This game did not age very well imo. I found it very frustrating in regards to it's mechanics and how difficult some enemies are and how they seem immune to most attacks unless you have the right weapons.

I played as the female character simply because she has a sword and can dismember creatures, though often it doesn't do much beyond reducing one attack.

It's great for zombies though as they can die from a decapitation, however, if cut in half they still keep coming. It's extremely gory and kinda cool, but is still a very difficult game that gives the dark souls series a run for it's money, only extra frustrating.

Stream + gameplay

-Buena ambientación
-Excelente banda sonora
-Los enemigos están bien diseñados, además de tener una buena IA
-Los niveles están bien, tiene algunas cosas (mejoras, ítems, etc.) para incentivar al jugador para explorarlo
-El combate esta ok, pero la cámara impide que se disfrute bien, aunque se entiende por la época
-Tiene pocos jefes, son aburridos y poco memorables (a excepción del jefe final)
-los controles están ok, pero para algunos les puede incomodar por ser un poco toscos
-ex: me gusta la barra de estamina que se implementa, dándole un desafío al jugador para seguir matando a los monstruos seguidos (y en los últimos niveles se te complicara mucho)

I jumped around with my big stick and killed all the creatures, who are from nightmares by the way.

I used to play this when I was wee and use the cheat to play as the monsters in each level. I loved the fella that just seems to be a zombie in a trenchcoat and fedora who wields a knife.

This was my first time playing through legit, and it's fine. Simply ok. I could say something wanky and profound like "Nightmare Creatures dodged awkwardly so Bloodborne could run", but I would never do that to you dear reader. You deserve much worse than I could ever give you.

Maybe the crappest final boss I've ever fought.

Around the time that I beat Castlevania 64 earlier this year, a friend of mine mentioned off-hand how as bad as that game was, this game, Nightmare Creatures, was even worse. Now I would describe Castlevania 64 as a not so much "awful" so much as "fairly maligned" game. Not as bad as all the hype pumps it up to be, but definitely deserving of a less than stellar reputation. Now something even more troubled than THAT, I had to see, and so I've been quietly hunting for this game ever since. I finally stumbled upon a copy recently, and so I made room in my busy schedule of playing Tales games to spend an afternoon and evening playing through it XD. It took me 5 or so hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware (albeit that real hardware was my PS3, so I wouldn't have to use a wired controller :b).

Nightmare Creature's story is mostly told through a lot of backstory in a narrated intro, but it mostly doesn't matter. Back in the mid-1600's, a cult did some evil experiments trying to make the ultimate life forms, but one of their members burned the whole thing down in 1666 (causing the Great Fire) and disappeared into history. Now it's the mid-1800's and that person's journal has resurfaced, and it's up to the two protagonists to stop the evil guy behind it all before his army of NIGHTMARE CREATURES (the game's words, not mine) takes over London (and the world too, I suppose). It's a very pulpy story, and once you actually start playing the game, it more or less totally disappears outside of little blurbs on the loading screens between levels (which actually went by so fast that I never had a chance to read them, but whether that's an issue with me playing it on a PS3 instead of a PS1 or if it's an issue with the game's quick loading times in general, I don't know and don't really care about).

The gameplay of Nightmare Creatures is a series of 20 levels (16 levels and 4 boss fights) through a London beset by the titular creatures. The levels do have secret and optional paths in them for extra goodies, but they're generally pretty linear. The controls are tank controls, and they feel AWFUL to play with on the D-pad. This game came out in '97 JUST as the first wave of dual-shock controllers were hitting store shelves (a little earlier than that, in some regions), and I pity whomever tried to play this with just the normal PS1 D-pad. Switching to analogue stick control mostly just maps the D-pad's controls onto the joysticks, but god damn does that make the game SO much more playable. It's a game whose control method takes a good deal of getting used to, and that goes especially for how your character will sometimes auto-lock onto an enemy, and sometimes they won't. Your jumping is also weirdly enough Simon Belmont-style, where moving forward ANY amount does the exact same HUGE jump forwards, while jumping from a standstill does a tiny forward hop. There isn't a large amount of platforming (mercifully), but there is at least one really annoying jump in the game, and the game would honestly be better if there were no mandatory platforming at all.

A huge part of the game is also the combat that takes place in each level. You have powerful sub-weapons which you find scattered throughout levels as well as healing items too, but your main attacks will be your heavy and light normal attacks. I played through as Nadia instead of the male character, as Nadia helps mitigate one of the game's most difficult aspects of combat: you are very slow, and your enemies are quite fast. Sub-weapons are far too rare to rely on them for standard combat, so getting good at dispatching enemies with your normal attacks is a must. It's something I stuck to so firmly that I ended up barely using any of my sub-weapons as a result ^^;. Most of combat just boils down to getting at least one hit in on an enemy, preferably when they're close to a corner, and then just pummeling them constantly to stun lock them until they die. Combat is more just a test of your ability to be a little patient with your blocking and then just bash enemies to death. It's tricky until you get the hang of it, but after the first few levels (and the horrid first boss) you probably won't be having too much trouble with combat, or at least nothing that the fairly numerous health pickups can't pave over.

The only real selling point of the game is the presentation, which is honestly pretty damn impressive for 1997. Kalypso did their own engine for this, and it's got some pretty bad texture warping problems with the environments, but the atmosphere and look of the world and monsters still holds up pretty well (at least as far as retro games are concerned). An especially cool feature is that you can slice monsters apart as you get better and better weapons, and the degree to which they fall apart dynamically as you happen to hit certain body parts (hands, heads, arms, getting outright cut in half) never fails to be really cool. It makes the janky combat feel more worth it with just how satisfying it is to slice those overly fast, clunky bastards in two XD. That said, the N64 version of the game apparently not only fixes a lot of the texture warping, but it also makes the awful platforming easier, so I would posit a guess that unless the controls map onto the N64's joystick REALLY badly, that's likely the definitive version of the game on console (but that version didn't come out in Japan TwT).

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Nightmare Creatures isn't awful, but it really probably isn't worth your time. It's not terribly interesting or difficult beyond how poorly it controls, but it does have its aesthetic going for it. The big trouble here is that it's a game that isn't very fun to play, can often be frustrating, and you'll get a lot of the aesthetic enjoyment out of just watching a Let's Play or a long play online or something. It's something I'd say certainly isn't as interesting as Castlevania 64, so I'd put it beneath that game for sure, and it's something better off left to only people very interested in janky 3D games from the 5th generation.

История Nightmare Creatures начинается в 1666 году, когда Братство Гекаты занималось экспериментами с целью получения эликсира, который мог наделить членов культа сверхчеловеческими способностями, что помогло бы захватить Лондон, а затем и весь мир. Однако вместо желаемого результата, подопытные стали превращаться в ужасных созданий. Но члены культа не стали расстраиваться и записали монстров в число своей личной армии. Но Сэмюэлу Пепису это не понравилось, поэтому он решил сжечь здание своих товарищей, что повлекло за собой Великий Лондонский Пожар. А сами действия игры разворачиваются в 1834 году, когда Лондон вновь начали доставать ужасные монстры. Все это затеял Адам Кроули безумном ученом и оккультисте, заручившемся помощью Братства. В доме Игнатиуса Блэкуорда, священника и эксперта по оккультизму, находят книгу. Он обнаруживает, что это утерянный дневник Сэмюэля Пеписа, содержащий исследования Братства. Он отправляет ее знакомому доктору из Америки — Джину Францискусу, но тот через некоторое время оказывается убит. И вот, на похоронах доктора, Игнатиусу и дочери погибшего доктора, к ним подходит мужчина, который вручает им записку, что дневник украден и это все дело рук Кроули. Игнатиус и Надя отправляются по адресу, указанному в записке, надеясь найти Кроули и нейтрализовать монстров. Они и становятся двумя играбельными персонажами.
Сюжет по большому счету для галочки. Его развитие можно увидеть в картинках между уровнями.

Игровые персонажи Надя и Игнатиус имеют различия: Надя поражает своей скоростью, мастерски манипулируя мечом, в то время как Игнатиус впечатляет своей силой, эффективно используя боевой посох вместо меча. В дальнейшем их оружие можно будет улучшить, найдя их на локациях. Также в игре присутствует ряд второстепенного оружия, которое можно найти также на уровнях. Кроме полоски здоровья в игре есть синяя шкала, которая является адреналином. Она постепенно истощается, когда вы бездействуете. Как только она достигнет нуля, то ваше здоровье начинается постепенно уменьшаться и если вы не успеете эту шкалу восполнить, главный герой теряет одну жизнь. А восполнить ее можно убивая монстров.
Дизайн уровней в игре хорош, хоть локации и линейны, но каждая имеет разветвления и потайные ходы. Внешне они тоже отличаются, успеете побывать, как на улицах Лондона, так и в канализациях и много где еще.

Что по поводу графики и музыки, то здесь все отлично. Для своего времени игра выглядела очень хорошо. А музыка нужную атмосферу и напряжение создает без проблем.

Минусы игры заключается в неудобной камере, возможно потому что тогда не было аналоговых стиков. Если на вас нападут сразу два противника с двух сторон, то это может стать большой проблемой для вас. Потому что развернуться очень быстро не получится. Во время битвы с первом боссом намучался я с этой камерой вдоволь. Выше я писал, что игра содержит в себе разветвления и всякие секретные места, но исследовать это все нормально толком невозможно из-за полоски адреналина. Поэтому задержаться на уровне и побродить спокойно по закоулкам не получится.

Итог:
Хоть и указанные минусы могут немного испортить впечатление от игры, но к ним со временем привыкаешь и начинаешь получать удовольствие от игры. Могу сказать точно, что игра стоит того, чтобы потратить на нее свое время. Да и свое время она стала хитом.

70/100

While I adore the aesthetic and atmosphere of Nightmare Creatures, I just cannot overlook how endlessly frustrating I found a lot of the experience to the point that I couldn't say that I wholeheartedly loved it in full. While I hadn't expected this to be a super smooth experience or anything, given that it was a 3D action game in the early PS1 era, there were just certain aspects of the janky gameplay that really didn't do it for me. The side dodge consistently felt pretty awful to use, for one, always feeling as if it was slightly too short to ever be more useable than just jumping backwards instead, and it made a fair few enemies feel almost identical when it came to how you were meant to approach them, even if they initially looked very distinct and interesting, since there were very few viable options in any given scenario. It's not really helped by the fact that almost every one of them can also just be stunlocked with a basic combo, leading most encounters to just boil down to mashing the attack button after managing to get a single hit in.

The thing that made this so frustrating to me in particular however, is the fact that these weird issues are combined with enemy behaviour being obnoxiously erratic, sometimes just chaining attacks together one after the other in a fashion that felt too fast to react to, especially with how minimal the telegraphing could be. This leads to a lot of situations where it just feels like you need to guess when the enemy will back off and provide an opportunity for you to hit them or you'll get hit for big damage. This last point was especially frustrating due to the lives system making it that a single reasonably sized mistake could lead everything to falling apart, especially since they don't replenish from level to level, making each cheap death feel that much more irritating. As a final complaint, basically every boss is just the worst thing ever, whether it's due to easily stunlocking you, having inconsistent attacks that come out with almost no telegraphing, or just generally being a really boring time. Point is, every boss fight was accompanied by me just sighing at the prospect of having to deal with some new frontier of pure bullshit.

I don't want to be too harsh on this game either however, because I really did love bits and pieces of it. While the combat was clearly built with only 1 on 1 encounters in mind, this ended up making group encounters cool with how strongly they encouraged using all the other items that you're sure to have picked up along the way, with directly fighting multiple enemies at once being a last resort rather than the intended method of approaching a situation. Since I'm a massive Bloodborne fan, this game being all about killing werewolves and demons in Victorian era London is naturally something that immediately draws me in as well, especially with how good the game looks, especially with the fog obscuring things in the distance to a degree in a way that gives it a really moody quality.

The dire nature of the plague in the game is also conveyed really well, with the adrenaline mechanic being a cool idea that's elevated by the way that each level has this go down faster, simultaneously representing the increasing danger of this disease along with the growing complacency in the protagonists when it comes to slaughtering hordes of horrible monsters. It makes the last few levels really frantic in particular and adds a cool dynamic between exploration and regular progression, where you can't really spend too long trying to hunt down items or you'll have spent too long since your last kill. With so much about this game that I love, it's just such a shame that it was as downright infuriating to me as it was, and this was even after realising that hard mode is the default option and changing the difficulty down to easy. Might see if I can cheat in some extra lives and give this another shot in the future, but for the time being, it was a very cool, but deeply flawed experience to me.

Una de esas deudas que tenía con mi yo de ocho o nueve años, que nunca pasó del segundo nivel.

Aunque no ha envejecido tanto como me esperaba, tampoco es, que digamos, un buen vino.

En primer lugar, la estética es mi mero mole: ambientaciones lóbregas llenas de niebla y lluvia, callejuelas góticas del Londres victoriano, aberraciones eldritcheanas en low-poly ¿Qué más se puede pedir?

Por lo demás, es un amasijo de escenarios no del todo intencionadamente laberínticos -a lo cual le da en la torre el medidor de estamina que exige combate continuo- y unas mecánicas que en general consisten en cornerear a los enemigos y encadenar combos más o menos sencillos.

El jefe final, por otro lado, es, válgame, una auténtica pesadilla y bastante frustrante en comparación al resto del juego.

"If there is such a revival of 2d beat em ups it is because creating a good 3d action game that orbits in combat is something that only a select group can do."

-Homogies 3/12 or something like that
It's strange that sometimes people refer to this game as "the precursor to Bloodborne", I don't see anything substantial that leads to this thought beyond the setting. Castlevania 64 had a similar settig as well, its internal clock triggering gates and important events, suggesting the importance or insignificance of your presence and feel of the world, something Bloodborne does as well.
What could have been top action at the time only seems correct right now. Not because of "it has aged badly" but because at least solutions have been found -not so elegant- to how to plan the action in pseudo-naturalistic orographies within the gamy logics. in Nightmare creatures you cannot take high ground, there is no place for it in almost any situation, you cannot control hordes or even pairs of enemies because their attack and defense mechanics only contemplate 1 vs 1 and, having no control over the camera always has to guess that attack will come from outside the frame the game chooses and there is no encouragement to express yourself (because you basically can't) or to behave like an aggressive hunter. More like a kid playing with a bo. Not that I want to praise the post Ninja Gaiden Black post Devil May Cry 3 structure because that would be choosing the easy way out but... Look at The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge or Van Helsing, They have the Capcomnian structure and half the problems are solve by themselves (generously speaking) and they don't encourage you to go beyond generating moments of explosive action without many nuances, but at least it's functional within 3d.

Arduween 1x07