#504: Nightmare Creatures
An early thematic predecessor to Bloodborne, but without half the playability
Initial release: September 30, 1997 (PSX version)
Platforms: Playstation, Nintendo 64, PC
Developer: Kalisto Entertainment
The mid-to-late 90s was a golden age for horror games. Some of the biggest spook series in the business got their start in that era: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, hell even Castlevania’s “Metroidvania” era it’s most famous for began with 1997’s Symphony of the Night. But alongside them was a massive collection of smaller competitors and also-rans, ranging from early chase-and-escape chiller Clock Tower to tank-control traditionals like Dino Crisis to just straight up shooters like Blood and Alien vs Predator.
Somewhere in the midst of this heady crowd is a lesser-known title called Nightmare Creatures, which in the years since its release developed a status as a cult classic, a sort of predecessor to Bloodborne with its frenetic hack-and-slash combat and spooky gothic atmosphere.
And I’m here to tell you… folks, I just don’t get it.
The basics: It’s October 17th, 1834, the night of the burning of Parliament. While the so-called Second Great Fire of London occurred during the Blitz, up until then this 19th-century conflagration was the largest since the big one in 1666. And therein lies the background — in 1666, a mysterious cult calling themselves the Brothers of Hecate were performing hideous experiments, until one of their own, Great Fire chronicler Sam Pepys himself, burned down the cult headquarters to put a stop to it. By 1834, the cult persists, having received new life when one Adam Crowley utilizes them to perform his own mad experiments, unleashing an army of horrifying mutants and monsters upon the foggy streets of London. A priest and occultist named Ignatius, receives a book from a mysterious donor. It turns out to be a lost diary of Sam Pepys, containing the cult’s research. He summons a friend of his, an American immunologist, who is promptly murdered. Ignatius, and his friend’s daughter Nadia, receive a note at the funeral: “Know about Adam Crowley, Brotherhood of Hecate — HVHJ.” (I should note that all of this is told, not shown.) The game begins with them (or rather, just one, as you can must pick between the two) setting out for the address written on the note.
Now, by now you’re thinking, “This is a lot of backstory and the game hasn’t even started yet. Surely the game itself has an impressive narrative.” It does not. Short of a pair of FMV cutscenes at the beginning and end (which the N64 version doesn’t even have!) the story is told entirely in brief text blurbs at the end of each level (or on the loading screen in the PSX version.) Other than that, each level is a featureless maze of streets, alleys, tunnels, docks, and the occasional building, full of monsters and not much else. There’s little in the way of environmental storytelling; at most, we occasionally catch glimpses of Crowley running away into the darkness, or follow the occasional blood trail. It’s otherwise a straightforward, nearly-mindless action game, through and through.
As I mentioned before, you get your choice between Ignatius and Nadia; while they have different movesets, Ignatius is supposedly stronger and Nadia is supposedly faster, there’s fundamentally no real difference between the two. They have the same speed, the same health, the same damage, the same items. So it’s just pick one and go. (Most playthroughs I’ve found on Youtube pick Nadia, probably because she’s cooler and also a girl.) The majority of the game is running around the streets of London fighting monsters, picking up items and generally chasing Crowley. It’s not the worst concept in the world, but the game has some serious issues that make it fall far short of what the label “Bloodborne spiritual predecessor” would imply.
The single biggest one is that it’s just not that fun to play. There’s little in the way of interesting level design; each stage is largely a gloomy maze of streets with little in the way of height variation or interesting locales. The controls are clunky at best, downright unresponsive at worst, making the increasing need to rely on fancy combos a grim proposition. And I don’t know if this is an issue specific to emulation or what, but the performance on both the PSX and N64 were just downright terrible — I suspect this may have played a role in a lot of my woes with the unresponsive controls. Not that it terribly matters much — most enemies don’t require a very cerebral approach and you can use easier combos to knock them down.
Perhaps the single worst element of the game, however, is the adrenaline bar. Slowly ticking down as you play, you must kill enemies to keep it topped off, a feat easier said than done when you get into the more mazelike areas where it can be easy to get lost. It’s a terrible design decision that essentially encourages players to avoid exploration, which is bad because with the bad controls you’ll need all the help you can get from the items you can find.
While the PSX version and the PC version were basically identical, the N64 version makes some changes. Based largely on the Japanese PSX release, the enemies are less aggressive, the levels have been shortened and simplified in some ways, and — importantly — the adrenaline bar becomes optional. This makes the game far less of a teethgrinder compared to the PSX release, but it’s still not really any fun.
I’ll give Kalisto some credit — the game is atmospheric as hell, the London gloom feeling all encompassing as it swallows you up in darkness. This is only enhanced on the N64, as the draw distance is by necessity shortened compared to other versions, everything fading into inky blackness. The soundtrack has its moments too, though those moments are rare in a score that’s largely the dull thump and thud of lifeless MIDI.
I came away from my time with the game thinking that there’s the bones of a good game here, but between the technical problems and the creative stagnancy of the gameplay I can’t really recommend this over the likes of Bloodborne. If you want something similar aesthetically then I direct your eyes to Bloodborne PSX, which, while not a complete recreation of the game, nevertheless makes explicit the link between the classic horror games of old and the new era that From Software’s greatest game represents.
