A New York family's life unravels after a tragedy; they process their grief while vacationing in rural Montana, where they explore human connection amid their profound sorrow.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I'll be honest, I played this game because I thought it was going to be shit, and I thought it
00:04would make a funny video if it was shit.
00:06I remember watching the trailer for Madison a few weeks before it came out and actually being anxious as fuck,
00:11but since I'm a crybaby piss boy I knew it would be a waste of money on my end.
00:15You know, I'd buy it, load it up, and then be functionally frozen with fear until the heat death of
00:20the universe.
00:21They weren't handing out keys for PSN streamers either, so that wasn't an explorable avenue for me,
00:26and I was one of the fucking idiots that pre-ordered Cyberpunk 2077, so I wouldn't be making that mistake
00:31again.
00:32Seriously, that game sat in its plastic wrap for almost two years.
00:36At least the bugs were fixed by the time I tried it.
00:38On release day I popped by a stream on Twitch and gave the gameplay a bit of a glance.
00:43I don't know what I stumbled on, but Madison looked crap.
00:46It looked really goofy.
00:47I watched for a few minutes and I turned the stream off because I was unimpressed,
00:50but as the weeks went on I started to hear more about it.
00:53A few people said it was an incredible game, a few people said it was dogshit,
00:57and one person told me it's exactly like the suicide of Rachel Foster,
01:01since that's now apparently the incantation you need to summon my interest.
01:04Spoiler alert, it's nothing like the suicide of Rachel Foster.
01:07It was only when my friend Birch offered to send me a copy, thanks Birch,
01:10that I thought, hey, you know, since it's free let's give it a go, and it was not what I
01:13expected.
01:14No, it turns out that Madison is one of the cheapest but highest quality VPNs currently on the market.
01:20Oh no, wait, sorry, I was confused. That's today's sponsor, Atlas VPN.
01:24With over 6 million users, Atlas VPN is a free unlimited VPN offering heavy duty protection
01:29against DDoS attacks and snooping, prevents ISP throttling, and allows you to swap your time zone
01:34for early access to time zone or region locked games.
01:37Right now, Atlas VPN is running a limited time offer,
01:40so check out the link in the description to learn more.
01:42Although I work in software, well, I mean I'm a web designer, I'm hardly technical,
01:46especially when it comes to VPNs, so I was happy to see how easy Atlas VPN is to use.
01:51You can connect anywhere, from a wide variety of countries,
01:54and any concerns are immediately addressed by the support centre.
01:57No technical jargon, no walls of text, just good help for users of any technical ability.
02:01With over 6 million users worldwide, Atlas VPN is one of the most popular VPNs available now,
02:06and for good reason.
02:07Right now, Atlas VPN is running a massive discount.
02:10You can get a 3 year subscription for just under $2 per month, plus 3 months for free,
02:15all with a 30 day money back guarantee.
02:17This deal won't be around forever, so make the most of this limited time offer
02:21by clicking the link in the video description below or my pinned comment below the video.
02:25Thank you Atlas VPN for sponsoring today's video.
02:28Yeah, no, Madison is no VPN.
02:29It's a game, unsurprisingly.
02:31A horror game.
02:32And when I saw it, I expected a stale walking simulator with minimal effort,
02:36flipped assets, cheap jump scares, and a dead atmosphere.
02:39But like dead in a crap way, not in a scary way, probably with the wankiest story on the planet.
02:45I was wrong.
02:45This is one of the scariest games I've ever played,
02:48and easily my scariest game of the year if not the last half decade.
02:52No, what really surprised me about Madison is that the game is actually really really good.
02:57Hear me out.
02:57So those of you who already watch my content will probably know already.
03:01I like games with good stories, good communicative control schemes,
03:05and a lack of reliance on jump scares.
03:07So, on paper, I would fucking hate Madison.
03:10Like all good pieces of horror media, Madison is a fairly terrifying experience that sits squarely on
03:16a story so flimsy that you can see its nips poking through its t-shirt when it gets cold.
03:21A lot of horror movies are like that, a shaky foundation of bad writing,
03:24serving the simple purpose of hoisting up some creepy visuals and nasty scares.
03:28Some of their stories are crap all the way through, like the Human Centipede 2 or Cabin Fever,
03:32squatting squarely on your face with the pure intention of making you very very uncomfortable
03:37with as little narrative effort as possible.
03:39The narrative is there loosely to justify what you're seeing on screen.
03:42Some of them start really strong and then they kind of blow their beans at the end
03:45when they realise they've escalated to a conclusion they can't quite pay off, like sinister.
03:50Madison, I feel, kind of falls into the first camp of horror media,
03:53as in the story is a very basic skeleton that justifies the gameplay with very little room
03:58for exploration and discovery and very little payoff.
04:01Varty Vigia would starve in this game.
04:03There's no hidden secrets to be found, no twists or turns, it's very basic.
04:07It's rare for horror stories to be good and that's fairly accepted, I don't mind that,
04:11but we should try and be better, I think.
04:12Madison controls like trying to pilot a tractor through a supermarket.
04:15Random interactions are assigned to the same buttons for some reason,
04:18so you'll try and sprint and end up taking a photo instead,
04:21or you'll try and take a photo and accidentally interact with something.
04:24Opening drawers and cupboards feels like peeling your own fingernails off.
04:27Your main character fumbles around like a toddler in a ball pit.
04:30And the jumpscares? Christ.
04:35I won't show you any jumpscares in the game in this video,
04:37one for spoiler reasons, but two for the mere fact that I fucking hate them,
04:41but this game absolutely layers them on.
04:43And honestly, it doesn't really need to,
04:45because the one thing I think this game does so well, so brilliantly,
04:49so pants wettingly well is atmosphere.
04:52Enough for despite all those problems with the game,
04:55all those issues I just mentioned,
04:57the atmosphere is what makes it one of the best horror games I've ever played.
05:01Like, it's that good, it can stand on its atmosphere alone.
05:04This game is scary, it is extremely tense,
05:07it is a perfectly crafted experience designed entirely with the intention of making you sleep
05:12with the lights on, and it pulls it off so well.
05:14If we were to grade Madison on its story, it would be low.
05:17If we graded it on characters, it would be average.
05:20If we graded it on mechanics, it would be pretty good.
05:22But if we grade it on horror, it's top of the class.
05:25And today, I'm going to tell you why.
05:27So, since most of the weaknesses of this game fall within the story beats,
05:30expect full spoilers for Madison.
05:32I will be covering everything, including the ending.
05:34Although, don't let that concern you too much.
05:37The story in this game really is secondary,
05:39and in my opinion, you can fully appreciate the game while still knowing how it ends.
05:44There's a few different interpretations for how it ends,
05:46and, like, the general story and how it all works,
05:49and I'll glance on them, but I don't really want to cover them here,
05:51because, you know, I want to stick to the review.
05:53With that said, before we begin, thanks for being here.
05:55Remember to like the video and subscribe if you enjoyed it.
05:58I post all sorts of gaming videos and there's plenty more to watch.
06:01Comment your own thoughts on the game if you've played it,
06:03your own likes and dislikes,
06:04and check me out over on twitch.tv slash muckkk if you'd like to check games real-time.
06:08Finally, there's a Patreon down below in the description
06:10where you can earn access to some beautiful pledge rewards,
06:13and, when I figure this dickhead Vimeo thing out, see videos early.
06:16Thanks to my current patrons for all their support.
06:18But that said, let's get on with it.
06:19In Madison, we start in a dark, dank room.
06:22The only illumination is a TV screen which flickers ominously,
06:25casting this washed-out light across all the walls.
06:28There's a man, your character's dad, crying outside the door.
06:31Your own blood, he says.
06:33What were you thinking?
06:34First things first,
06:35but our character's voice reminds me of somebody so familiar.
06:38I gotta get out of here.
06:41Father, when can I leave to be on my own?
06:43I've got the whole world to see.
06:46Yeah, I couldn't get that little puppet out of my head the whole time I played this.
06:49Luca, our main character, has a hilariously soft voice,
06:52and sometimes he does these little moans when he's scared or upset,
06:55and they're supposed to be, like, harrowing.
06:57But he's like,
06:57uh, uh,
06:59it just sounds like he's creamed his pants,
07:01and they make me laugh every time.
07:02The own blood your father is referring to seems to be some dismembered body parts
07:06you see in some polaroids you collect off of the floor.
07:09So we can assume Luca killed somebody in his family shortly before this game began,
07:13and then locked himself in that room.
07:14Fair's fair, Luca.
07:15I would probably need some breathing space after something like that as well.
07:18As we toddle around this tiny room,
07:20grappling with the insanely stiff cupboard opening animation
07:23it will be the death of me I swear,
07:24we grab a hammer and use it to pry our way through some boards in the wall,
07:28heading into a new section of the house.
07:30So cool and creepy, definitely.
07:31This new section of the house is, as we learn, Luca's grandfather's house.
07:35His furniture screams the cheapest starter set of Sim's furniture,
07:38and among the beige décor we learn that he's installed a fuckton of jump scares.
07:43We can assume he's dead, the game never specifies I don't think,
07:46but I feel it's a comfortable assumption to make,
07:48and the house has been kept the same ever since.
07:50Exactly the same.
07:51The place is littered with rubbish, old unopened mail, pill bottles, not even a sweep.
07:57God, I hope my kids leave my house and belongings to rot away after I die.
08:00That'd be great.
08:01Luca has a camera that I initially assumed would serve as a terrible torch
08:05full of canned jump scares, but not so.
08:07Not so at all.
08:08The camera in this game is actually pretty cool.
08:10Not only can you get cute skins for it,
08:11including a literal skin one if you want to roleplay as some flamboyant necromancer,
08:16but the function the camera serves evolves across the course of the game.
08:19Frustratingly, it's assigned to the same button as Sprint,
08:22meaning you'll often accidentally shoot a premature photo when something makes you jump,
08:26like a squeaky masochist, but one of the many purposes of the camera will find it serves,
08:31is that it can magically make stuff happen when you take photos of stuff.
08:34You often progress the story by finding what you need,
08:37or assembling what you need to assemble, and then photographing it.
08:40There will be a loud bang, the screen will shake, and whatever happens happens,
08:44usually in a manner that involves it running right at you screaming at the top of its voice.
08:48Lazy design? Maybe.
08:49But I mean, anything Luca does seems to take 10,000 years,
08:53and a fuckton of elbow grease to work,
08:54so it's nice to literally have a make the thing work button in my hands.
08:58Why is opening cabinets so clunky?
09:00Why do I feel like I'm peeling tarmac every time I open a drawer?
09:03Fuck me.
09:04We enter a room with a chair sat in the center,
09:06and we use the camera to make the thing work,
09:08and we watch it turn into some kind of ritual setup with candles littered across the floor.
09:13As we explore, we find a hole in the wall with a blaring TV on the other side.
09:16It's a rude but effective move this game pulls often.
09:19Your character wants to see through the hole,
09:21this game is played in first person,
09:23and so your character will have to get right up close to the hole in the wall
09:25and stare directly through it at a clue or something on the other side,
09:29and god, it's ass crunching.
09:30I would really quickly glance through and then back out straight away.
09:33The medium burned me on this, and it certainly won't be happening again.
09:36I don't know if any scares ever happen in those situations,
09:38I didn't get one, they could be randomly generated,
09:41and for that I applaud the team for their self-restraint,
09:43being that they could have ended my life in a second
09:45with one close-up screamer.
09:47That being said,
09:48if there are possible scares in these situations and I just somehow avoided them,
09:52then I don't know, lick my bum.
09:54As I learned throughout the game,
09:55some of the scares in this game are actually random.
09:57Not as in like pure RNG,
09:59but some places have scares spawn where they don't normally spawn,
10:02so it's perfectly achievable to be on your sixth run-through of the game,
10:06only to flounder into a scare you've never seen before,
10:08and I think we can all agree that that is like the worst thing ever.
10:11So the TV tells us that a woman named Madison Hale killed her own family during a ritual,
10:16just like us, 20s, except she was fatally shot in the stomach,
10:19interrupting said ritual.
10:21But what was the ritual?
10:22Nah, I'm sure it won't be relevant.
10:24Oh look at this, a book full of drawings of burned Polaroids.
10:27The drawings are titled things like Sister's Leg, Mum's Arm, Dad's Head,
10:31but most importantly this book is found in a red safe.
10:34The red safe is essentially your storage box.
10:37Think like Resident Evil 7 and then think it again because that font in the upper eye
10:42of your inventory is definitely like ripped straight from it for some reason.
10:45As we walk into the house proper,
10:47we see what we have to work with and the real strengths of this game come to light.
10:51Remember how I said this game was really good?
10:53Well, I haven't been doing it much justice so far with my explanations, have I?
10:56But this is where the game really begins to shine.
10:59See, Madison largely takes place in a modest sized family house with a few rooms.
11:04I say that but I mean modest sized family house from like the 60s,
11:09so it probably cost ÂŁ800 with a zero interest mortgage qualified for
11:13because the buyer showed up in a suit and tie or because his parents promised the bank
11:16he'd probably be good for the cash.
11:18But this is good because it means that we have a very small space to explore
11:21and do our puzzles in with some branching paths that take us elsewhere.
11:25The house at first feels almost like a hub area, like it seems a bit safe,
11:29but occasionally something ultimately harmless will scare the shit out of us.
11:33Think Henry's apartment from Silent Hill 4 if you're old enough to have seen a PlayStation 2 in person,
11:38and I know that some of you aren't.
11:39There are only a few rooms available to us at first and there are puzzles dotted around,
11:44but we don't have tools to access them yet.
11:46Most of the doors are locked.
11:47This game does a thing where it gives you access to some late game puzzles or items early,
11:51but with no way of using them.
11:52I think this is easy to criticise, but personally I really like it.
11:55I hate when games oversimplify themselves by having you walk into a new section of the game
12:00when you are given exactly the puzzles that you need to solve right now,
12:03and the exact tools that you need to solve them with.
12:05Because then the game becomes a four-piece jigsaw that you already have the pieces for,
12:09so it's just a matter of slotting them together.
12:11I think it makes puzzles too easy when you're given exactly what you need exactly when you need it.
12:16In Madison, you can be given late game puzzles right at the start.
12:19The toilet, for example, which needs bolt cutters to open,
12:22and the game doesn't tell you whether or not you can solve them yet.
12:25And horror games love pretending bolt cutters are far more relevant to daily life than they actually are.
12:30So you spend a bit of time with the toilet, get to know it, try some stuff on it,
12:34and while you explore you tend to find the puzzles you can actually solve,
12:37and the items you can actually solve them with.
12:39I prefer it.
12:40It becomes a jigsaw you don't have all the pieces for yet.
12:43You don't actually know how big it's supposed to be,
12:45but the game drip feeds you a random selection of pieces at a time,
12:49and half of the challenge is figuring out what's relevant and when it's relevant.
12:52At this point, I wandered around a little bit and explored.
12:54The items you can pick up, like winding keys and shovels,
12:58feel natural enough to be found in a home and aren't out of place,
13:01but they also feel useful enough that I can understand why my character picked them up.
13:06We have a good balance between Resident Evil and Song of Horror here,
13:09where Resident Evil has you picking up three dog head reliefs,
13:12but Song of Horror has you picking up bits of random scrap metal
13:15that you would definitely never notice or think to find important
13:19if the game didn't specifically have your character comment aloud on them
13:22and put an interact button right above them.
13:24The puzzles in Madison, I feel, are done really well.
13:27What really works in this game, and what I really find to be its strongest asset,
13:30is the atmosphere.
13:31What you'll find around this point, or maybe will have found even earlier,
13:34is that this game is fucking tense.
13:36It is really scary.
13:37There is no other way to describe it.
13:39Madison makes incredible use of the surround sound in your headphones
13:42to create a game so immersive that even the most seasoned horror players
13:46will utterly crawl through it.
13:48I know whenever I talk about scary games, there's always somebody in the comments like,
13:52yeah, I played it. It wasn't scary. Not even one bit.
13:55And it's like, okay, but I don't believe you.
13:56And I definitely don't believe you with Madison.
13:58The audio design in this game is one in a million.
14:01The house fundamentally is extremely quiet.
14:04There's no music or wind whistling or ambient sound.
14:07The house is silent, which means that any noise you hear just strikes through like a gunshot.
14:12The house creaks around you.
14:14Footsteps echo in other rooms.
14:16Doors open and shut when you're not looking.
14:18The house is in no way lived in, but you do not feel alone.
14:22Noises don't escalate, but the tension does.
14:25The house finds a constant level of creepy, occasional sounds and stays there.
14:29But your anxiety will just grow and grow and grow until you're sweating, heart palpitating,
14:35having to pause the game for a rest every few minutes.
14:38It's a difficult game to play in the best possible way.
14:40Often you'll find a note to read and when you pick it up,
14:43you'll hear something right behind you, walking towards you.
14:46But when you frantically put the note down and look behind you, nothing's there.
14:50But you don't even want to turn around.
14:51Maybe it would just be better not to know.
15:04The utter silence of the house, the dead air, meant I was crawling through this place on my belly.
15:09The house has been carefully crafted in such a way that rooms are connected by long,
15:14thin corridors and tiny doorways under tall ceilings.
15:17So you can see far ahead, but only a pin prick.
15:20You can't see left, right or above.
15:22It makes walking down those corridors extremely tense.
15:26Your blind spots on either side are so significant that something could be right
15:29on the other side of a wall or corner and you would not know until you were right next to
15:33it.
15:34And sometimes you are right next to it.
15:36The game plays with this a bit, having figures walking away right at the end of a corridor,
15:40or having a very, very rare jump scare that I think spawns if you spend too long
15:44walking around the house where one particular corner becomes, well, it becomes a cause for
15:49concern if you catch my drift.
15:50And drift I did, right over to the power button when I put this game down for the night.
15:54The lighting in Madison is bleak, adding to this dusty grey filter over everything you can see.
16:00Luca's grandpappy's house has some of the most washed out overhead lights on the market,
16:05bathing everything in like a dull grey that gives the place a strange and otherworldly vibe.
16:10The shadows leaping across the floor make me jump bad.
16:13The corners of the rooms are pitch black and creepily dark,
16:17you can only illuminate them with the flash from your camera,
16:19and doorways are short and narrow, obscuring your viewers to what's on the other side.
16:23And as the game wears on, and one particular entity begins to roam,
16:27it really helps to know what's on the other side of those doors.
16:30The way this house has been put together to maximise atmosphere is utterly masterful,
16:34in my opinion, with every detail geared specifically towards giving you some of the
16:38tensest experiences of your life. The way the gameplay functions is similar too.
16:43Initially I was really sceptical of the use of an inventory system,
16:46often they just feel like time wasters, and the consequential blight of inventory management,
16:51since you get, what, like eight measly slots for inventory and some of them are permanently occupied.
16:56I was initially really irritated by the semi-constant need to be shuffling these bits and pieces
17:00back and forth from the red safe. Combined with the way the game gives you late game pieces early,
17:05it means that you might need to trial a few different combinations of items before you
17:09find the ones you need for a puzzle, adding to your reliance on walking back and forth from the
17:13red safe. But as I played, I started to realise that this is a really effective way of raising the
17:19tension. See, when you make progress in this house, invisible variables will turn on and things will
17:24become active, like new jump scares or just general spookiness. Having inventory management
17:30forces you to walk through the house to the red safe and then walk through the house back to where
17:35you were doing the puzzle. It's only a short walk, but combined with the noises and the tension and
17:40the crippling atmosphere of this horrible little game, it becomes a walk you would genuinely rather
17:46do tomorrow. I remember doing a puzzle in the attic which involved moving four portraits around on
17:51the walls, only to realise my inventory was full. A quick trip to the safe, I reassured myself,
17:56but looking down the ladder, imagining myself taking that long walk back to the safe, I put the game
18:02down and went to bed. Tomorrow problem. Because the map does do that. Change, I mean, not go to bed.
18:07After a certain point the ladder will fall down from the attic so that you now have access to the
18:11attic,
18:11but this cuts off your quick access to the kitchen. It takes the initial doughnut shape of the map and
18:17turns it into a horseshoe. This means that instead of being able to scurry through the fairly open
18:21jumpscare free kitchen, you now have to take a long, long walk through those corridors,
18:27round three tight corners, multiple doors, and the game will make you feel every extra second of that
18:32trip. Jesus Christ. This artificially elongates the gameplay, but not to the extent where it feels
18:38like they're trying to drag out the playtime. The time is nominal here. It's only a few seconds,
18:43but it feels like years. I feel like Madison forces you to turn away from what you're doing and face
18:48that
18:49horrible network of corridors head on. It means that while you might be in one room doing one
18:53single puzzle, having to pick up a new item means that the situation now extends across the house
18:58and you have to take a very nauseous, heart palpitate walk all the way back to that red
19:03safe to drop off some more stuff. I think it's really effective. Normally I find these kinds of
19:07gameplay extension tactics to be really cheap, but I think it worked so well in Madison that I couldn't
19:12fault it, and in some of the later puzzles it adds a risk of death when you're running back and
19:16forth across the house or wherever you find yourself, but there's something there with you too.
19:21The way this functions forces you to immerse yourself in the atmosphere and it forces you to
19:26endure it and it is really unbearable. On the flip side, the save frequency in this game can only be
19:32described as appalling. The game autosaves as denoted by an icon that appears in the bottom right corner
19:37of the screen, but it only autosaves when you make measurable progress through the story. Since initial
19:43playthroughs are puzzle heavy, they can run you pretty long. The time between measurable pieces
19:48of progress can be quite high. Sometimes I would spend like 30-45 minutes carefully walking around
19:53the house, picking up items, examining things, reading notes, reshuffling my inventory, figuring
19:59out puzzles, but then I would need to clock back into work or go to bed and there's no way
20:03to save
20:03the game without progressing the story. So what do I do? Do I check a walkthrough and spoil the next
20:08step for myself just so that I can save the game? Or do I turn the game off and lose
20:12my thread 30
20:13minutes in and return to the game not knowing what I've read, picked up, experienced or have in my
20:18inventory? For me, since I love puzzles, I would just turn the game off and take the hit to my
20:23play
20:23time, but it was really annoying when I wanted to stop and take a break only to be forced to
20:28play for
20:28another 20 minutes just to wait for the save game icon to show up. I know it sounds like a
20:32nothing
20:32problem and in most games it's not really that important, but on my first playthrough I was really annoyed
20:37by this. I think with games like this that are so intensive and heavy that when you need a break,
20:43you need a break. Being able to quicksave or have a point in the house you can interact with to
20:47save
20:47the game, potentially the phone in the kitchen, would be really useful just so I could keep my inventory
20:52and not have to retrace my steps every time I pick up the game again. After a short stint in
20:56the basement
20:57we find a recording left by a priest who visited the house where he talks about demonic possession.
21:01The way this game does recordings is really funny. Rather than just putting the tape into a tape player,
21:06Luca just holds it in his hand and the thingies in the tape just spin while the tape plays.
21:10Hey what's up, what you been up to? The priest tells us that from the moment of first contact
21:14it is already too late. Demons attach themselves to humans like parasites and devour their soul.
21:19The whole time Luca is just repeating words or phrases from the recording in these like meek,
21:24shocked little whispers. Aggressive, even violent. This is the result of demons.
21:31But sometimes he just directly talks over the recording, like shut up Luca. There's actually an option in the
21:36menu to turn off Luca's voice, which gets really tempting at points. Luca sees visions of a red
21:40door and if you're already on a second playthrough you'll probably already have walked down into the
21:45basement and been standing outside said red door by this point, waiting for the dialogue to end.
21:50It's really funny actually, if you check out some speed runs on this game, half of the run is spent
21:54waiting for that priest to stop talking. The priest warns us that demonic possession usually manipulates
22:00insects into gathering and the priest tells us to avoid places where we see insects, particularly
22:05cockroaches, but lo and behold this cockroach is on the door, just as the priest said. But this is a
22:10horror
22:10story so naturally it is the only time in the game that cockroaches are used, to my memory. It's a
22:15shame,
22:16I think they could be a strong motif used throughout the game, but they're largely forgotten from this
22:20moment onward. They're just like a cool oh yeah moment when you're listening to the audio and then you look
22:24up and
22:25see some insects. There's a lot like that in this story to be honest, motifs that are picked up and
22:29dropped, storylines that are undercooked, connections between storylines that are half-arsed and half-baked.
22:34I won't go into them for the sake of spoilers and at one point I did flirt with the idea
22:37of explaining
22:38the story in this review since it has some interesting elements but I decided against it. I think it's worth
22:42playing it yourself so I won't go into detail. So while I said earlier that this game takes place in
22:47a small
22:47house with a few branching paths, behind this door is one of those branching paths. As we're told by the
22:52priest's recording, subjects of possession tend to hallucinate big time, which I think is what's
22:57implied by these branches. We're not actually going down a well into the sewers, we're not actually
23:02going through a subterranean maze, we're not actually in an old run-down church, we're probably just
23:07lying down on a dirty floor somewhere tripping demonic balls. It might be what's implied by the
23:12wall Luca crawls through to get to his grandpa's house. These places might not even exist, they could
23:17just be happening in Luca's mind. Honestly, his grandpa's house could be in his mind as well. He might never
23:22have left the TV room at the start of the game and a lot about the game implies that, especially
23:26the
23:27priest's dialogue when he tells us that the fastest way to get rid of a demon is to do exactly
23:32what it
23:32wants you to do. Like, isn't that exactly what a demon would tell you if they wanted you to do
23:36what
23:37they wanted you to do? Like, yeah dude, definitely, this priest, this holy man, this vessel of christ, he
23:42definitely thinks you should do what I say you should do, so go and do it. I think the whole
23:45hallucination idea
23:46is a pretty cool concept that gets a little bit more explored in the game, more than the cockroaches
23:51anyway. I mean, the title of this game is literally Mad Son, he's probably just in a k-hole somewhere
23:56watching daytime TV. As we wander underground into some sewers, one thing I do feel pertinent to mention
24:01is the use of jumpscares. This game employs a lot of jumpscares, which it layers on top of this
24:06crippling atmosphere pretty thoroughly. I've never played PT myself, but it looks like the kind of
24:10game that aims for the same atmosphere as PT without ripping the shit out of it. And personally,
24:15I'm in two minds about it. I don't feel like Madison needs to have so many jumpscares,
24:20this game is really creepy without them, but they work? So like, I don't know. Because I'll be honest,
24:25this game is rancid with them. They're constant enough that the game is a series of gunshot volume
24:30barks right in your ear, and they're exhausting and endless and they absolutely batter you both ends.
24:35But they're placed just sparsely enough that you're lying if you say at least one didn't really get
24:42you. And me, who hates jumpscares because I jump so hard that it hurts, well, I found a weird respect
24:47for them. Some of them were evil. Normally, I can't stand them, but I felt as though alongside
24:51the atmosphere of this game, they ended up really working. Like, this is a horror game. It's supposed
24:55to be scary. Its goal is to scare me, and it did that really well. Is the story flimsy? Yes.
25:00Are the
25:00characters weak? Oh yes. Are the monsters actually a bit goobery? Yes. But this game had me walking
25:05backwards through the house with my headphones off because it's a move the devs would never anticipate, and if that
25:10hasn't done its job, then I don't know what has. They don't prepare for players like me. I'm just too
25:14smooth with it. Despite the cheapness of the jumpscares in places, they're not entirely relied upon. At
25:18some point, several statues in the house will begin to move around, and yeah, sometimes it's fairly
25:22noticeable, but sometimes you'll be solving puzzles on one wall only to turn around and there'll be a
25:27statue right behind you. No movement, no noise, no sting, no dramatic flair, just presence, and by god,
25:32if those weren't the moments where I was propelled 15 feet off my seat in a fear response that could
25:36be
25:37measured on the Richter scale. See you later, man.
25:38There is one bit that I feel kind of sucks. The game has you walking through a pitch black
25:43underground maze for a really really long time. Even if you do it quickly, you're still walking
25:47in silence for what feels like forever, and even on my first playthrough, having the mental sturdiness
25:52of one of those marshmallows SpongeBob places bars with, I managed it okay. I think it's supposed to
25:57be slowly slowly raising the suspense before one utterly crippling jump, but it goes on for so long
26:02that you get a bit bored and you zone out, and then that final jumpscare just isn't that bad. For
26:07a segment of
26:07gameplay that should have had me crying under the weight of my own mounting terror, it was mostly
26:12fine and that's probably a failure I'd say. This maze incidentally leads us to a really unusual
26:17choice for a setting. Well, actually the setting is okay, it's the church where Madison's wake was
26:22held and consequently where her coffin now sits waiting for us, but god damn if you aren't gonna
26:26laugh when you find out who's here. Lucas steps out of the maze into a graveyard and has this moment
26:30of
26:30how did I get here? Which comes off as a bit trite, yeah. You know, we did enter a maze
26:35through a hole
26:35in the attic, so you know, it shouldn't be possible for us to move so far above ground, but we
26:39were
26:39walking for like six minutes, Lucas. It's not out of the possibility that we will be somewhere else now.
26:44The church is a cool setting at first glance. We walk around between photos on the wall with
26:48different dates and colours assigned, and when we photograph them we appear in different times.
26:52The present day church is a graffitied mess, it actually looks fantastic. This rundown piece of
26:57shit hollow shell, there's an old place of worship now ruined and sabotaged. It looks really good and
27:02it's really eerie. It's only when we go into the past that we meet him. Hans. Hans the Nazi ghost.
27:08We get our introduction to Hans through a woman crying in the confessional who whispers to us that
27:12she was living with a monster who never loved her, who lied to her and tried to pretend he wasn't
27:16garbage
27:17but his past followed him, you know, yada yada yada. And then she whispers in this hushed voice,
27:21he was in charge of the gas chamber. And I don't know, I just laughed. Oh yeah, of course,
27:25let's put Nazis in the game for some reason, why not? He can't just be a ghost that haunts the
27:29church,
27:29he's a Nazi ghost, so he's like 10 times worse. Oh yeah, you can hear him breathing when he's nearby
27:34because he has a gas mask on, because he's a Nazi ghost, who is in charge of the gas chambers.
27:38So what? Put a pillow over his head or something, make him a normal dude who got strangled. Why make
27:42him a Nazi? He could work for Nintendo or be a professional cyclist and it would have had zero
27:47bearing on the story. He could be a runaway fry cook with a penchant for stabbing, though it would have
27:51been so much more interesting. The Nazi angle here is picked up and dropped like a newborn with a drunk
27:55mother-in-law. Never mentioned again on any level, not even referenced, not even relevant. He's scary,
28:00sure, but he's definitely the weakest aspect of this whole game. From what I understand from other
28:04people, this game tries to go for a Visage format where each section of the game has a different
28:08main enemy. I've not played Visage, so I can't comment. Still, I thought it might be pertinent to
28:13mention it in case anyone can confirm in the comments. If so, I can see that. The game has a
28:17rough
28:17three sections with three respective enemies, you can only die in two of them, and the first two are
28:22Madison and Hans. The final one? Oh man, the final guy is called Blue Knees. And no, before you say
28:27Blue Knees
28:28was not my nickname at university, it wasn't my mum's nickname at school, it was my dad's, obviously.
28:34So Blue Knees is interesting. There's a lot more to him than the game is directly telling us, and if
28:39I
28:39didn't explain video on this I'd probably go into it, but just google it. His section is the final of
28:44the three. There's a lot about him that the game doesn't really tell us, but it's kind of implied and
28:48yeah,
28:49we'll cover him as we go. Blue Knees is what amounts to a final boss. There's no specific fight
28:54with him, this isn't Doom, but his section forms the most dangerous and hectic part of the game,
28:59with very real threats to Luca's life. What's cool is that he's foreshadowed throughout the game.
29:04There's a mirror in the bathroom with the words Blue Knees is real on the back. We find out that
29:08Luca's grandma was haunted by Blue Knees until her eyes went completely white and suffered constant
29:12pain while her husband accused her of lying before Blue Knees killed her. Her medication for eye
29:17pain is scattered across the house everywhere. It's when we find a book of Blue Knees that he
29:21becomes active. One thing I really liked about my copy of the game, the possessed edition, was that
29:26it came with a few bits and pieces that I really appreciated. I might just be buying the wrong games,
29:30but it feels weird to me to find stuff packed into boxes nowadays. Sure, you occasionally get a map,
29:35but unless you're pre-ordering you don't tend to get anything at all. Madison came with a bunch of
29:40awesome bits and pieces, some in-game ritual cards, some polaroids of Madison and Blue Knees
29:44respectively, and the Blue Knees book. I was really pleasantly surprised by the amount of
29:48effort that went into these boxes, and if the cards hadn't been double-sided I probably would have
29:52put them on my wall or something. But I love that the book that was cursed and haunted their house
29:56ended up in my house. Like, I thought that was cool. It made me appreciate the team very much.
30:01They put a lot of effort into all these bits and pieces. Thanks guys. It was actually wholesome as
30:04fuck to get jumpscared by a cat-eyed zombie witch when I opened the box for the first time.
30:08The premise of Blue Knees section is fairly cool. You go back to the house,
30:11but the layout has now changed. Grammophones have been placed in various rooms and you need to
30:16spin the crank for the length of an entire music clip. Some tiny Tim-style song about Blue Knees.
30:21It's about 30 seconds long until the end when an eyeball might pop out that we need to collect.
30:27There are two eyeballs to grab from these Grammophones and they're randomly placed around the house.
30:32The only catch? Blue Knees is now roaming and he will spawn on you every roughly 30 seconds or so
30:37with a loud noise to notify you that he's arrived. At this point the camera comes in handy and
30:42functionality around it develops again. Flashing him with the camera causes him to momentarily
30:47stun and despawn. I really like the way the camera develops here.
30:50If you'll pardon the pardon.
30:51It's very scary though. When you take a photo, Luca takes five minutes to tenderly remove it from the
30:57camera, flop it back and forth until it develops and then stare lovingly at it just to see what he's
31:02captured in film. So if you startle too hard when Blue Knees spawns and flash him too early,
31:07you'll miss the window and Luca will be four seconds into a 25 second animation by the time BK
31:12grabs him and kills him. So it's kind of cool in the way that you not only have to adapt
31:16to the
31:17way the camera now works, but you also need to get used to BK popping in and out of existence
31:21enough
31:22so that you don't completely blow your beans prematurely. I think it's a really effective
31:25escalation and I love the way the camera starts as a light source, becomes an object you can collect clues
31:30on,
31:30activates aspects of the environment, becomes your conduit between worlds and times and now
31:35is kind of like a shield of some kind. What's more is that the gramophones are placed so that your
31:39back is often to the door or any exits and they are designed to keep you locked in that location
31:43for roughly 30 seconds. Blue Knees can attack you during this time so you need to quickly disengage
31:48from the gramophone, turn around, wait for him to get into range and then stun him with the camera
31:52then carry on before he respawns. I don't know what you're supposed to do if you're hard of hearing,
31:56I don't remember any visual clues, but you know hopefully they'll add some accessibility options
32:00if they don't have them already. One good thing about this segment is that if you die you respawn
32:04with all gramophone progress saved. This segment could really potentially drag if you had to still
32:09be doing 30 seconds at each station every time and you can argue that it's too easy with this,
32:14but I think they prioritised fun over challenge here and didn't put you in a situation where
32:18you'd just be redoing seven 30 second stints with travel time between them every time you die,
32:24since Blue Knees is an instant kill and I respect that, although I am biased because I died here a
32:28lot.
32:28Blue Knees would come running at me and I would scream and suddenly the flash would go off in my
32:32hands and I'd have a polaroid soaking the inside of my jeans while Blue Knees fingers my eye sockets.
32:37I don't think I managed a successful stun on him once. With this final puzzle out of the way,
32:42I head to the final segment of the game. The game then crashed. As I went back to my homepage
32:45I saw it
32:46had updated and when I checked the update description it said improved stability which I found ironic.
32:51On a reload there wasn't much left to retread thankfully considering the unbelievably cruel autosaves in
32:56this game and I reached the final scene. So we get to the final scene and this final scene is,
33:00for lack of a better word, weak. Indicative of horror stories that have a lot of fancy ideas but
33:05nowhere ready to take them, this game does wrap up logically and the ending does make sense but it
33:11feels more like a mid-game plot point or a fail state than an actual cohesive ending and if it's
33:16sequel
33:16bait then that's even worse considering the team have no track record of making good sequels or any games
33:22considering I believe this is actually their first game. I feel like you have to have a good few
33:25individual titles under your belt before you start acting like your good name carries enough weight
33:29that people need to trust you that the next game in the series will definitely be good we promise.
33:33But enough preamble. So this is basically the culmination of a ritual that's been taking place
33:37over the course of the game beginning long before the game began. You'll have some numbers at this
33:41point that you can use on a padlock to grab an urn and with this being the final piece of
33:46the puzzle
33:46your character climbs up onto a chair and hangs himself as Madison's spirit approaches him. A camera takes a
33:51photo of him without any human input shortly thereafter spitting out the burned polaroid and
33:55in the final shot of the game luca gasps awake presumably now possessed by Madison. Presumably.
34:01After finishing the game myself I watched a few people play this on twitch and not one of them
34:04assumed that this was the ending of the game. Everyone was confused by this. Although this could
34:09comfortably be the ending of a game with enough build up I feel like this hits out of nowhere.
34:13It's the kind of ending where you look back and realise where it came from and yeah it does make
34:17logical sense but it's not built up to in any meaningful way and it feels random in its
34:21execution. It's hard to explain I hope I'm making sense. The ending is all far and no shit but it
34:25could be shit. If there had been more of a struggle between luca and the demon, more of a resistance,
34:30more foreshadowing, maybe notes from the priest it could work. I mean the noose is hanging right
34:34there from the start of the game so it's kind of foreshadowed but it feels so left field. Those of
34:39you
34:39who've played madison do you know what I mean? I soaked up this story while I played it and I
34:42was
34:43still confused as to what on earth was going on by this final scene. Essentially luca had been following
34:48madison's will the whole time and her final command to him is that he hangs himself and the only way
34:53we know that is because it suddenly says so in his notebook so he hangs himself. I feel like it
34:57was
34:57basically mind controlled to do it but we don't really see that so to us he sees a piece of
35:02paper
35:02that says the hanged son and then he hangs himself. It's quick it doesn't work but hey collectibles
35:06carry over through saves so I have no complaints. Anyway thanks for sticking around to the end of my
35:11madison review. I finished this game four or five times now and I still have to play it in increments
35:15even knowing what's coming up the atmosphere is a quagmire and it is so hard to sit down and commit
35:20to. I get sweaty. It is really scary and if you told me you weren't scared by this even a
35:25little bit
35:25I honestly would not believe you. This game didn't have an exceptional story, the characters were basic
35:29the plot was fairly cobbled but the puzzles were hard enough that I felt challenged without needing
35:33to google them and the scares had me painting my sofa brown so I think it does what it sets
35:37up to do
35:38fairly well horror wise. I often feel like that in horror good stories are a cherry on top but not
35:43necessarily the core selling point and although I don't think we should settle for less I do think
35:47this game does what it sets out to do very well and I would recommend it for any lover of
35:51horror
35:52games. Anyway don't forget to click the link to Atlas VPN in my description below or the pinned comment
35:56and thank you again Atlas VPN for sponsoring this video. Finally hop over to Patreon, check out those
36:01pledges if you haven't already and thank you to my patrons for their support. If you enjoyed the video
36:05drop me a like, comment your own thoughts on the game and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks for being
36:09here
36:09folks and I'll see you in the next one.
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