Majestic Nights
Developer: Epiphany Games
Price: TBA
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for Majestic Nights.
Majestic Nights is an episodic action-adventure thriller set in an alternate 1980s where all conspiracy theories, past and present are True.
That’s the basic premise Majestic Nights sets itself up with and this game will have you laughing out loud, grooving to the killer soundtrack, and questioning your government all at once. It’s awesome.
I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories. If a movie, game, or book has anything close to dealing with conspiracies you can bet your sweet ass I’m going to check it out. I don’t dabble too deeply in them though because there’s no climbing out of that rabbit hole once you’ve fallen in.
Majestic Nights is an isometric adventure game that places you in an alternate 1980’s where everyone is involved in some way with a conspiracy theory. You’ll alternate each chapter between Cardholder and Cal, a private detective. The game is set to release in six chapters, a chapter a month, with the prologue being free; each chapter costs $5 with the option of a season pass available.
The prologue chapter puts you in the shoes of secret agent Cardholder who may or may not know the details of every infamous conspiracy theory you could think of. In the hour and a half it took to finish the chapter I snuck past suits to get to my home, beat up a bouncer to get into a club, chatted up fellow conspiracy theorists, discovered the club is actually a CIA front where they’re secretly working on Project MKUltra, and searched for evidence to prove whether the moon landing was faked by the famous Hollywood director Rubric who totally bears no resemblance to Stanley Kubrick.
The meaty part of the game are the conversations you’ll have with the various inhabitants of this whacked out world of paranoia and secrecy. As you talk to people you might learn something new about your target or perhaps discover an alternate method to completing your objective. I was able to buy some drugs off a kid which helped shed some light on the CIA using the club as a front for Project MKUltra; I could’ve also used my bribery money to get into the club without having to fight the bouncer which probably would’ve made my time inside the club much easier without him looking for payback. Certain optional goals (like gaining the trust of a reporter) gave the impression that it would affect something in future episodes but I’m not 100% sure. I would hope there’s some reason to completing lots of the optional objectives you are given in the prologue or else there’d be no real point to doing lots of them.
When you’re not snooping around for classified documents you’re shooting suits in the face with bullets. You can hit the space bar to snap to cover and pop out to shoot by holding the right mouse button. The game autoaims for you so these fights play pretty quick, especially with enemies dying in very few shots. The game isn’t always super clear on what’s considered cover though. A badge will show up whenever you can take cover on something but sometimes certain objects in the environment seem like something you should be able to take cover behind but can’t. Sometimes it’s not super clear on where your aiming reticle is going to go either, forcing you to move positions; I also found my bullets hitting something invisible instead of enemies too. I’m not sure if these two things are an error with the game itself or if it’s because of the isometric view obstructing a piece of the environment from my view though. The animation when in cover is also super weird but that’s apparently going to be fixed in the full release.
I will say that the prologue is very well paced as it slowly eases you into the mechanics of the game. The beginning introduces you to the conversation mechanics and soon after that you’re sent to sneak into your home where you learn about cover and staying in shadows to remain out of sight. You’ll then go to the club where the game basically tells you “Okay, you know how the dialog system works, go wild” and lets you loose. You’ll eventually make your way into the secret underground CIA base where the combat mechanics are introduced and you’re given a mix of gunplay, stealth, and hilarious dialog moments.
The preview build also had quite a few bugs like the controller not working when plugged in, the UI glitching, and a weird bug where I’d reload a completed save (to play out the final stage again) and sometimes the game wouldn’t let me or the enemies shoot our guns. I never got any sort of weird glitch like that anywhere else so it was really weird when I was able to consistently replicate it. Once again, I’d like to stress it was a preview build I was playing and the developers have mentioned that they’re looking to fix the AI, movement, animations, and various other hitches in the final release.
Majestic Nights looks like it’s set to be a very refreshing game and if you have any sort of interest in conspiracy theories and humorous adventure games you should definitely keep an eye out for the game when it releases later this month.
