Reeducation is in order
I dig espionage stories. Faceless government agents running amok, corporate interests dominating the nation’s politics, scruffy retired spooks pulled in for “one last job”; I eat that stuff up.
So I was excited when I heard aboutMajestic Nights, a conspiracy driven, episodic adventure game set in a neon-soaked hyper-’80s, a laHotline Miami. I was hoping for John le Carre meetsScarface. What I got wasX-Filesfanfiction meets a game I don’t want to play.
Spy lingo is a tricky thing to write. You have to nail it, or it just sounds like a bad SNL sketch riffing on Watergate. To give you an idea of howMajectic Night’shandles its conspiracy fiction, the game starts with ripping off a scene fromJustice League Unlimited, a cartoon. Set your expectations accordingly.
The writing goes downhill from there. Lots ofhush-hushdoubletalk that never seems to come to anything and spy slang that is obnoxiously outdated even for the ’80s. The weak writing is a major problem since talking to people is the bulk of the game. You control the requisite retired super spy, John Cardholder (seemingly a nod toThe Venture Bros.), who is scouring the seedy underbelly of 1980s LA to find a movie director (heavily implied to be the real source of the famous Kennedy assassination Zapruder film footage) for reasons never fully explained.
“Scouring” in this case mostly means bouncing between one highlighted person or another and clicking through dialog options that barely seem to matter. SinceMajestic Nightsdrops you into its world with no context or history to go by, but everyone seems to know Cardholder, all of these exchanges are basically guessing games. I’m not sure you can even fail, though — click enough options and eventually you’ll get your way.
There are a few occasions that let you get down and dirty like a real spy, but after a few minutes withMajestic Night’saction scenes, you’ll be dying to get back to the stilted dialog. There is a wishy-washy stealth system that rewards you for staying in the shadows, some horrendously awkward gun play, and the game claims it has a cover system, but every time I attempted to use it, Cardholder just tried to rub his face through the wall until I disengaged.
Majestic Nightscould use more time in a smoke-filled room working on its cover story. There may be an interesting game buried somewhere in there, and I still like the atmosphere (the synth-heavy soundtrack is fantastic), but right now it just feels unfinished. This is one agent you can leave stranded in the field and not lose sleep over.
