Nocturne
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
Nocturne sometimes seems like an action/adventurer's dream come true. At other times, it seems more like that late-night snack that comes back to haunt you at 3 a.m. This Alone in the Dark descendant casts you as an operative for an agency called Spookhouse, a 1920s and '30s equivalent of the Ghostbusters.
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At other times, it seems more like that late-night snack that comes back to haunt you at 3 a.m.
This Alone in the Dark descendant casts you as an operative for an agency called Spookhouse, a 1920s and '30s equivalent of the Ghostbusters. As the trench-coated, two-gunned, monster-hating Stranger, you set out from the headquarters-a source of advice and supply--on any of four episodes of from four to 11 chapters each.
In the first, you're hunting a powerful vampire, in the second, the walking dead in a small Texas town. In the third, you try to sort out why hits are being performed by dead men in gangland Chicago And in the fourth, you set out to help a retired Spookhouse agent whose estate is beset by imps and skeletons. Along the way, you shoot more or less everything that looks at you funny, collect weapons, amoo and a range of helpful tools, solve an assortment of modest, key-oriented puzzles and take part in non-interactive dialogues.
Nocturne's strongest suit is its artwork. It's often dark-the first thing the game had me do was boost my contrast and brightness to maximum-but a graphical masterpiece nonetheless. The artwork and animation are respectively sumptuous and fluid-so much so that, when The Stranger and his half-vampire sidekick ran through the ashen woods in the first episode, it occasionally flickered through my mind that I was watching real-world people against a real-world backdrop. Alone in the Dark never looked like this.
That sense returned even more vividly in the incredible train level that opens the second episode when I noticed that, as the Stranger jumped from car to car, his blowing coattail obeyed the direction of the wind. And in the next chapter, when he rescued a couple from their their zombie-infested farmhouse, the tottering old lady, walking in baby steps with her arms puffed out from her sides, looked utterly real.
So did the blood-spattering patterns on the staircase wall from the zombie I laid to rest en route.
It wasn't the last time that happened. I can't say I've ever seen graphics in an action game like the ones in downtown Chicago in the third episode. Even when I didn't much enjoy what I was doing-the game has some predictable levels and the AI tends to be pedestrian-I finished them, wondering what I would see along the way. I wasn't disappointed. The graphics sustained me.
Nor is the artwork the only thing Nocturne has going for it. When it fully embraces its locations-as in much of the second episode--it's an absolute hoot. At those moments, I couldn't stop playing even if I wanted to stop.
But be advised: Taking pleasure in Nocturne nevertheless requires some perseverance, as the first episode exposes a number of irritating shortcomings.
For instance, the game camera doesn't always work effectively. The perspectives aren't character-based, but location based. This means that, when you're fighting a monster at some depth into the screen, the camera isn't at The Stranger's shoulder, but at a distance. In combination with the darkness that shrouds the early levels, this can make it extremely difficult to tell what's going on--let alone hit your target--unless you activate the auto-aim option. And, of course, if you do enable auto-aim, you risk the old who's-playing-the-game-here? problem (familiar to Tomb Raider players) under which The Stranger notices enemies before you do.
Moreover, if Stranger moves into a nook or corner, the camera sometimes shifted to point of view behind the interior wall of that corner and didn't even show my character or the monsters he was fighting.
While the animation is generally supple, it doesn't handle stairs convincingly--the character seems to jerk from one stair to the next--and I'm not sure how The Stranger pulls off those long jumps when he's running uphill. I ran into a few clipping issues, and a pushed kept jerking to a new location, then back to its real one, every time I moved it. When you die, the game doesn't do anything special. It tosses up "You're dead. Game over." in red text at the bottom of the screen. They don't even use a fancy font. I know these folks have an artistic eye, but why wasn't it brought to bear here?
We've all played games with gorgeous graphics and no feeling of involvement. And to be sure, Nocturne has weak points. But even when this game does something predictable, it does it with such splendor that it renders the ordinary extraordinary.
That's an experience worth having, and one I hope to have again.
