The Sanity of Morris Review

Sanity of Morris has some nice ideas, but unfortunately there are too many hurdles to overcome to enjoy much of it. From woeful stealth to boring puzzles and exploration, what little B-movie style enjoyment that could have been gleaned from the game gets overshadowed by the issues at hand.

Let’s start with the stealth. It’s rubbish, quite frankly. Whether against the aliens or humans, I found it to be almost entirely unpredictable, yet totally boring. Those we need to hide from have large, colourful vision cones to let us know where they are looking. Handy? Yes. Useful? Not so much. The cones clip through walls and objects, so I was never really sure if I was safe to pass or not. Even when I did end up in their vision, it was hit and miss as to whether they’d see me or not. At one point I was literally sitting under the nose of an enemy without being spotted, yet 2 seconds after they turned away from me they suddenly swung their weapon *at nothing* and I died.

When the game decides to tell us we’re in danger their vision cones go to orange for alert, then red to signal they’ve seen you. The thing is, not only does this not always happen, but if it does turn red it’s a 99% guaranteed game over, as Morris is unable to defend himself, run, or hide effectively. And despite his attempted at blood curdling screams when he dies, the animation lets the side down as the alien sprints up to us, looks at us for a second then remains static while the camera slowly flops to the ground. What little atmosphere that is here is instantly quashed by these inconsistent mechanics and the presentation.

Puzzles fare marginally better, mainly in that they work – even if they don’t amount to much more than scanning an area for the red-highlighted objects. Some of these are tiny though, or easily missed. Thankfully, our flashlight is super helpful in that…wait…sorry, I meant absolutely rubbish. At points its beam can be concentrated in order to interact with specific parts of the alien ship, but when it comes to exploring and looking for objects it actually made me feel quite disorientated.

Sanity of Morris is far from the only game to have a naff flashlight, but at points it is impossible to see outside of the small circle of light coming from it, so navigation becomes a chore as I walked into objects on the floor, or missed an item that was just out of sight. Our man Jonathan also has the world’s biggest fear of heights it seems. When exploring, even the smallest drop off a ledge is enough to kill him. I lost count of the amount of times I dropped off a harmless looking side to be met with his death wail yet again.

Fret not though, for Sanity of Morris has Quick Time Events! It’s a shame then that these are just as poor as the stealth. Button prompts are presented in plain text rather than with an illustration of the button to press, which wouldn’t be too much of a problem except that without that extra help to quickly identify which button it is the 0.1 second (at least, that’s what it feels like) window of time we get to press it feels a bit stingy. Then there’s the odd choice to have us mash UP on the d-pad to sprint in these sections, and just poor signalling all round when it comes to timing.

So the puzzles are rote, and the stealth is terrible, but it’s not all bad. For all the woeful acting the story is somewhat enjoyable; all alien conspiracy and cover-ups, mind control and world altering discoveries. Some of the visuals are decent too, at least in still shots. Early on, when the game leans more heavily into the sanity part of the title, I liked how the pictures on the walls would change just at the edge of the screen before flickering back as I looked at them, or how random apparitions would disappear as we shone our light in the corner of a room. But this aspect is soon forgotten as we venture further into more sci-fi aspects, and any vague attempt at tension later on is undermined by the aforementioned issues.

Conclusion

Sanity of Morris is sadly just not very good. Outside of some decent initial horror aspects and a passable tale, the woeful stealth, boring exploration, and tedious puzzles make for a title that gets ever more maddening the further we play.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.