- 21 hours ago
The Madison S01 EP02
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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. At least the bugs were fixed by the
00:38time 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. It looked really goofy.
00:47I watched for a few minutes and I turned the stream off because I was unimpressed, but as the weeks
00:51went on I started to hear more about it.
00:53A few people said it was an incredible game, a few people said it was dog shit, and one person
00:58told 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, that I thought,
01:10hey, you know, since it's free let's give it a go, and it was not what I expected.
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 against DDoS attacks and
01:31snooping,
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01:37Right now, Atlas VPN is running a limited time offer, so check out the link in the description to learn
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01:42Although I work in software, I mean, I'm a web designer, I'm hardly technical, especially when it comes to VPNs,
01:48so I was happy to see how easy Atlas VPN is to use.
01:51You can connect anywhere, from a wide variety of countries, and 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.
02:02With over 6 million users worldwide, Atlas VPN is one of the most popular VPNs available now, and for good
02:07reason.
02:07Right now, Atlas VPN is running a massive discount, you can get a 3 year subscription for just under $2
02:13per 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 by clicking the link in
02:22the video description below,
02:23or my pinned comment below the video.
02:25Thank you Atlas VPN for sponsoring today's video.
02:28Yeah, no, Madison is no VPN. It's a game, unsurprisingly. A horror game.
02:32And when I saw it, I expected a stale walking simulator with minimal effort, flipped assets, cheap jump scares, and
02:38a dead atmosphere.
02:40But like dead in a crap way, not in a scary way, probably with the wankiest story on the planet.
02:45I was wrong. This is one of the scariest games I've ever played, and easily my scariest game of the
02:50year, 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 watched my content will probably know already, I like games with good stories,
03:03good communicative control schemes, and 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 a story so
03:17flimsy
03:17that 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, serving the simple purpose of hoisting
03:26up some creepy visuals
03:27and nasty scares. Some of their stories are crap all the way through, like The Human Centipede 2 or Cabin
03:32Fever,
03:32squatting squarely on your face with the pure intention of making you very, very uncomfortable with as little narrative effort
03:38as 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 when they realise
03:46they'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, as in, the story is a very
03:54basic skeleton that justifies the gameplay
03:57with very little room for exploration and discovery and very little payoff.
04:01Vati Vigia would starve in this game. There's no hidden secrets to be found, no twists or turns, it's very
04:06basic.
04:07It's rare for horror stories to be good, and that's fairly accepted, I don't mind that, but we should try
04:11and be better, I think.
04:12Madison controls like trying to pilot a tractor through a supermarket. Random interactions are assigned to the same buttons for
04:18some reason,
04:18so you'll try and sprint and end up taking a photo instead, or you'll try and take a photo and
04:22accidentally interact with something.
04:24Opening drawers and cupboards feels like peeling your own fingernails off. Your main character fumbles around like a toddler in
04:29a ball pit.
04:30And the jumpscares? Christ.
04:35I won't show you any jumpscares in the game in this video, one for spoiler reasons, but two for the
04:39mere fact that I fucking hate them.
04:41But this game absolutely layers them on, and honestly, it doesn't really need to.
04:45Because the one thing I think this game does so well, so brilliantly, so pants-wettingly well, is atmosphere.
04:52Enough for despite all those problems with the game, all 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, it is a perfectly crafted experience designed entirely with the intention of
05:12making you sleep with the lights on,
05:13and it pulls it off so well. If we were to grade Madison on its story, it would be low.
05:17If we graded it on characters, it would be average. If we graded it on mechanics, it would be pretty
05:22good.
05:22But if we grade it on horror, it's top of the class, and today I'm going to tell you why.
05:27So, since most of the weaknesses of this game fall within the story beats, expect full spoilers for Madison.
05:32I will be covering everything, including the ending. Although, don't let that concern you too much.
05:37The story in this game really is secondary, and in my opinion, you can fully appreciate the game while still
05:43knowing how it ends.
05:44There's a few different interpretations for how it ends, and 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, because, you know, I want to
05:52stick to the review.
05:53But that said, before we begin, thanks for being here. Remember to like the video and subscribe if you enjoyed
05:57it.
05:58I post all sorts of gaming videos, and there's plenty more to watch. Comment your own thoughts on the game
06:02if you've played it,
06:03your own likes and dislikes, and check me out over on twitch.tv slashmukkk if you'd like to check games
06:08real-time.
06:08Finally, there's a Patreon down below in the description where you can earn access to some beautiful pledge rewards,
06:13and when I figure this dickhead Vimeo thing out, see videos early. Thanks to my current patrons for all their
06:17support.
06:18But that said, let's get on with it. In Madison, we start in a dark, dank room.
06:21The only illumination is a TV screen which flickers ominously, casting 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. What were you thinking?
06:34First things first, but our character's voice reminds me of somebody so familiar.
06:39I gotta get out of here.
06:41Father, when can I leave to be on my own? I've got the whole world to see.
06:45Yeah, 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, and sometimes he does these little moans when he's scared or
06:55upset,
06:55and they're supposed to be, like, harrowing. He's like,
06:58It just sounds like he's creamed his pants and they make me laugh every time.
07:02The own blood your father is referring to seems to be some dismembered body parts you see in some polaroids
07:07you collect off of the floor.
07:09So we can assume Luca killed somebody in his family shortly before this game began and then locked himself in
07:13that room.
07:14Fear's fear, Luca. I would probably need some breathing space after something like that as well.
07:18As we toddle around this tiny room, grappling with the insanely stiff cupboard opening animation
07:23It will be the death of me, I swear, we grab a hammer and use it to pry our way
07:27through some boards in the wall,
07:28heading into a new section of the house. So 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 Sims furniture, and among the beige decor,
07:40we learn that he's installed a fuckton of jumpscares.
07:43We can assume he's dead, the game never specifies I don't think, but I feel it's a comfortable assumption to
07:48make
07:48and the house has been kept the same ever since. Exactly 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. That'd be great.
08:01Luca has a camera that I initially assumed would serve as a terrible torch full of canned jumpscares, but not
08:06so. Not so at all.
08:08The camera in this game is actually pretty cool. Not only can you get cute skins for it, including a
08:12literal 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, meaning you'll often accidentally shoot a premature photo when something makes
08:26you jump, like a squeaky masochist,
08:28but one of the many purposes of the camera we'll find it serves is that it can magically make stuff
08:32happen when you take photos of stuff.
08:34You often progress the story by finding what you need or assembling what you need to assemble and then photographing
08:40it.
08:40There will be a loud bang, the screen will shake, and whatever happens happens, usually in a manner that involves
08:45it 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 and a fuckton of elbow grease to work,
08:55so 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 centre and we use the camera to make the thing
09:08work,
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. Your character wants to see through the hole, this game
09:21is played in first person,
09:23and so your character will have to get right up close to the hole in the wall and stare directly
09:26through it at a clue or something on the other side,
09:29and god, it's arse crunching, I 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, I didn't get one, they could be randomly generated,
09:41and for that I applaud the team for their self-restraint, being that they could have ended my life in
09:45a second with one close-up score.
09:46That being said, if there are possible scares in these situations and I just somehow avoided them, then, I don't
09:53know, lick my bum.
09:54As I learned throughout the game, some of the scares in this game are actually random.
09:57Not as in like, pure RNG, but 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, only to flounder into a scare
10:07you'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, interrupting 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,
10:40because that font in the upper eye of your inventory is definitely, like, ripped straight from it for some reason.
10:45As we walk into the house proper, we see what we have to work with, and the real strengths of
10:49this 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.
10:58See, Madison largely takes place in a modest-sized family house with a few rooms.
11:05I say that, but I mean modest-sized family house from, like, the 60s,
11:09so it probably cost £800 with a zero-interest mortgage qualified for because the buyer showed up in a suit
11:14and tie,
11:15or because his parents promised the bank he'd probably be good for the cash.
11:18But this is good, because it means that we have a very small space to explore and do our puzzles
11:22in,
11:22with 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, this game does a thing where it gives you access to some late-game
11:49puzzles 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.
12:55The 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
13:44that even the most seasoned horror players will utterly crawl through it.
13:48I know whenever I talk about scary games,
13:50there'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.
14:00The house fundamentally is extremely quiet.
14:04There's no music or wind whistling or ambient sound.
14:07The house is silent,
14:09which 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.
14:41Often 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, thin corridors
15:14and tiny doorways under tall ceilings, so you can see far ahead, but only a pinprick.
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 on the other side of a
15:30wall or corner
15:31and you would not know until you were right next to it.
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 jumpscare that I think spawns if you spend too long walking around the house,
15:46where one particular corner becomes... well, it becomes a cause for concern 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.
16:16You can only illuminate them with the flash from your camera, and doorways are short and narrow,
16:21obscuring 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, in my opinion.
16:35With every detail geared specifically towards giving you some of the tensest experiences of your life,
16:40the 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,
16:48and the consequential blight of inventory management since you get, what,
16:52like 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 back and forth
17:01from the red safe.
17:02Combined 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 find the ones you
17:09need for a puzzle,
17:10adding to your reliance on walking back and forth from the red safe.
17:14But as I played, I started to realise that this is a really effective way of raising the tension.
17:19See, when you make progress in this house, invisible variables will turn on and things will become active,
17:25like new jump scares or just general spookiness.
17:28Having inventory management forces you to walk through the house to the red safe,
17:33and then walk through the house back to where you were doing the puzzle.
17:36It's only a short walk, but combined with the noises and the tension and the crippling atmosphere of this horrible
17:43little game,
17:44it becomes a walk you would genuinely rather do tomorrow.
17:47I remember doing a puzzle in the attic which involved moving four portraits around on the walls,
17:52only to realise my inventory was full.
17:54A quick trip to the safe, I reassured myself,
17:56but looking down the ladder, imagining myself taking that long walk back to the safe,
18:01I put the game down and went to bed. Tomorrow problem, because the map does do that.
18:05Change, 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.
18:14It takes the initial donut shape of the map and turns it into a horseshoe.
18:18This means that instead of being able to scurry through the fairly open jump scare free kitchen,
18:22you 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 trip.
18:33Jesus Christ.
18:34This artificially elongates the gameplay, but not to the extent where it feels like they're trying to drag out the
18:39playtime.
18:40The time is nominal here. It's only a few seconds, but it feels like years.
18:44I feel like Madison forces you to turn away from what you're doing and face that horrible network of corridors
18:50head-on.
18:51It means that while you might be in one room doing one single puzzle,
18:55having 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-palpitatey walk all the way back to that red safe to
19:03drop off some more stuff.
19:05I think it's really effective.
19:06Normally I find these kinds of gameplay extension tactics to be really cheap,
19:10but I think it worked so well in Madison that I couldn't fault it.
19:13And in some of the later puzzles, it adds a risk of death when you're running back and forth across
19:17the house
19:17or 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
19:25and it forces you to endure it and it is really unbearable.
19:29On the flip side, the save frequency in this game can only be described as appalling.
19:33The game autosaves as denoted by an icon that appears in the bottom right corner of the screen,
19:38but it only autosaves when you make measurable progress through the story.
19:42Since initial playthroughs are puzzle-heavy, they can run you pretty long.
19:46The time between measurable pieces of progress can be quite high.
19:50Sometimes I would spend like 30-45 minutes carefully walking around the house,
19:54picking up items, examining things, reading notes, reshuffling my inventory, figuring out puzzles,
19:59but then I would need to clock back into work or go to bed,
20:02and there's no way to save the game without progressing the story.
20:05So what do I do? Do I check a walkthrough and spoil the next step for myself
20:09just so that I can save the game?
20:11Or do I turn the game off and lose my thread 30 minutes in
20:14and return to the game not knowing what I've read, picked up, experienced or have in my inventory?
20:19For me, since I love puzzles, I would just turn the game off and take the hit to my playtime,
20:23but it was really annoying when I wanted to stop and take a break
20:26only to be forced to play for another 20 minutes just to wait for the save game icon to show
20:31up.
20:31I know it sounds like a nothing problem, and in most games it's not really that important,
20:35but on my first playthrough I was really annoyed by this.
20:38I think with games like this that are so intensive and heavy that when you need a break, you need
20:43a break.
20:44Being able to quicksave or have a point in the house you can interact with to save the game,
20:48potentially 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.
20:55After a short stint in the basement, we find a recording left by a priest who visited the house
21:00where he talks about demonic possession.
21:01The way this game does recordings is really funny.
21:04Rather than just putting the tape into a tape player, Luca just holds it in his hand
21:08and the thingies in the tape just spin while the tape plays.
21:10Hey, what's up? What you been up to?
21:12The priest tells us that from the moment of first contact, it is already too late.
21:16Demons 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, shocked little whispers.
21:26Aggressive, even violent. This is the result of the...
21:31But sometimes he just directly talks over the recording, like shut up Luca.
21:35There's actually an option in the menu to turn off Luca's voice, which gets really tempting at points.
21:39Luca sees visions of a red door and if you're already on a second playthrough
21:43you'll probably already have walked down into the basement and been standing outside said red door by this point,
21:48waiting for the dialogue to end.
21:50It's really funny actually, if you check out some speedruns on this game,
21:53half of the run is spent waiting for that priest to stop talking.
21:56The priest warns us that demonic possession usually manipulates insects into gathering
22:01and the priest tells us to avoid places where we see insects, particularly cockroaches.
22:06But, lo and behold, there's cockroaches on the door, just as the priest said.
22:10But this is a horror story, so naturally it is the only time in the game that cockroaches are used,
22:15to my memory.
22:15It's a shame, I think they could be a strong motif used throughout the game, but they're largely forgotten from
22:20this moment onward.
22:21They're just like a cool oh yeah moment when you're listening to the audio and then you look up and
22:25see some insects.
22:25There's a lot like that in this story, to be honest.
22:28Motifs that are picked up and dropped, storylines that are undercooked,
22:31connections 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 the story in this review,
22:39since it has some interesting elements, but I decided against it.
22:42I think it's worth playing it yourself so I won't go into detail.
22:45So, while I said earlier that this game takes place in a small house with a few branching paths,
22:49behind this door is one of those branching paths.
22:51As we're told by the priest's recording, subjects of possession tend to hallucinate big time,
22:56which I think is what's implied by these branches.
22:59We're not actually going down a well into the sewers, we're not actually going through a subterranean maze,
23:04we're not actually in an old run-down church, we're probably just lying down on a dirty floor somewhere, tripping
23:10demonic balls.
23:11It might be what's implied by the wall Luca crawls through to get to his grandpa's house.
23:15These places might not even exist, they could just be happening in Luca's mind.
23:19Honestly, his grandpa's house could be in his mind as well.
23:21He might never have left the TV room at the start of the game, and a lot about the game
23:25implies that,
23:26especially the priest's dialogue, when he tells us that the fastest way to get rid of a demon is to
23:31do exactly what it wants you to do.
23:33Like, isn't that exactly what a demon would tell you if they wanted you to do what they wanted you
23:37to do?
23:38Like, yeah dude, definitely, this priest, this holy man, this vessel of Christ,
23:42he definitely thinks you should do what I say you should do, so go and do it.
23:45I think the whole hallucination idea is a pretty cool concept that gets a little bit more explored in the
23:49game,
23:50more than the cockroaches anyway.
23:51I mean, the title of this game is literally Mad Son, he's probably just in a K-hole somewhere watching
23:56daytime TV.
23:57As we wander underground into some sewers, one thing I do feel pertinent to mention is the use of jump
24:02scares.
24:02This game employs a lot of jump scares, which it layers on top of this crippling atmosphere pretty thoroughly.
24:08I've never played PT myself, but it looks like the kind of game that aims for the same atmosphere as
24:12PT without ripping the shit out of it.
24:14And personally, I'm in two minds about it.
24:17I don't feel like Madison needs to have so many jump scares.
24:20This game is really creepy without them, but they work?
24:23So like, I don't know.
24:24Because I'll be honest, this game is rancid with them.
24:27They're constant enough that the game is a series of gunshot volume barks right in your ear,
24:32and they're exhausting and endless and they absolutely batter you both ends.
24:36But they're placed just sparsely enough that you're lying if you say at least one didn't really get you.
24:42And me, who hates jump scares because I jump so hard that it hurts, well, I found a weird respect
24:47for them.
24:47Some of them were evil.
24:48Normally, I can't stand them, but I felt as though alongside the atmosphere of this game, they ended up really
24:53working.
24:53Like, this is a horror game.
24:55It's supposed to be scary.
24:56Its goal is to scare me, and it did that really well.
24:58Is the story flimsy?
25:00Yes.
25:00Are the characters weak?
25:01Oh yes.
25:02Are the monsters actually a bit goobery?
25:03Yes.
25:04But this game had me walking backwards through the house with my headphones off,
25:07because it's a move the devs would never anticipate,
25:09and if that hasn't done its job, then I don't know what has.
25:12They don't prepare for players like me, I'm just too smooth with it.
25:15Despite the cheapness of the jump scares in places, they're not entirely relied upon.
25:18At some point, several statues in the house will begin to move around,
25:21and yeah, sometimes it's fairly noticeable, but sometimes you'll be solving puzzles on one wall,
25:25only to turn around and there'll be a statue right behind you.
25:28No movement, no noise, no sting, no dramatic flair, just presence,
25:32and by god, if those weren't the moments where I was propelled fifteen feet off my seat
25:35in a fear response that could be measured on the Richter scale.
25:38See you later, man.
25:39There is one bit that I feel kinda sucks.
25:41The game has you walking through a pitch black underground maze for a really, really long time.
25:45Even if you do it quickly, you're still walking in silence for what feels like forever.
25:49And even on my first playthrough, having the mental sturdiness of one of those marshmallows
25:53SpongeBob places his bars with, I managed it okay.
25:56I think it's supposed to be slowly, slowly raising the suspense before one utterly crippling jump,
26:01but it goes on for so long that you get a bit bored and you zone out.
26:04And then that final jumpscare just isn't that bad.
26:07For a segment of gameplay that should have had me crying under the weight of my own mounting terror,
26:11it was mostly fine and that's probably a failure I'd say.
26:14This maze incidentally leads us to a really unusual choice for a setting.
26:18Well, actually the setting is okay.
26:20It's the church where Madison's wake was held and consequently where her coffin now sits waiting for us,
26:25but god damn if you aren't gonna laugh when you find out who's here.
26:27Luca steps out of the maze into a graveyard and has this moment of
26:30How did I get here?
26:32Which comes off as a bit trite, yeah.
26:33You know, we did enter a maze through a hole in the attic,
26:36so, you know, it shouldn't be possible for us to move so far above ground,
26:39but we were walking for like six minutes, Luca.
26:41It's not out of the possibility that we will be somewhere else now.
26:44The church is a cool setting at first glance.
26:46We walk around between photos on the wall with different dates and colours assigned,
26:50and when we photograph them we appear in different times.
26:53The present day church is a graffiti mess.
26:55It actually looks fantastic.
26:56This run-down piece of shit hollow shell.
26:58There's an old place of worship now ruined and sabotaged.
27:01It looks really good and it's really eerie.
27:03It's only when we go into the past that we meet him.
27:05Hans.
27:06Hans the Nazi ghost.
27:08We get our introduction to Hans through a woman crying in the confessional
27:11who whispers to us that she was living with a monster who never loved her,
27:14who lied to her and tried to pretend he wasn't garbage,
27:17but his past followed him, you know, yada yada yada.
27:19And then she whispers in this hushed voice,
27:21He was in charge of the gas chamber.
27:23And I don't know, I just laughed.
27:24Oh yeah, of course, let's put Nazis in the game for some reason, why not?
27:27He can't just be a ghost that haunts the church,
27:29he's a Nazi ghost, so he's like ten times worse.
27:32Oh yeah, you can hear him breathing when he's nearby because he has a gas mask on,
27:35because he's a Nazi ghost who is in charge of the gas chambers.
27:38So what?
27:39Put a pillow over his head or something, make him a normal dude who got strangled.
27:42Why make him a Nazi?
27:43He could work for Nintendo or be a professional cyclist
27:46and it would have had zero bearing on the story.
27:48He could be a runaway fry cook with a penchant for stabbing.
27:51It would have been so much more interesting.
27:52The Nazi angle here is picked up and dropped like a newborn with a drunk mother-in-law.
27:55Never mentioned again on any level, not even referenced, not even relevant.
27:59He's scary, sure, but he's definitely the weakest aspect of this whole game.
28:03From what I understand from other people, this game tries to go for a visage format
28:06where each section of the game has a different main enemy.
28:09I've not played visage, so I can't comment.
28:11Still, I thought it might be pertinent to mention it in case anyone can confirm in the comments.
28:16If so, I can see that.
28:17The game has a rough three sections with three respective enemies.
28:20You can only die in two of them and the first two are Madison and Hans.
28:23The final one? Oh man.
28:24The final guy is called Blue Knees.
28:26And no, before you say Blue Knees was not my nickname at university.
28:30It wasn't my mum's nickname at school.
28:32It was my dad's, obviously.
28:34So, Blue Knees is interesting.
28:35There's a lot more to him than the game is directly telling us
28:38and if I did an explain video on this I'd probably go into it, but just google it.
28:43His section is the final of the three.
28:44There's a lot about him that the game doesn't really tell us, but it's kind of implied
28:48and yeah, we'll cover him as we go.
28:50Blue Knees is what amounts to a final boss.
28:53There's no specific fight with him, you know, this isn't Doom.
28:56But his section forms the most dangerous and hectic part of the game,
28:59with very real threats to Luca's life.
29:01What'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.
29:07We find out that Luca's grandma was haunted by Blue Knees until her eyes went completely white
29:12and suffered constant pain while her husband accused her of lying before Blue Knees killed her.
29:16Her medication for eye pain is scattered across the house everywhere.
29:19It's when we find a book of Blue Knees that he becomes active.
29:22One thing I really liked about my copy of the game, The Possessed Edition,
29:26was that it came with a few bits and pieces that I really appreciated.
29:29I might just be buying the wrong games, but it feels weird to me to find stuff packed into boxes
29:33nowadays.
29:34Sure, you occasionally get a map, but unless you're pre-ordering,
29:37you don't tend to get anything at all.
29:38Madison came with a bunch of awesome bits and pieces,
29:41some in-game ritual cards, some polaroids of Madison and Blue Knees respectively,
29:45and the Blue Knees book.
29:46I was really pleasantly surprised by the amount of effort that went into these boxes,
29:49and if the cards hadn't been double-sided I probably would have put them on my wall or something.
29:53But I love that the book that was cursed and haunted their house ended up in my house.
29:58I thought that was cool.
29:59It made me appreciate the team very much.
30:01They put a lot of effort into all these bits and pieces.
30:03Thanks guys.
30:03It was actually wholesome as fuck to get jumpscared by a cat-eyed zombie witch when I opened the box
30:07for the first time.
30:08The premise of Blue Knees section is fairly cool.
30:10You go back to the house, but the layout has now changed.
30:13Grammophones have been placed in various rooms, and you need to spin the crank for the length of an entire
30:18music clip.
30:19Some tiny Tim-style song about Blue Knees, it's about 30 seconds long until the end,
30:24when 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.
30:40At this point, the camera comes in handy, and functionality around it develops again.
30:44Flashing him with the camera causes him to momentarily stun and despawn.
30:48I really like the way the camera develops here.
30:50If you'll pardon the pardon.
30:52It's very scary though.
30:53When you take a photo, Luca takes five minutes to tenderly remove it from the camera,
30:57flop it back and forth until it develops, and then stare lovingly at it, just to see what he's captured
31:02in film.
31:03So 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 grabs
31:13him and kills him.
31:14So it's kind of cool in the way that you not only have to adapt to the way the camera
31:17now works,
31:18but you also need to get used to BK popping in and out of existence enough so that you don't
31:23completely blow your beans prematurely.
31:25I think it's a really effective escalation, and I love the way the camera starts as a light source,
31:29becomes an object you can collect clues on, activates aspects of the environment,
31:32becomes your conduit between worlds and times, and now is kind of like a shield of some kind.
31:37What's more is that the gramophone's a place so that your back is off into the door or any exits,
31:41and they are designed to keep you locked in that location for roughly 30 seconds.
31:45Blue Knees can attack you during this time, so you need to quickly disengage from the gramophone,
31:49turn around, wait for him to get into range, and then stun him with the camera, then carry on before
31:53he respawns.
31:54I don't know what you're supposed to do if you're hard of hearing, I don't remember any visual clues,
31:58but hopefully they'll add some accessibility options if they don't have them already.
32:01One good thing about this segment is that if you die, you respawn with all gramophone progress saved.
32:06This segment could really potentially drag if you had to still be doing 30 seconds at each station every time,
32:12and you can argue that it's too easy with this, but I think they prioritised fun over challenge here,
32:17and didn't put you in a situation where you'd just be redoing seven 30 second stints
32:21with travel time between them every time you die, since Blue Knees is an instant kill,
32:25and I respect that, although I am biased because I died here a lot.
32:28Blue Knees would come running at me and I would scream and suddenly the flash would go off in my
32:32hands
32:32and I'd have a polaroid soaking the inside of my jeans,
32:35while Blue Knees fingers my eye sockets.
32:37I don't think I managed a successful stun on him once.
32:40With this final puzzle out of the way, I head to the final segment of the game.
32:43The game then crashed.
32:44As I went back to my homepage, I saw it had updated,
32:47and 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,
32:53considering the unbelievably cruel autosaves in this game, and I reached the final scene.
32:58So we get to the final scene, and this final scene is, for lack of a better word, weak.
33:02Indicative of horror stories that have a lot of fancy ideas but nowhere ready to take them,
33:06this game does wrap up logically, and the ending does make sense,
33:11but it feels more like a mid-game plot point or a fail state than an actual cohesive ending.
33:16And if it's sequel bait, then that's even worse, considering the team have no track record of making good sequels,
33:21or any games, considering I believe this is actually their first game.
33:24I feel like you have to have a good few individual titles under your belt
33:27before you start acting like your good name carries enough weight that people need to trust you
33:30that the next game in the series will definitely be good, we promise.
33:33But enough preamble.
33:34So this is basically the culmination of a ritual that's been taking place over the course of the game,
33:39beginning long before the game began.
33:40You'll have some numbers at this point that you can use on a padlock to grab an urn,
33:44and with this being the final piece of the puzzle, your character climbs up onto a chair
33:48and hangs himself as Madison's spirit approaches him.
33:50A camera takes a photo of him without any human input, shortly thereafter spitting out the burned polaroid,
33:55and in the final shot of the game, Luca gasps awake, presumably now possessed by Madison.
34:00After finishing the game myself, I watched a few people play this on Twitch
34:04and not one of them assumed that this was the ending of the game.
34:06Everyone was confused by this.
34:08Although this could comfortably be the ending of a game with enough build-up,
34:12I feel like this hits out of nowhere.
34:13It's the kind of ending where you look back and realise where it came from,
34:16and yeah, it does make logical sense, but it's not built up to in any meaningful way,
34:20and it feels random in its execution.
34:22It's hard to explain, I hope I'm making sense.
34:24The ending is all fart and no shit, but it could be shit.
34:26If there had been more of a struggle between Luca and the demon,
34:29more of a resistance, more foreshadowing, maybe notes from the priest, it could work.
34:33I mean, the noose is hanging right there from the start of the game,
34:35so it's kind of foreshadowed, but it feels so left field.
34:38Those of you who've played Madison, do you know what I mean?
34:40I soaked up this story while I played it, and I was still confused as to what on earth was
34:45going on by this final scene.
34:46Essentially, Luca had been following Madison's will the whole time,
34:49and her final command to him is that he hangs himself,
34:52and the only way we know that is because it suddenly says so in his notebook, so he hangs himself.
34:57I feel like it was basically mind control to do it, but we don't really see that,
35:00so to us, he sees a piece of paper that says the hanged son, and then he hangs himself.
35:04It's quick, it doesn't work.
35:05But hey, collectibles carry over through saves, so I have no complaints.
35:09Anyway, thanks for sticking around to the end of my Madison review.
35:12I finished this game four or five times now, and I still have to play it in increments,
35:15even knowing what's coming up.
35:17The atmosphere is a quagmire, and it is so hard to sit down and commit to.
35:20I get sweaty.
35:21It is really scary, and if you told me you weren't scared by this even a little bit,
35:25I honestly would not believe you.
35:27This game didn't have an exceptional story, the characters were basic, the plot was fairly cobbled,
35:31but the puzzles were hard enough that I felt challenged without needing to google them,
35:34and the scares had me painting my sofa brown, so I think it does what it sets up to do
35:38fairly well horror-wise.
35:39I often feel like that in horror, good stories are a cherry on top, but not necessarily the core selling
35:44point.
35:45And although I don't think we should settle for less, I do think this game does what it sets out
35:49to do very well,
35:50and I would recommend it for any lover of horror games.
35:52Anyway, 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.
35:59Finally, hop over to Patreon, check out those pledges if you haven't already,
36:03and thank you to my patrons for their support.
36:04If you enjoyed the video, drop me a like, comment your own thoughts on the game, and subscribe if you
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36:09Thanks for being here folks, and I'll see you in the next one.
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