Game review: Midnight Murder Club (PS5)

Making people pay money for multiplayer-only games have been a bit of a gamble thanks to the rise of quality free-to-play titles out there. There are now tons of free-to-play games offering loads of content, such as Fortnite, Marvel Rivals, Valorant, Warframe, and more. 

To put this in more perspective, Sony wanted gamers to pay around $70 NZD to play Concord last year, and we know what happened to that game. Concord was shut down in less than two weeks, and it is never coming back. 

Sadly, I do not have high hopes for Midnight Murder Club because it, too, is a multiplayer-only game that gamers have to pay for. Originally, the game was priced at $31.95 NZD as an early access title. With the game now officially out, it has been reduced to a more reasonable $17.95 NZD on the PlayStation Store. 

That being said, the $17.95 NZD isn't the full price because an active PlayStation Plus subscription is needed to even play the game. At the moment, the cheapest option for PlayStation Plus is around $16 NZD for only one month. Therefore, the full price for Midnight Murder Club is $34 NZD, which was its original price anyway.

The only reason I talk a lot about the price of the game is because I believe this game would have been better had it been free-to-play. The game does not offer much value for money because there is only ONE map! The map takes place in a dark mansion, and there are no other maps available as I type this review up. 

Another thing I did not like about Midnight Murder Club is that the game is purposefully dark. All players are armed with a small torch that somewhat illuminates the room, but the game is still too dark for you to even see where you are going. There is a perk that allows you to get a brighter torch, but this benefit is only temporary. 

Midnight Murder Club also does not have any memorable characters or skins that you can play as, too. You are just assigned a random character, and everyone is pretty much armed with a revolver, and that's it. You don't get the cool characters and skins that you see in games like Fortnite and Marvel Rivals. 

There is only one redeeming factor about Midnight Murder Club, and that's the fact that the game has more than one game mode. I remember playing full-priced multiplayer-only games like Predator Hunting Grounds and Dragon Ball: The Breakers, and these titles only had ONE game mode at launch. 

The current game modes in Midnight Murder Club are Free for All, Team Deathmatch, Wildcards, Graveyard Shift, Thief in the Night, and Headhunters. Only Graveyard Shift and Wildcards offer offline bots for you to play with or against. The other modes all require you to connect with other human players. 

Wildcards is a chaotic PvP mode where you can earn cards that will change the dynamic of the gameplay. For example, you can get a card to make the players appear very small. In another scenario, every player could even get super speed. I have to admit, this game mode is fun in short bursts, but it's not something I would play for several hours. 

Graveyard Shift is more interesting because this is a co-op mode where you have to do nine rituals to survive. All of the enemies are AI-controlled, and you can pretty much kill them with one bullet most of the time. However, they are sizable in number, so it's not an easy experience. 

The only thing I did not like about the Graveyard Shift mode was needing to find objects in the dark. I remember needing to find a specific golden statue, but it took me ages looking around the mansion's many rooms to grab the right one. 

All of the other modes are pretty much PvP battles, but I wasn't able to experience them for too long because the player count of this game is quite small. It took me a long time to find other players. This is unlike Helldivers 2's launch on Xbox, which has thousands of new players already!

All in all, I don't think I can recommend Midnight Murder Club at its current price because it doesn't offer anything that makes it worthwhile. Why would players want to spend money buying this game when free-to-play titles exist out there and offer more content?

Verdict: 5.5/10