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Undoubtedly dark and creepy, the survival horror of MADiSON can grab you but isn't perfect by any means
Oh, horror games, how mixed my feelings tend to be about you on the Switch. I will admit that at least MADiSON seems to have helped me break out of what was feeling like a depressing streak of titles that had little more to offer than periodic jump scares injected into dull walking simulators. That said, it would be incorrect to say that it doesn’t have any warts. First, while you can thankfully adjust the brightness and contrast I’m never a fan of games that don’t get that addressed up front as by default it’s damned near impossible to see anything. I understand that you want it to be dark to help with the atmosphere, but when you can’t make out much of anything very well it’s also annoying. Second, though granted this may be a “me” issue for the life of me I couldn’t understand what I was supposed to do to rotate an object in a puzzle right at the start. The on-screen help symbol actually confused me quite a bit, and since it felt like there were plenty of available buttons to use, the decision to make you use the D-Pad felt bizarre as it was literally the last option I would have assumed would have been chosen. If you can get over those issues and survive what are sometimes vague puzzles that will require you to scrounge around in the hopes of stumbling onto a solution by accident there’s no doubt the experience features a solid creep and scare factor, something its competition doesn’t always deliver, just be aware it’s not all positives.
Justin Nation, Score:Good [7.5]