A Stain on Survival Horror's Record

As a fan of all things pulpy, gothic, and mysterious a title like Nocturne seems like a surefire thing.  A secret U.S. Government organization known as "Spookhouse" is tasked with eliminating supernatural threats across the globe.  You'll fill the role of their trench-coat wearing top agent known as the Stranger and travel to such varied locales as Germany, Chicago, France, and even small town Texas to eradicate werewolves and vampires.  I am a sucker for these Lovecraftian adventures but unfortunately Nocturne is only an interesting design premise with poorly written characters and a game that was designed in a time when technology was placed on an altar before game play.  If you can even manage to get Nocturne to run on contemporary hardware you'll find a game that is laughably bad to play and even more cheesily written.

First of all the Stranger is the worst kind of no-nonsense heroes.  His voice-acting is muddled with strangely awkward delivery as if the voice actor is pausing to re-read his script mid-sentence.  The Stranger seems to know how to kill anything but seems to stop and ask for explanation far too often.  Everyone within Spookhouse is eager to call the Stranger a badass but there is very little supporting evidence to help you feel that you can trust this.  Unlike a character like Hellboy, there is no real reason for the Stranger to even be working for a patriotic organization like Spookhouse.  Hellboy was raised and cared for within the B.P.R.D. but the Stranger is just some misanthropic cipher that threatens to kill his fellow agents if they get in the way.

The Stranger controls in general like the first Resident Evil except that there is no "quick turnaround" not that it's really missed.  Your character drives like a tank and has an awkward dual-wield auto-aim that is unreliable in most cases.  You wait for a monster to come within range and then you hold down the fire button.  If there are multiple targets sometimes one of his arm will aim wildly away from the other and well, it's just bad to look at. It's difficult to make the Stranger run in a straight line and since the game has so many unnecessary rooms and hallways you'll be bumping and grinding against all walls and false doorways to just find a way to progress.  This'll lead you to falling off the bridge in Germany or off the docks in Chicago to a watery instant death that you couldn't see coming because the game is overly, overly dark.

For PC gaming, Nocturne represents that first generation of 3-D titles that handled poorly and were created in an artistic style that wasn't meant to last.  Think back to the PS-1 era and very games that you'd revisit would be bearable to a gamer of contemporary expectations.  For it's time, Nocturne featured fantastic shadows that really accented its dark gothic appeal.  But now its muddy and pointless and its really obvious that the game lacks real atmosphere.  When the Stranger and his half-vampire associate run through a graveyard, their heels click across the grass like they're in the middle of a marble-built bank.  The Strangers trench coat can move and sway but it bubbles to and fro like he's constantly standing over a hot air grate blowing up his skirt.  About the best thing the game's artistic style seems to retain is a nifty lens flare and well, that ain't the stuff of great graphics.

But for a fan of Call of Cthulhu : Dark Corners of the Earth, I really like the idea of a zombie attack in 1920s Texas.  Or how about a German scientist that resurrects gangsters for Al Capone's mob?  The entire story conceit behind Spookhouse is definitely worth merit because look at the success of B.P.R.D. and Hellboy and neither of those concepts are exactly the stuff of Pulitzers.  But there is just some god awful gameplay, voice work, and lack of foresight that will prevent anyone from appreciating the entirety of this game's context.  At least all four stories (or "volumes") are self-contained and can be accessed at the game's beginning.  So if you got stuck at one point you could try out one of the other three.  But I wouldn't recommend it.  The clumsily to control "Stranger" makes Harry Mason seem like a Ninja Warrior champ his boyscout marksman badge.