Alright, so Night Creatures arrived in the mail the other day and I finally got around to popping it in last night. I hadn't played it since it was first released, and I remember absolutely despising it back then. But something in my head said, "It couldn't be as bad as I remember it being." Besides, graphically it's kinda bad ass, and the concept is cool too.
Yeah...it's just as bad, if not worse, than I remember. Which is a shame because, again, the game looks really nice. But the hit detection is such that the game is nearly unplayable.
I began by going to the right from the first screen and getting to the werewolf/spooky trees area. The boss battle with the giant tree took me a good 2-3 tries because my character kept bouncing from root-to-root, without any ability to control him, until all my energy was depleted. I finally took him down by finding a narrow safe spot and hacking the shit out of him. Once I finished, it was down into the cave, where I was immediately smoked by the witch. The hint for the witch was something like, "She doesn't bathe". Do I throw water at her? What? By that point, I was too frustrated to work my way back there, so after my Game Over I decided to go left from the first screen. Again, stylistically, the game impressed me. Shit's all spooky and gothic looking. I went into the church and began climbing down. Found a sword (that looked more like a fencing foil), and began hacking the shit out of the hordes of rats n' shit that came at me. But once those floating eye-ball/spectre things came at me, I was toast. And so was the game. I shut it off.
I felt just like I did back in the 90s when I first cracked this game open. Completely disappointed, because I love the haunted/spooky atmosphere games of that era. Perhaps I'll pick up Ghost Manor next, since that game's actually playable...
