Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC.
“Evil dies tonight!” cry the angry residents of Haddonfield in a call to end Michael Myers’ reign of terror in Halloween Kills. In Halloween: The Game, though, Evil jumps out of a cupboard only to get the shit kicked out of him by four 16-year-olds screaming down their microphones. Like Jason and Leatherface before him, it’s Michael Myers’ now gets the multiplayer videogame treatment, pitting four online players against another in the role of The Shape, as they try to save as many of the town’s residents as possible and escape before Michael slices, dices or creatively hurls them through a TV screen.
With many such games have tried to recreate the success of crowned king of horror multiplayer Dead by Daylight, but they almost invariably fall short by never fully embracing the wacky horror franchises they’re pulling from. It’s to Halloween: The Game’s credit that it displays such a deep love for Michael Myers as a character — despite his many issues. The person stepping into the killer’s shoes is encouraged to embrace the experience entirely, properly stalking your victims, with three levels of fear available to inflict by doing so. Rather than sneaking up behind people, it’s very much in your interests to appear from behind a bush in full view and watch your victim properly freak out, with higher fear levels making them trip as they run, marking terrified targets on the map, or allowing Michael to unleash one of his many macabre special abilities.
The best of these murder methods, and where the game truly shines on both sides of its killer/survivor coin, is Michael’s “Shape Jump” ability, which sees the masked killer travel to new locations in an instant, dishing up some organic slasher-film moments. It’s an absolute joy to have a survivor lock themselves inside a house, only for Michael to suddenly appear, staring back at them from the top of a staircase (made more satisfying by screams of terror over proximity-based microphone chat). On the flipside, it also provides some Carpenter-level scares for survivors as you turn a corner, only for Myers’ firm hand to grab you by the throat, leaving you helpless and thoroughly spooked.
As a survivor, you’ll have a town full of NPCs to save, keeping you (and by extension Michael) consistently busy. However, the lack of maps and a relatively limited menu of objectives — including a way-too frequent button-tapping minigame to persuade townspeople to call the police — does get old before too long. With no roadmap to expand the game, either, this focuses on quick thrills over long-term engagement.
Neither does the game quite manage to get away from some of the jankiness that is prevalent in the asymmetrical multiplayer genre. Here, melee knife swings often soar straight past your target, and there’s slowdown when executing some of the game’s many (very gory) environmental kills. Still, that doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had in slamming the local jock into a window frame, and it never derails the experience as a whole.
Halloween: The Game is also a rare example of the genre that comes complete with a single-player mode. Clocking in at a brisk three hours, it’s essentially a glorified tutorial, but those with an affinity for John Carpenter’s original will certainly get a kick out of playing through the 1978 slasher from Michael’s POV (including the opening scene, first-person and all).
While this never escapes the problems that plague similar games, thanks to gameplay that fully embraces all the franchise’s unique quirks, this will nonetheless walk (very slowly) into the hearts of those who love Halloween.
