Nightmare Creatures

"Not a great game, but good enough to keep you entertained"

I bought this game because it was being sold brand new for a relatively cheap price (roughly $13 US) along with a ''no-name'' memory card. I expected to have exactly what I paid for - a $13 dollar game that I would get bored of quite quickly, and a memory card that wouldn't even work. Let me tell you how pleasantly surprised I was at the outcome.

Gameplay (7/10): This game is the basic ''hack and slash your way to the main boss'' kind of game. You have the option of selecting either one of two characters to accomplish your mission (a male and a female). Each character has his/her own fighting moves, as well as their own upgradable weapons (the male has a staff, the female a sword). The challenge in this game is learning new combinations to fight the enemy. There is a wide enough variety of combinations, so that you don't get bored of fighting too fast, but some of these combinations are a challenge to execute. What is interesting is that you start the game with the ability to use any combinations, but the system only shows you the instructions for a new combination on each level (there are 16 levels in total). Therefore if you have already finished the game (or read a FAQ) then you can start off the game and use any of the 16 (or so) combinations. I found this to be an original feature to have in a game (i.e. in most games, you are only able to execute a new combination after completing a certain goal). Some of the combinations are quick and simple, while others last a couple of seconds. Some of them even dismember the opponent! (who can keep fighting, although somewhat disabled without their legs / arms / etc.). There are also many items that you can pick up and use against the enemy, such as guns, mines, smoke bombs, fire, dynamite, a death head that makes them fight (and dismember) themselves, a freeze attack, etc. There is a feature of this game that some of you might find annoying (but luckily you can turn off), and that is the adrenaline bar: It is a bar that keeps going down at a slow pace when you are not fighting opponents. When it reaches zero, you begin to lose your health. So you must keep searching for monsters and killing them in order to stay alive. This has cost me a few lives when I was lost in a level and could not find the correct path to take, and had already killed all the monsters. But if you really don't want to always be racing against a clock, (as I mentioned) you can turn this feature off.

Graphics: (8/10): The graphics for this game are dark and gothic, and they do a fantastic job at setting the proper mood of the game. You are often surrounded by broken-down buildings, sewage running through the littered streets, corpses on the ground, burned out carriages, tombstones, rats, etc. The background environment of a specific level will often have more than one variation. For example, you can start off in the streets of a town, walk into the basement of a building, pop up in front of a cemetery, etc. There are multiple environment effects as well, such as fog, rain, lightning, snow, etc. When you kill an enemy character, his dismembered body lingers on the ground, covered in blood, and you can often hear and see the rats rushing to his body to consume it. In fact, this game has enough blood and graphic violence to keep most hardcore gamers satisfied. I must say that the game designers did a good job at creating creepy atmosphere. I know that when you start the second level, one of the first things that you will see walking back and forth behind a fence that is blocking your way, is this 9 foot tall monster, with 3 arms and that's just plain hideous. I can assure you that it will stop you in your tracks the first time you see it, while you watch it from a distance and start wondering if rushing up ahead is such a good idea…

Audio (7/10): The music in this game is not bad at all. In fact, the music that they play for one of the bosses later in the game is actually quite good. It has a nice, catchy, heavy metal beat (and this is surprising, considered that its composed on a N64 midi table). The only thing that lags about the audio are the sound effects, which simply sound somewhat dull. When you kill a zombie by cutting its torso in half, you hear a dull ''uhhhhh'' resounding. Maybe its because its lungs have just been sliced apart, but personally I attribute it to bad samples. Generally speaking, although some of the screams by the monsters are good, more than the majority are a bit poor (i.e. I would give the audio rating a 9/10 if the sound effects were better).

Story (3/10): The story of this game is the basic ''you must kill the evil [fill name here] in order to save the [city, world, universe]''. Its quite pathetic and overdone, but chances are that you will buy this game just to hack and slash your way through 16 levels, not because you want to be immersed in a captivating story.

Replay Value (8/10): Lets just say this. Even though I own a Playstation 2, I still find myself playing this game every now and then. Once you have completed the game with one of the characters, you can either complete it with the other, or start over again with the same character, but this time knowing ALL of the attack combinations. This is one of those games that you won't mind finishing again after having completed it (which will probably take you anything from 5 to 15 hours to do, depending on how good you are).

Control (4/10): The basic controls of this game are simple, but mastering the combinations, as well as the sometimes ''crazy'' camera angles is what makes things complicated. For example, some of the combinations are quite easy, such as hitting A A A or B B B within a second or two. Others can involve hitting A A+Up B+A or B C-Left+C-Down within the same amount of time, which can quickly become frustrating if you can't seem to get them to work. But there are enough combinations that you shouldn't need to know all of them. As well, the camera sometimes seems to sometimes spin abruptly behind you, or does not re-position itself where you want it to. But this is only a minor complaint.

Other Features (8/10): This game includes the feature of saving your progress either to a memory card, or as a password! Way cool! Another feature that I also appreciated is that the fight with a boss (any boss) is considered a level. So you can save your game right after completing the previous level, and if the boss kills you, you can start right back in front of him. While some people might considered this ''cheating,'' I don't. I can tell you that it is much better than having to re-do the level over and over again, because the main boss at the end keeps killing you (and I can assure you that some of them will kill you many times before you figure out their weakness). One complaint is that you can only save one game per memory card. But if you wish to have more than one game, you can either use another memory card, or use the passwords.

Buy or Rent: The version of this game that I bought was re-bundled along with a memory card, for the very low price of $13 US. Out of all the games that I played, this one has the highest fun factor (divided by) cost ratio. Its long enough to keep you busy for a while, but at the same time short (and fun) enough so that you'll want to re-finish it once you have completed it.

Overall (7/10): Overall, I can tell you that this game surpassed my expectations. The fact that it was selling for so cheap led me to believe that it must be a pretty crappy game. And perhaps that is why I found it so fun to play (i.e. it didn't disappoint my already low expectations). My advise to you is that if you like action/adventure games that are dark, bloody, and gloomy, and you happen to find a copy of this game at a cheap price, then you should by it without hesitating. Although you will most likely not think that it's a great game, at worse you will rate it slightly below average. Oh, and the memory card that came with the game still works fine.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/01, Updated 05/31/01