MADiSON on PSVR2 is as terrifying as you’d expect | Hands-on preview
As much as I love horror games, I’ve never actually played one in virtual reality. That’s probably a good thing because if MADiSON VR is anything to go by, I’d be spending far too much money on the electricity bill by refusing to turn the lights off ever again. Although I was only able to preview a small section of the final game, it was intense, nerve-wracking, and everything you could want from the genre in the confines of the PSVR2.
The horror is in the things you don’t see – in the noises you hear and the flickering lights – and this makes MADiSON VR well worth checking out on PSVR2. It starts in a dingy room with blood all over the floor and your father on the other side of the door. You play as Luca, and while you don’t understand why you’ve been locked inside, things slowly begin to reveal themselves upon escaping the room. The house was once the site of a demonic ritual conducted by Madison Hale where she butchered four people.
Its classic horror foundations allow Bloodious to get creative, and some of the locations in the house are dripping with familiar yet well-designed tropes. The demonic symbolism painted on the walls; cockroaches crawling all over the floor; religious statues and skulls of animals hanging from the wall. It looks fantastic on PlayStation 5, with the lighting so well implemented you can never truly relax in the fear that anything can make you jump at any time.
Towards the end of my time with MADiSON VR, there was a particular moment in the basement where I was chest-deep in water and trying to solve one of the puzzles where a police radio was getting clearer depending on where I was stood. I used my camera to take a picture where the red light on the radio flashed the most, and a person I assume to be Madison appeared and made me shit myself. It never holds back from keeping you in a constant state of fear, but it also doesn’t throw cheap jump scares at you either, making sure when it does happen, you’re always surprised.
When it comes to the gameplay, there’s one key feature that will act as your biggest aid. After finding a polaroid camera that once belonged to the killer, it can then be used to take photos of potential clues or help progress the story by snapping a shot at the right time. In order to get into the basement (or sewer, whatever the dank and dingy place was), I had to find the right combination for three padlocks that kept it shut. An earlier demonic diagram on a wall in the house held the key and it was only after snapping a photo and checking on it that I saw the three icons I needed to unlock the padlocks.
In VR, you grab the camera from over the shoulder and take a photo. Once you’ve done so, the photo needs to be shaken as in real life to see the image, and it’s these immersive touches that make it so cool. I used a hammer to break down wooden planks, placed cassette tapes into tape players, and searched every corner of the house to work out what I needed to do next. The puzzles are varied in their execution, and while I didn’t see a lot, they range from the mentioned lock combination to environmental ones like turning the generator back on after figuring out which trip switches needed to be flicked on.
MADiSON VR is impressive in virtual reality, and the way Bloodious Games has created the tension without overdoing the jump scares is fantastic. It builds the horror in the unknown – in its atmosphere and sound – and as terrifying as it was at times, the feeling of being helpless in that house is something I want to feel again. As long as horror can be done right in VR, it provides one of the coolest experiences within the video game medium, and after my short time with MADiSON, it has the potential to be great come release day.
MADiSON VR releases on March 29 for PSVR2 and Steam VR.
