Nightmare Creatures II

"The nightmare is any money spent on this game"

Wow. This game is horrible. This game is really, really horrible. I swear this thing must've been made in some video game sweatshop where they pay the coders 50 cents an hour to churn out ''masterpieces''. Why am I so cruel? Why am I so mean to such an unassuming little game? What did this game ever do to me to make me wish it so much harm? It made me waste my money, that's what it did. And hopefully by writing this, I'll prevent you from wasting yours.

I was (and am) a big fan of the Dreamcast. It's a great system. But now that it's basically dead and retailers are trying to rid themselves of Dreamcast games, I've found and subsequently purchased a number of them for 10 dollars or less. Examples? Rayman 2, Shadow Man, Star Wars Demolition, 4 Wheel Thunder. The list goes on and on. I came across Nightmare Creatures 2 for this price and decided ''Why not?''. Well if I had known what I know now I could've come up with a number of reasons.

Flash back to about 45 minutes ago. I take the shrink wrap off the package, I stick the game into the DC, everything seems fine. I start watching the lame intro movie with Rob Zombie music blaring in the background, get bored, hit start and go to the title screen. I start up a ''New Game''. Instantly I'm presented with horrible graphics. I've seen worse, mind you, but these are just bad. It looks like a PlayStation game with the edges smoothed out a little. Because it is. I guess that's what you get for 50 cents an hour....

But bad graphics don't kill a game, and I was still plenty ready to give the game a go. I push forward on the analog to move my character and he does a little twitch. I push it some more and he starts walking around. Of course ''walking'' is being generous because it looks more like he's having convulsions causing his legs to somehow move him forward. I try to walk towards a door and end up walking into the wall. I press the button to swing his axe and suddenly he's in front of the door, swinging his axe to open it. Apparently he never learned how to use the doorknob. To cut (pun?) a long story short the controls are what really kill this game for me. The ''jump'' is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. I haven't played far enough into the game to see if there's any platform jumping in it but it would be impossible if there was. The game switches into a ''battle mode'' when you fight the bad guys and it's equally horrible. There's two different ways to swing your axe, and you're supposed to press the two buttons in combinations to do ''combos'' on the guys. Fine, that's all well and good, but I start hacking on the opponents with my axe and suddenly the view changes and my head is being chewed on by my opponent. I do one of the ''combos'' and my guy is flying through the air, axe in hand, chopping up the bad guy, and all of a sudden it happens again. The view changes back to the same view it was just at before and my head is being chewed on again. It's just ridiculous and has got to be the worst combat I have ever experienced in a 3D game.

I'll sum things up really simply. I played this game for about 45 minutes and I'm never gonna play it again. The control and combat is just so bad that I don't even want to bother trying to make it work long enough to get my moneys worth out of the game. So let's see....

GAMEPLAY- 0/10 The game is unplayable from my point of view.

STORY- 0/10 I'm sure there's a story behind all of this bad gameplay but that's irrelevant. The story really doesn't matter in a game like this anyways.

GRAPHICS- 3/10 I've seen worse on the Dreamcast but this is still pretty bad. If you're into PS one quality stuff then by all means, enjoy!

SOUND- 4/10 The sounds effects were okay when they were used but they weren't used enough. As for the music, well in the 45 minutes I played I never really even heard any. Supposedly Rob Zombie is in there somewhere, I guess if you like him (I don't) you can add a point or two to this one...

REPLAYABILITY- 0/10 You'll never even want to play it once, let alone come back for more.

BUY OR RENT- I strongly urge you to do neither. But if you really want this game (for some sick reason) then I'd recommend renting it first. Or, hell, you can have my copy...

(please don't e-mail me asking for it, that was just a joke, and I'm gonna try to sell it, maybe for 50 cents?)

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 02/25/02, Updated 02/25/02