Sanity of Morris

Sanity of Morris was reviewed on a PS4

Put on your tinfoil hats in Sanity of Morris as you investigate an alien conspiracy theory in this First Person thriller. You’ll have to hide and sneak your way around shady government agents and bizarre looking aliens.

Sanity of Morris is about Johnathan Morris, a young man who one day gets a weird call from his father, asking him to visit him. While on the road, John’s car is rammed into a tree by a suspicious white van. What unfolds next is a story about government conspiracies, creepy aliens and shady organizations.

The game’s first major flaw reveals itself during the intro sequence, QTEs. These aren’t any normal QTEs though; the button mapping on some of them was abnormal to say the least. During the game’s first few cutscenes, in order to run away from the agents looking for you, you’ll have to mash the UP button on the D-pad.

Yup, that’s right; you’ll have to mash the only button on the DualShock 4 that wasn’t meant to be mashed. The QTEs are inconsistent as well as some of them will result in death if they weren’t pressed quickly enough, while the rest of them are meaningless.

During the intro’s car scene, a deer jumps in front of your car and you have to press one of the buttons to swerve away from it, but the game doesn’t punish you for failing to quickly doing so. The screen will just freeze until you press the button.

The cutscenes are also some of my major annoyances with the game. They constantly strip away the controls from you just so you could hear Johnathan’s thoughts for a second or two. The game could’ve easily kept me in control while the protagonist said what he wanted to say.

Close encounters­

The game’s first few hours will have you exploring Johnathan’s childhood home and its surrounding areas. It’s not long before you discover that your dad was involved in a secret government project and he actually believes that aliens are real.

You’ll spend an hour or so exploring the house and its darkest corners. This was by far my favorite part of the game. Snooping around and trying to find any clues about his whereabouts was fun while it lasted. Unfortunately, not long afterwards, the game decides to throw you down a literal rabbit hole and into the aliens’ lair.

The next few hours will be spent solving puzzles that involves using your trusty flashlight and playing hide and seek with the alien invaders. Most puzzles can be solved just by shining the light on the right spot.

Out of this world

I loved the game’s simple premise, though it’s disappointing that the level design struggled to be as interesting. Bad design choices, repetitive locations and bland graphics made the whole game a struggle to play through.

It’s such a shame that the middle section of Sanity of Morris is set in one of the most derivative, mundane and frustratingly designed settings I’ve ever witnessed in a game — The previously mentioned green maze-like pod shaped spaceship that’s covered with overgrown vines and patrolled by the octopus looking extraterrestrials.

Be careful not to get caught, as the aliens would release their tentacles and probe your brain if they catch you, resulting in a game over screen.

Thankfully, the loading screens are brief so getting stuck in the same location as you figure out your next move isn’t THAT frustrating. The broken AI makes things easier as well as it’s not that difficult to just literally sneak behind them and get past them.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over.

What is difficult though, is finding out what you’re supposed to do next, as the game doesn’t guide you or tell you what to do next, and the level design doesn’t help things out in that regard. Navigating this labyrinth of endless, derivative, bland corridors and hallways was an absolute chore.

To say that the game’s graphics are mediocre would be an understatement. At least on the PS4 version, the environments are blurry, uninspiring and drab. The first location was the best looking one, and even it wasn’t that good.

The walls’ textures of Johnathan’s childhood home lacked any details and most objects had jagged edges, similar to what you’d expect on a PS2-era game.

I don’t know if I should blame the developers for that though, as I’ve noticed that these kinds of blurry textures and jagged edges are usually the byproduct of porting a Unity game onto consoles.

I’ve encountered the same issue in Silver Chains a while back, so I’ll cut the game some slack on that regard. Based on what I’ve seen in the PC screenshots of the game, it looks more than decent, so definitely check out the PC version first.

Sanity of Morris uses a red filter that covers the screen for no reason at times, I think the game was trying to imitate Amnesia’s sanity meter? Except it’s never properly explained here and it constantly obscured my vision, making the game more frustrating than it should be.

Things were confusing enough without having ketchup smeared on the screen every few minutes. Even dying and restarting from the last checkpoint didn’t make the obnoxious effect go away.

Overall,

Besides its intriguing premise, Sanity of Morris does little to keep you entertained throughout its 6-7 hours of gameplay. It constantly gets on your nerves with its bizarre design choices and poor level design.

The Dumbed down AI of its antagonists also cheapens any challenging aspects that the game might have had. Instead, the only challenge you’ll get is an obnoxious and frustrating exercise in trying to navigate the drab repetitive locations without any guidance whatsoever.

Ultimately, the game was let down by its ambition and scope. Any mystery and intrigue that the first few hours had was thrown out the window a mere minutes later. Sanity of Morris would’ve been a much better game if it had just perfected the first two sections of the game, instead of adding a third section that I can’t discuss in this review since it’s heavy in spoilers.

It’s a shame that this could’ve been a great entry in one of my gaming’s favorite genres, had the folks over at Alterego games reconsidered some of their design choices.

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Special thanks go to Stickylock for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Sanity of Morris if you

• Enjoy the variety of locations
• Enjoy a story that explores aliens and conspiracy theories
• Don’t mind the repetitiveness of the spaceship
• Don’t mind the unforgiving stealth mechanics
• Don’t mind the QTEs
• Don’t mind the below average graphics
• Don’t mind the ambiguous level design
• Don’t mind the lack of guidance

Sanity of Morris’ Score

4/10