Welcome to our review of the cute game called Midnight Deluxe!
In this golf-like game with a perpetual darkness setting, your task is to guide a little square-shaped fairy, named Midnight.
Use your controller or touch-screen controls, to launch Midnight into the night sky, but watch out! The world of Midnight is a dangerous one thanks to the likes of spikes, circular saws and plenty of other dangerous objects and even if you do manage to get Midnight into the safe zone, to advance to the next level, there’s the added challenge of trying to complete each level in the least amount of shots as possible to get all three Stars.
I usually like games like these, the ones where smaller puzzles meet with a certain amount of luck, but this one, this is a different matter altogether. Let me start with the controls, which are truly horrible. Imagine having very little precise control over Midnight, it usually takes a few tries to get things right.
While the puzzles themselves are fun, the gameplay does kind of ruin a fun experience. At one point, I was just next to the pit I needed to be in, but I ended up wasting 4 tries just to go in, forcing me to lose 2 stars in the process. Later in the game, this became an occurrence that often annoyed me. While it is not all bad, I would like a more adapted game style where you have more control over the action.
When I say that, I will specifically point out how the touchscreen controls go for someone like me, with big fingers. It downright sucks, I could not see how I was planning to shoot Midnight and once even had me fire him down the wrong way. It just seems this game was made for 3DS with a stylus in mind, but most definitely not for fingers.
Luckily the actual game makes up for a little. While some puzzles are near impossible to score that elusive hole in one, it does give you a big high if you finally succeed. I just feel like the levels were not organized properly or that you face some really harsh ones too soon. I took twelve times to three stars the very first level. That should be the easiest of all, right? I just feel most of this gameplay is due to luck rather than skills. I tried holding down the thumbstick to really be as precise as I could be, but it kept shaking a little. Almost made me think that I had a faulty Joy-Con. Asked my wife to try it too and the same happened to her, on both my Joy-Con and my pro controller!
In conclusion, I have to be honest, I want to love this game. I have a deep love for this genre but sigh, this game makes it hard to love it. With every level again it feels like a hit or miss. I aced some levels and struggled way too much with others. The balance is completely off so I need to take that into consideration when rating a game. In the end, I could only hold the annoyances over the fun of playing and I ended up with a 40% rating.
My rating for this game stands at 40%!
