by Igor - November 26, 2003

In a genre that�s so common nowadays, Nosferatu seems to be one amongst many. Yet this game that has you playing as an aristocratic British fencer battling the undead hordes manages to captivate my interest. It may be just another FPS, but it�s somehow different; not only is there horror unmatched since Clive Barker�s Undying, but there is replay value as well (sadly, this is something most companies nowadays seem to have abandoned). Then there is also the game�s price, which in itself is a large bargain.

Enthrallingly scary

Nosferatu starts out similarly to many first person shooters. The player is shown a movie, a short introduction to the game, and is then dropped onto the first level all alone. To be specific the player starts out in Count Malachi�s castle in Romania. You, the player, arrive several days late (your avatar was in a fencing tournament) to where Count Malachi was supposed to marry your sister.

But if everything went according to plan, the game would�ve been better off as a movie, and alas, Count Malachi did not marry your sister. Instead, when your family (and friends) arrived to the castle, they found themselves prisoners. Such is the goal of the game, to go across the castle from room to room and rescue all or most of the family members.

You don�t actually have to rescue all or any of the family members as you later find out � the real goal of the game is to attempt to stop Count Malachhi from resurrecting Lord Malachi (an ancient Undead baddie) by stealing all of the Count�s sacrifices (he plans to sacrifice your family members). The way this works is simple: you have a �game time� clock that you carry around with you, and whenever a certain amount of time passes a random family member is killed off (the explanation is that the vampires find them locked up in their room and kill them).

There are actually good reasons to rescue your family though (aside from the fact that they are, well, your family) � not only is Lord Malachi weaker with each sacrifice he is deprived of, but also each family member gives you some kind of reward (denoted by unlocking his or her briefcase in the castle entrance area).

To rescue the family and reap the rewards, you will have to travel all over the castle to find them and bring them back to the castle entrance area. The castle itself is divided into the East Wing, West Wing, and Main Wing. You start out by only having access to one of the wings, and having to find keys to the other two wings. Likewise, each wing has multiple floors and/or doors to which you will need to find keys before being granted access.

If finding keys was all this game was about, however, this might as well have been an adventure game, and so monsters impede your every move. The combat here is pretty much like any other FPS; the monsters spawn randomly when you are not looking, they leap off ceilings, emerge through the floor, and break through windows. Thankfully, there are lots and lots of ways to get rid of them.

You start off with only a saber (you are a fencing champion after all), and this may cause the game to seem a lot harder than it actually is in the beginning. Once you kill your first baddie with a pistol, everything starts to become easier. The first pistol you see is either the Revolver (a weak pistol carrying 5 shots) or the Flintlock (an ancient pistol using gunpowder allowing for one shot). Once you get the gun it is easy to kill the monsters (who seem to be very good at not missing their melee attacks) � just point and shoot; the flintlock kills the monsters in one shot (but if you miss, it takes a long time to reload) and the revolver in two.

The arsenal also consists of some kind of rifle that uses gunpowder, a Catholic cross, a Holy Chalice (that uses Holy Water as ammo), and of course a big bad Machine Gun (which you get only by rescuing your grandfather). Something I found very interesting and useful relating to the arsenal is that you could carry more then one gun of any one type. For example, towards the end of the game I had about 8 flintlocks, 2 revolvers, and 3 rifles. While it may not seem all that great, it takes quite a while to reload a flintlock or rifle, and so simply switching to another weapon that is already loaded is far easier then waiting for 10 seconds for your weapon to be reloaded.

Aside from this I wouldn�t say much of anything stood out to me, except perhaps the ending. Unlike most traditional FPSs, I found it interesting that you could end the game not just by dying but by beating one of the final bosses the wrong way. Do the wrong thing and you become one of Lord Malachi�s sacrifices, forever cursed to roam the Earth in his conquest of all known life. Sadly this happened to me several times before I realized what it is exactly you needed to do. It turns out Count Malachi could not be killed by conventional weapons (I circled him for 10 minutes trying to take him out until I ran out of ammo, whereas it took me only 30 seconds with about 100 machine gun rounds to take out the big and bad Lord Malachi) � which is rather preposterous; he should�ve just had a big, big number of hitpoints.

Your not too shabby graphics served

The graphics, as you may judge from the screenshots, are not trying to live up to your state-of-the-art Source/Unreal engines. They are simple, and do their job well. Still, some effects are nicely done, such as the sunlight going in a window, raining through a fog, or more importantly the game�s horror movie look (yes, those screenshots were not touched by photoshop).

They scream for blood, I scream for EAX

The sound in this game isn�t exactly spectacular either � it does put up a novel attempt however. Whenever you traverse the world of Nosferatu, you are greeted with screams and the monsters� skulking. Somehow the sound was designed such that you can predict when an enemy is nearby (the music looks like it changes when you are about to fight).

While the monsters screaming as they are about to kill you is quite nice to hear, this game does not have EAX and thus does not support multi-direction sound, so you can�t tell which direction what sound is coming from. Too bad; I could�ve imagined a scene where sound slowly emanated from all the corners of a room until finally a monster leaped at you from the ceiling.

But wait, there�s replayability!

Replayability is rare in today�s world of games. Most first person shooters nowadays provide you a linear game that upon playing once you will uninstall and put in the trash. Nosferatu is different here � not only is it non-linear (for reasons explained quite shortly) but you can also replay it at least once before going bored.

The reason is simple � although there is no multiplayer (and that�s fine, it is a solid single player game in my opinion), the castle is randomly generated each time you enter the game, regardless of whether or not you�ve started a new game. That means each time you play the game the castle layout is completely different, and your family members are in completely different places. For the same reason, it is beneficial to play through most of the game in one sitting (or you will get lost � the castle is huge).

There are vampires too

How good would any horror game be without vampires? Sure, it�s in practically every horror game � but it�s in Nosferatu as well! Best of all, the vampires sleep during the day and you simply walk up to their coffins with a stake � and *bam* stab the vampires and watch them die. Note: The aforementioned vampires may also be killed by using Holy Water, a nice religious twist.

In a nutshell

Although Nosferatu does not introduce anything new to the gaming table, it definitely has some solid single player experience. It is also quite a good bargain ($30) and has more replay value then other new games (i.e. Max Payne 2). I definitely recommend this to anyone who likes horror games, at such a low price, even if there are things that you do not like, you will not end up screaming at your money lost.