OMGJeremy

Humpday Gaming: Nocturne (pc)

Oh Nocturne. You had all the potential in the world, but you decided to squander all that potential to be King Of The Shitpile. Instead of taking the survival horror genre to the next logical step, you were content to try and be the prettiest Resident Evil clone out there. Instead of improving the controls, interface, and general gameplay of a series that had long since been showing its age, you decided to simply emulate it with better graphics. Nocturne is the sad, sad case of a developer not knowing when to use superior technology to make something better, instead of just making it really pretty.

Nocturne was GOD Games and Terminal Reality’s first game for the pc, and it had a premise that is still completely awesome to this day. Nocturne was set in the 1940s, focusing around a fringe Government agency that solved unexplainable phenomenon and such.  Sort of like if the X-Files existed way back in the day. You played as The Stranger. An enigmatic character that wore a long, billowing overcoat, fighter plane goggles, and sporting a couple of dual pistols for additional cool effect as well. The rest of the agency consisted of the old guy in charge, a sexy vampire woman, and some weird Frankenstein’s monster looking guy. Sounds corny as hell (and it was), but it was really well done in a way that was like seeing a dark comic book come to life. There were several sets of stages, all representing a separate story with its own plot and characters. You always played as The Stranger, but each new story had you playing with another partner from the agency, trying to get to the bottom of some crazy paranormal mystery. It was borderline genius. Too bad nothing else in the game came close to how good the premise was.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jpz3V2_Jn0

Hey remember Resident Evil from way back in the day? When moving your character around felt more like maneuvering a Panzer tank through a tight hallway? It sucked, but it got a free pass because no other game had done what RE did. You can only play that card for so long, though. Even Capcom was aware of that. So by the time Nocturne rolled around in 1999, people were so damn tired of RE tank controls that the entire genre was about to fall on its face unless someone did something new to completely revolutionize it. And from the huge magazine spreads hitting all over the place for it, it seemed a lot of people were looking to Nocturne to be that game. After all, it looked AMAZING in those magazine shots. The models, the settings, the dynamic shadows… just wow. GOD Games and Terminal Reality must have known that this was going to be the new standard for the survival horror genre from all the hype and hooplah, right? So what did they do to totally change everything?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Unless you call directly mapping RE tank controls to a mouse and keyboard changing things. To its credit, it DID change things. It just made those tank controls EVEN WORSE. Now not only were you using WSAD to move The Stranger around, but you could also use the mouse for precision aiming on a vertical and horizontal axis. Sounds good in theory, as more control would be a welcome addition to the robotic RE-style of movement. In practice though, it was a mess. Aiming while moving around became an almost impossible task. And that’s if you could even aim at all due to the constant camera angle changes. Going from aiming down your gun one second, then changing to a 3/4 overhead view from the opposite direction was jarring to say the least. Especially when the controls never changed with the perspective. And considering the game was way more shooting heavy than the RE games, it became an effort in futility to mow down the legions of the dead in front of you. God, what a sad mess. Oh wait, did I mention you could jump as well? And there were actually platform sections to go along with that jumping? It’s as bad as it sounds like it would be. In all, this game was barely playable.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x28E5l-C-IQ&feature=related

To its credit, the aforementioned graphics went a long way in making you want to trudge through the terrible gameplay. The mood they set was unlike anything ever seen before. Nocturne was also one of the first games to use real-time shadow mapping. Meaning that everything that moved would cast realistic shadows over just about any static object. Shadows would stretch down hallways, zombies would quickly run by revealing only a lanky black blob across a door frame, and rooms could be filled with bats or all such manner of crazy things while all casting individual shadows. It’s still a strikingly good looking game to this day. You can check out the video for proof.

Unfortunately, graphics can only take you so far. Just because you’re the best looking turd in town, doesn’t make you anything more than a turd. And Nocturne is a pretty big turd of a game. Nocturne was panned for its awful gameplay, and unfortunately never saw a sequel made. Mainly because GOD Games were given the franchise rights to the Blair Witch Project, which they then had Terminal Reality use the Nocturne engine to power a few episodic-style games based on the Blair Witch Project mythology. You know, that super rich Blair Witch Project mythology that everyone was totally into? Yeeeaahhh…

Needless to say, all those games bombed, and GOD Games shuttered not long after. I still have high hopes though that maybe someday, someone will announce a modern day remake/reboot. Maybe this time with gameplay to match the awesome premise.

The Stranger is due for a comeback.