspiring sleeper hits. I’ve covered a couple at IGC, Color Zen and Blok Drop U. There are a lot of people complaining about titles like this, and I don’t get it. Games like this have a place in gaming. Maybe to cleanse the palate, or maybe just to kill an hour or two. But that doesn’t mean the game has to be bad. After all, nobody wants to cleanse their palate with feces. Well, unless they find that kinky.

The PLINKO idea is probably not a good one in a physics based puzzle game that scores you based on the amount of strokes you take. Should such a game rely so heavily on luck? I say no.

I wouldn’t exactly call Midnight bad, but it does need a lot of work. Earlier stages show a lot of promise. Just drag the stylus to adjust the power and aim, then let go to shoot. At first, the aiming seems a bit off, but you quickly get used to it. The problem is that physics never seem fully consistent. Sometimes I would shoot the square-shaped ball, it would land on a large patch of flat terrain and come to a comfortable stop. Other times, I would seemingly shoot it on the same trajectory and strength, but instead of landing on the flat patch flush and clean, it would immediately start spinning upon impact and fly out-of-bounds. I can’t really whine about this too much when nearly every physics based game seems to have issues like this, but that same physics engine failed me when the stages started to add obstacles and the difficulty got its teeth.

Take stage 18. Here, there’s a cannon that you have to shoot the ball into. Once you do this, it automatically launches you into a wall that, in theory, you’re supposed to break off, clearing a path to the hole. In practice, this failed, failed, failed. Sometimes I would hit the wall at seemingly full speed only to have the wall not move AT ALL while I watched my ball ricochet off it and fly out-of-bounds. Sometimes I would hit the wall at seemingly full speed, have the wall not move AT ALL and watch my ball drop lifelessly back down into the cannon again which would fire it into the wall again, watch it bounce off the wall again with no effect while my ball ricocheted out-of-bounds. Physics puzzle games need one thing above all else: predictable physics. Hit object in certain section at certain speed and certain action happens. Midnight doesn’t have that, and thus there’s no glory in finishing a stage. It feels like it’s almost done by luck.

Midnight has some nasty glitches too. Like this one. I’m in the hole here, but the game didn’t register it. I planned to complain at length about this, but the developer already caught wind of it and has pledged to fix it. Watch for a Second Chance with the Chick for Midnight in the near future.

There are only 28 stages in Midnight, and even with some frustrating designs (including some levels based on timing to avoid saws or spiky enemies that felt about as out-of-place as a cannibal at a PETA meeting), you should be able to finish the whole experience in under two hours. I don’t know what else to say. The interface is clean. Too clean, actually. Midnight doesn’t tell you how many shots you’ve taken, or how many shots are required to score three stars on a stage. Sometimes a game can be too minimalist. Really, nothing here is extraordinarily bad, and with some patchwork, it can be decent for a couple bucks, even if it’s on the wrong platform (games like this really belong on 3DS). But right now, Midnight is just a little too unstable for me to fully recommend. Patches are coming, so I guess what I’m saying is, I’m going to wait till the Midnight hour before my love comes tumbling down.

For those of you who have spent the last few minutes trying to make sense of that last sentence, you really shouldn’t have bothered.

Midnight was developed by Petite Games
Point of Sale: Wii U eShop

$1.99 made Wilson Pickett roll in his grave in the making of this review.