Ночные Твари: Ужасы Лондона 1834 года

1997 video game

Nightmare Creatures is a 1997 survival horror video game developed by Kalisto Entertainment for PlayStation, Microsoft Windows and Nintendo 64. A sequel, Nightmare Creatures II, was released three years later. A mobile phone version of Nightmare Creatures was developed and published by Gameloft in 2003. A second sequel, Nightmare Creatures III: Angel of Darkness, was cancelled in 2004.

The story behind Nightmare Creatures draws upon gothic horror elements of the 19th century and begins in 1666, when a devil worshiping cult called the Brotherhood of Hecate were conducting sinister experiments in London so as to take over the city, and then the world. The Brotherhood tried to develop an elixir that would endow them with superhuman powers. However, rather than creating their intended superhumans, their experiments instead created grotesque monsters called nightmare creatures. When they decided to use these creatures as an army of conquest, one of their members, Samuel Pepys, set their headquarters on fire, resulting in the First Great Fire of London. The game takes place in 1834 when London falls victim to several evil occurrences. Monster sightings are reported along with news of people mutating into ungodly creatures, and that the dead are waking from their graves and walking among the living. All of London is in a panic and vulnerable to the schemes of Adam Crowley (who was based on occultist Aleister Crowley), Secondary weapons such as pistols, mines, fire bombs, and magic spells can be used in addition to each character's primary weapon. The game features an optional adrenaline bar which causes health to be lost if it runs out, and players are forced to continuously seek out and win battles to keep the adrenaline bar full.

Nightmare Creatures was the first video game to be created with LibSys, Kalisto's own proprietary 3D development program. The game's environments were modeled from 19th century maps and blueprints. Initially Mindscape was slated to be the publisher, but the publication rights to Nightmare Creatures were acquired by Activision just before the 1997 Electronic Entertainment Expo. Nightmare Creatures was published by Activision in North America and Sony Computer Entertainment in Europe. In North America the PlayStation version was promoted with a television commercial featuring a voice over by Maurice LaMarche. While the PlayStation and Microsoft Windows versions are essentially the same, the Nintendo 64 version saw a handful of minor changes. Given the limited storage capacity of the Nintendo 64's cartridge system, all full motion videos were removed. Brief segments of scrolling text are used at the game's start and following each level to advance the plot. The platforming elements were made much easier in the Nintendo 64 version, and the health depleting adrenaline meter could also be turned off in the options menu, allowing players to explore the environments at a more leisurely pace. Also graphically, the Nintendo 64 version is more crisp, clear and detailed than the PlayStation version, without the pixelization and texture warping. The PlayStation version was released in Japan on February 26, 1998.

Nightmare Creatures was a commercial hit, with global sales above 1.5 million units by January 2000. The PlayStation version of Nightmare Creatures received "favorable" reviews, while the Nintendo 64 and PC versions received "mixed" reviews, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. Taking the other side, IGN concluded, "Ultimately, the positives far outweigh the negatives in Nightmare Creatures. It's spooky, challenging, and a hell of a lot of fun." The disagreement extended between Electronic Gaming Monthlys four reviewers; Sushi X and Kelly Rickards gave the game a 8.0 and 7.5, respectively, saying that the special attacks are all easy to perform and useful in combat, while Joe Fielder and Crispin Boyer both gave it a 5.5, with Fielder arguing that the player is driven to either button mashing or sticking to a handful of basic moves and Boyer saying the game is too difficult unless the player quickly masters the use of the block. Entertainment Weekly gave the game a B−, praising the 3D environments, and saying Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is dated and flat in comparison.