Pitch a tent in it, I'm camped! There is a genius somewhere in here, likely taking form of innate complicity in being a voyeur to horrors for thee sake of capturing them in image(s). That in & of itself is a gut churner. Sadly, there are far too few opportunities to capitalize on such a theme. Limited interactivity is thee name of that game, baby, I would never ask for more control here. I would ask for more eroticisms, more moments for your eyes to be passive gashes. After all, its humor is intentional, the deathly sparse set designs are a complimentary nausea, but every facet of this game ends under-realized, even its finest strengths.

This game is strange. It feels unfinished, it is buggy, it does not look or sound good, the voice acting is awful (OH MY GAAAAAWD) and the NPCs are as lifeless as they can be... BUT, it is also a game very different from any other game I have played.

The main concept is that you play a camera man in a team of three people. You and your team are in charge of investigating a mysterious fog that has engulfed the city of Chicago. Because your hand are on the camera, you can't do anything but watch your environment and point at things while your colleagues interact with the environment. This creates an interesting situation in which you have to help your reporter survive, but you can't intervene directly, only show, alert and watch.

While this concept is unique and has potential, it feels more like a 3D point and click than a survival horror game. The thing is, you are (almost) never in danger. The worst case scenario being you fail to protect a reporter, she dies and you go to the next level, where you will meet a new one. That lack of tension or danger kills any potential scary atmosphere. The game tries so hard to spook you, by playing random spooky noises for no reasons in certain locations, but it never works because you know that you are not a part of its universe.

But this is not at all a negative aspect if you are open to a different type of experience! In fact, this dissociation of the main character from the rest of the universe fits in very well with the low budget of the title. It creates a surreal experience where nothing makes sense but nobody seems to mind. Every location feels empty as if it had never been inhabited, the NPCs scream in fear when there is a monster, but they are not animated and they freeze right next to it while looking away, action scenes are just as slow as the rest of the game, everything just feels out of place.

The real thing I'm not so enthousiastic about in this game is the scoop/morality/erotism meter. In every levels, you can choose between investigating, helping your colleagues or straight up sexually aussaulting your female colleagues. This doesn't really affect the story, aside from some small pieces of dialogue and some lore clues to find (lol). I feel like the erotism part should not have been included because it serve no purpose other than score. It sometimes manages to create funny moments, but most of the time it is just disrespectful to women.
ALSO, when you finish the game, you unlock a strip club mode where you can make all the reporters pole dance in underwear... and it is way more animated than any other element in the game... there even are jiggle physics :')
I think it explains why the rest of the game has no budget lmao.

While this is not a perfect game, or even a good game, I enjoyed the 5 hours it took me to complete it. It's a strange experimental game that tried some neet ideas. Nothing more, nothing less.

I didn't know where to put this but props to the voice acting and the run animation of the guy you meet just before the end of the game. I don't think I have ever seen a better run cycle than this one hahaha!

this game sucks so bad. it's really great.

fundamentally, all the pieces are there. the backdrop of something weird (and alien in nature) in chicago that's just hinted at through some dialogue and pieces of lore you can find scattered around. the conflict of "should you keep filming because this'll make a great scoop even if this makes you a monster?". the vibes where everything is just slightly off in an unsettling way, everyone moves slow and reacts even slower like you're watching a nightmare in slow motion.

i even think that the really terrible voice acting further compliments the game rather than hinders it, because it goes with the vibe that something is just WRONG. i always describe michigan as "this game feels like it was made by aliens" and it's just so true, in the best way possible.

now is this the most entertaining game? absolutely not. honestly i do kinda get bored toward the middle/middle-end, but not only is michigan short as hell, you can actively choose to speed up getting to the end by killing off the newsreporter you're with, and these moments are also pretty funny.

i do like the framing device of "you're seeing this through a camera" and occasionally you don't have control of what's happening ingame, but i'm also the biggest fan of lifeline for ps2 so what do i know, anyways? similar to lifeline though, michigan is so good because it's bad, but if this game was remade today to be better, would it even be good? for example, if the game had a strong narrative, better voice acting, better scares, and characters with actual writing... well, that would be a good game from everyone else's point of view, but i love michigan because it sucks. i'd probably like the remake, too, but nothing will beat the sheer kusoge that is michigan report from hell.

Well, what a trip.
The idea of ​​being the camera in a video game while the protagonists are guided by small point and click touches is curious in a 3d environment.

Normally video games capitalize on horror quite poorly, pigeonholed into tropes and structures to stick to forms of action or helplessness, it is okay for Michigan to stay in between and satisfy itself with comedy and fetishize reporters, guarding them from dangers and intervening to turn them into heroines. If you want.
If not, you can always sexualize them and record morbid events to become the villain of the story.

But it's a hell of a mess, because its experimental nature stays in the concept and the rest is filled with nonsense. You hardly do anything but walk guided by a sort of comic Slasher where the characters are dying one by one.
Also, the original director dissociated himself from the project because he was horny and perverted,
Great.

kind of this weird point of middling jank and very half baked story beats and gameplay mechanics. both of which could’ve been so much more interesting if not glorified jerk off simulator for horny millennials in Europe and Japan. like if this was a two hour long arcade cabinet that you’d find in like a speciality arcade I would vibe w it a lot more. instead it’s like this very middle of the road weird piece of obscure ps2 history that rlly should’ve never been a console game. shame too bc I rlly do like the aesthetics the game is trying to go for w such an intensely low budget, I like the fog and I like the closed in cramped corridors. Chicago has such a cool rich history to it wnd so many very vibey and yeah scary iconography and landmarks that it’s a bit of a shame it just uses all interiors that look like they could be in anywhere in America or the rest of the world. I do like the fog and I do like the anime girls puking up blood and slug monsters, I like the zaka tv logo and I like the flavor text ur rewarded w for finding random items in each level. I do think it takes advantage of the fact that ur a cameraman too, like there’s rlly cool mise en scene going on, stages are almost set up like a diorama for a horror house and I think it’s cool they rlly do allow u to frame other characters in cool and interesting ways, the boom mic guy appearing out from behind a palm tree as he drunkenly rants. it looks good and u get to make it look better if u want. idk how can u not love low texture fast food bag in the style of like in n out that just says FOOD on it and which u can interact w. reminds me of those insurance ads that are poking fun at horror movies, like anything that can go wrong does. but also end of day it’s way too boring for how short it is and also v casually misogynistic which yeah is expected in the genre but just bc it’s expected doesn’t mean it’s excusable. one of my favorite boxarts ever though, both for europe and japan tbh and it sucks that the game doesn’t at all deliver the aesthetics that it promises.

this game in such a weird spot for me. it's a really bad game with ass controls, really bad voice acting that fucks up the tone of the game a lot at times, and a whole bunch of glitches that i'm not sure are from the actual game, or the emulator.
but on the other hand, the premise is really really interesting. love how you can either make the reporter(s) suffer for some good camera footage, or save them but have no footage at all. too bad I encountered a glitch somewhere near the end, where I kept clipping through the floor and I couldn't continue. it's a shame, if this game had a better dub (or no dub at all) and the game was less buggy (or the pcsx2 devs fix them) this game would definitely be up there as a goated horror game in my opinion