Nightmare Creatures review

Nightmare Creatures dates back to 1997 and is a real favourite of mine. I have the first title on the PlayStation and its sequel on the Dreamcast, but it was also available on the Nintendo 64 (minus FMVs due to capacity differences), Windows and now mobile telephone, whereas the only alternative platform for the sequel was the PlayStation.

The former game is set in 1834 London, with the back-story tying-in to 1666s Great Fire. The Brotherhood of Hecate have been experimenting and made a whole bunch of monsters. They are now all over London. Good luck with that.
You can play Ignatius, church-goer with a stick, or Nadia. Pick Nadia.


Obviously Hekate isn't accurately represented, but it's only a game.


During gameplay, there's a bar at the side of the screen you have to keep full by defeating monsters. There's some dispute over whether it represents your character's adrenaline or poison in the air, and as I don't have the game booklet in the vicinity I can't definitively tell you. But I do know, if it runs out, you die.

Character movements can be somewhat wooden but the gameplay is enjoyable and relatively easy to handle. A range of mêlée moves and weaponry can be deployed to defeat opponents, some of which are quite creative. Tip: Slice the zombies in half across their middles, or they'll keep getting back up!
I notice they're all wearing jeans, though the game is set a little early for that.

My favourite pick-up in the game has got to be the circular saw blade, which gives the slightest stroke of your weapon the damaging effect of, well, a circular saw blade.
I also have a fondness for the gun you spin around and take out everyone in the vicinity with.




PLAY AS MONSTER CHEAT CODE!!
The video info says this:

1.At the Password screen enter Left, Up, X, Square, Down, Triangle, Square, Down. You can now enable infinite everything (lives, weapons, etc.), play as a monster, and choose your starting level.
2.To shrink all monsters into babies with baby-like noises, enter the CHEAT MODE code then, while still on the title screen, press L2, L2, R1, R1, L1, R2, Select.

Can't presently remember if I ever tried Baby Mode.

The Play as Monster cheat is TOO AWESOME for words. My favourite flying female appears at 9mins28secs in the video.
Look at those magnificent specimens. Yeah, they're blocky but, wow.

The music at the very end of that video is actually Biohazard 2/ Resident Evil 2's Save Room music (composed by Masami Ueda/ Shun Nishigaki/ Shusaku Uchiyama). As nostalgic as you can get right there.


Watch out for the grave ghost at 3mins36!
You should have seen how giddy I was thinking of this level when I went past the real Highgate Cemetery a couple of years ago. Was probably hugely inappropriate of me but whattaya gonna do?


As for the music, well. My primary listening habit is and has always been, videogame soundtracks. We all know I love the odd bit of heavy metal and Norwegian deathpunk. But game soundtracks.. you can't beat them, whatever the genre.

Nightmare Creatures is from the epic era when you could still whack PlayStation disks in the CD player and hear the music. That was the soundtrack to my junior school years. As for the boss battles: there are bands today who don't compose pieces anywhere near as good. Whenever I played it to people (non-gamer friends) they would often say "uh, when do the lyrics start?". Lyrics?! Don't taint NC with lyrics!




Rockin'.


This is probably my favourite level music. For each double-beat I can almost see the zombie feet scuffing the ground:


It's hard to find conclusive information about the band who performed the music for the game.



Nightmare Creatures II on the Dreamcast; I LOVED it!!


Aww, Wallace. It's great when you feel solidarity towards a character. And who doesn't love 1900s mental hospitals? That place had the perfect creepy air to it. The ending.. ah I'm getting carried away!

I intend to write a separate review for this one. If my Dreamcast laser diode wasn't so dusty I'd be able to successfully get it to load a lot more often.

We were promised a Nightmare Creatures 3 but I've yet to hear of it. At least it's not as lengthy as the Duke Nukem fiasco though.

I was still young enough for the traditional rectangular lunch box with the little handle when NC 2 was released. My parents scanned the cases of games-of-the-moment and stuck them on as my lunch box picture :D! So, the Dreamcast version of this image was staring out at people as I ate lunch!:


I was clearly the coolest kid there.

SUMMARY: The Nightmare Creatures series ROCKS! If you haven't got them, you need to get them, and if you have, you need to go and fire-up the ol' PlayStation!