Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi

 

Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi is a very intriguing game. At first glance its some kind of horror shooter adventure game. The premise, theme, and quick look at screenshots looks very appealing to me. Games set in this classic vampire horror are surprisingly hard to come by, even more for a FPS game. That's all I needed to know to be curious to pick this one up.

The game doesn't give you much to go by. It starts off with a really cool cinematic about how you're on a trip to visit your relatives in some far away spooky castle on a hill. But when you get there, they're all held captive by evil forces basically. So you're on a mission to save them. Then the game starts off in the courtyard of this castle and you make your way deeper into the castle, periodically returning back to the courtyard as you get more keys and unlock more wings of the mansion.

As I said, the game does a poor job explaining its self.
I had an extremely frustrating, terrible first impression of this game.
For starters, everything is on a time limit. You have a dozen or so relatives you can rescue, and they will each slowly automatically die depending on how much time has passed. This makes it so you pretty much have to speedrun the entire time, the game is designed around it. You can't take your time to admire the atmosphere, scenery, or levels, its just 'go go go' nonstop.

I didn't know this, it wasn't immediately obvious. So my first time playing, I had the most important Priest character die on me. Not knowing what the hells going on, it annoyed me quite a lot. Not only that, but when I did find relatives to rescue, I didn't even know where to bring them back. The answer is right at the beginning of the game, you can simply turn around to open some big gate which is the real Safe Area with a glowing safety circle, as well as lots of chests which they open for you to give you buffs. Well I didn't think to turn around and open this door, I probably thought it was decoration. So thats another thing that was poorly explained and just confusing.

But actually, after I already failed the most crucial character and realizing I should probably reset my game, I was already fed up with the game.

That's because the general gameplay is kind of atrocious and doesn't make sense.

I didn't realize it, but guess what? The game is randomly generated - mostly.
The castle has certain set pieces, like the courtyard, the East wing, the West wing, and so on. And different styles of rooms, like different chunks. But these chunks get randomly swapped around, as well as I guess the keys and items in chests.

Even when you start a new game, it says "Randomly generating new castle" I didn't know what to make of that when I first started, maybe I thought it was just a quirky way to say "loading". But fundamentally what this means is that the game has messed up balance and bizarre difficulty.

The general gameplay has you going through this labyrinth of a castle, looking for keys and looking for relatives to escort back to the safezone in the courtyard. But before I could do any of that, I was just getting destroyed by basic combat. The game is heavy on combat, I didn't know what to expect, but its nonstop combat. The thing is, it also has a heavy focus on melee combat. The beginning of the game it only gives you this sword and your fists. So you're going around these linear castle hallways, having waves of enemies dumped at you randomly, like dozens upon dozens of goblins, monsters, dogs, and all you have to fend for yourself is this fucking horrible sword weapon that barely has any reach (Reminds me of Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde) , and your fists. Anyone sane would think the sword would naturally be better than your fists - yeah that's the first mistake. I was struggling with this piece of shit sword for awhile, its basically impossible to use it without taking constant damage.

The game only has three difficulties: Easy, Medium, Hard. I picked medium. No way I ever play a game on easiest difficulty. Well, this game isn't no walk in the park. The enemy AI is bullshit, jutting around randomly, the animations are atrocious, the animations look like 10fps, the general programming of the game is abysmal. The enemies glide around, float around, fly across the screen randomly with crap physics. Couple this with horrible melee combat it becomes frustrating fast. The melee combat turns into nothing more than trading blows and hoping theres enough healthkits around to make up the difference. This is also made even more awful by the games stamina system. If you sprint for more than half a second you start panting to yourself and the screen starts wobbling around and shaking. Even moving normally half depletes your stamina bar. Then trying to use melee ontop of it is a recipe for frustration, tedium, and annoyance. At least when you are fully exhausted you can still move and attack, but the whole system is just stupid and feels obnoxious to engage with.

Not too long into the game you do find your first gun, this flintlock gun. Ok no more shit melee combat (I thought). Well the issue is even the controls with the guns are screwed up. Something simple as the HUD ammo count is confusing. You'd think the number on the left is the currently loaded and the right is the total ammo, you know like how every game does it. But no. Its the opposite here. For one, that screwed me up. Then, if you press the reload button at any time it seems to dump your ammo and waste your ammo on you, punishing you for doing so. Then, the act of reloading your gun its self is just a glitchy, buggy, janky mess. Half the time it fails to reload, or does the animation twice, or glitches up, you try to shoot but it glitches and starts half reloading again. Or you think you have ammo but then magically you don't. Even more confusing is the fact your gun can say 0 bullets but actually you can carry two of the game gun and if you press the button to switch to the gun again you can pull out another one with a few bullets? I don't fucking know, everything about this games mechanics is such a disaster.

But worse than that is the fact that I barely got any ammo my first try around. I would get like 10 bullets but then be up against 50 enemies. Forcing myself to use the awful melee. I'd be picking up all sorts of ammo like Machine gun bullets, Revolver bullets, meanwhile all I have is a stupid sword and this flintlock pistol. Why does it give you so much of this ammo so early in the game of guns you cant even get yet? Oh yeah, because the game is randomly generated and the balance sucks. Also, there are rooms with portals that spawn infinite enemies. And I didn't even know you could destroy these portals, so this really screwed me over and frustrated me. Seemed like an impossible challenge to deal with all this crap with no ammo and terrible melee. And besides these portals, it seems like the game randomly spawns enemies all around you infinitely... its like this never ending tedium and annoyance, the game really stresses trying to get you to speedrun and ignore everything it seems like.

So, my first try playing the game this priest guy died on me because I didn't understand what the hell I was on for. I almost uninstalled the game right there and then and wrote it off. But the next day I said screw it, and started it up again. Started a new save, with the new knowledge I had. The game has a typical classic FPS save system, that is to say you just quicksave constantly. But its even worse here. Since the game is so difficult, and theres barely any ammo, I was quicksaving every 15 seconds. Yeah, its one of THOSE kind of games. With this new knowledge of how to use the janky gun reloads, how the sword is garbage and to use fists, where to bring the escorts to save them, etc, I ran straight to saving the first doctor guy and ran straight back to the safezone and managed to finally make some good progress.

Eventually I experimented with the fists and to my absolute shock they are way superior. The reason is because the fists stunlock enemies. So you walk right up to an enemy, and then do nothing but spam the fist attack and the enemy is guaranteed to get stunlocked and you kill them easily every time. Only when theres multiple enemies does it not become effective.

The greatest thing about the game is by far the presentation, and setting. The general idea of going to the gothic castle, rescuing your relatives, even the fact that the set-pieces are randomly generated could be good. I dig what they're going for, I appreciate its trying to have this unique identity. The graphics are cool, it has a nice use of different colors and glows on these different rooms which make things pop out and look mystical and intriguing. The audio is strange, lots of weird sounds of people yelling and shouting and banging around, the soundtrack is kinda quirky but at the same time a bit annoying at times, but its fine. The weirdest thing is the technical low quality audio. It sounds like 60kbps audio or something, its super low bit rate ugly sounding audio. It sounds like an N64 game or something. This can make the audio a bit grating to listen to after awhile. I don't know why its so low quality, the game isn't THAT old. By 2003 theres no excuse to have such low quality audio.

When you press TAB you get a neat little screen showing you all the people you can save, who you saved and who died. By the end of the game, I naturally somehow managed to save everyone by Melissa. I looked it up afterwards and it turns out thats fairly common. Melissa is programmed to always die after a certain amount of time, and since the game is randomly generated, she can spawn in such a place where its near impossible to get to her by that time. So most people have her die on them. This goes to prove my point even more. The game is fundamentally designed in a way that doesn't really make sense. It wants you to be slow and methodical to save all these relatives, it wants to be randomly generated, but the balance goes out the window with giving you resources, and these escort missions where NPC's can randomly spawn in such a way where it sometimes barely gives you any time doesn't make sense. You might be thinking this is similar to Dead Rising, well I really like Dead Rising, the difference is its just executed good in that game.

Before too long I started getting keys, making my way through the castle. You get a flintlock rifle, which is pretty much the same thing as the pistol, uses the same ammo, but has a stupid looking crosshair. I guess it shoots further? Theres a Crucifix item, but its mostly useless except for shooting a very specific type of ghost enemy. This is another weapon that confused me in the beginning. Then you get a Revolver for saving a certain NPC, but the revolver is borderline useless. Its the weakest gun in the game, it takes like 3 shots to kill the most basic enemy, while the Flintlock takes 1. The starter Priest guy gives you this Chalice where you throw holy water at enemies, and you can refill it from these ponds you can make with your Crucifix on certain basins. A mechanic I also barely understood until the game was almost over. This chalice trivializes the few boss fights in the game, so much so that it makes them feel underwhelming and disappointing, its too good. The other weapons suck. The games combat in general sucks, the weapons all suck. Theres a stake for, I don't even know. I couldn't find any use for it. You stab it into random enemies and it doesn't seem to do shit. I guess it works on the few vampire type enemies? But i'd rather just shoot them than fumble with the controls to switch to to the stake for 2 seconds. At pretty much the end of the game you get a Machine gun that you get to use for like 10 minutes and thats it.

The game has about a dozen NPC's you can rescue. But the AI for escorting them is, as usual, awful. You need to babysit these idiots, keep looking behind you making sure they're coming. They frequently just stop randomly and wont follow you. You have to walk up to them and press E on them, but theres no visual feedback or cue that it worked. Sometimes they will say "Ok i'll follow you" but its inconsistent. The terrible thing is that if you are both near a door, and you press E to open the door, well you can also tell the NPC to stop following you. Which turns into this annoying juggle of trying to get them to follow you again, its a mess. Luckily some of them can fight monsters and fend for themselves, and they're not so weak they die easily, just the general task of getting them to follow you is a pain.

The weirdest thing about saving the NPC's is some of them give you these odd buffs or temporary boosts. They open their "trunks" and you pickup items inside.  Like one of them gives you this seemingly permanent movement speed boost, which makes you zip and zoom around the game like something comical, it just feels out of place and kind of stupid, and makes the game feel even more clunky and odd, but at least it sped up the playthrough. Another one gives you a stamina boost. Another one gives you a temporary Garlic buff which was supposed to keep vampires away? I didn't really notice a difference. Another one gives you regenerating health for 6 minutes. One of them gives you a Protective vest which I suppose makes you take less damage. These NPC's is how you unlock guns, too. This is how you get the Revolver, and Machine gun. So I guess if you do a really bad job saving NPC's you can miss out on all this stuff and make the game even more of a chore. It was kind of exciting to see what new thing I would unlock for bringing them back, so there is that.

The games basic structure is starting off going through the East Wing, you get keys, save NPC's, you go up top and do this boss fight, drop down and stab a Stake into these important vampires in caskets, get keys, get to the West wing, do the same kind of stuff, at one point you drop down into this pit with a giant monster but I just sort of sat in the corner and stabbed him while he couldn't hit me, it visually looked cool but disappointing fight. Make your way through the west wing, saving NPC's, getting more keys, this time it introduces some new enemies like flying bats and more demonic looking creatures, you get a Main Castle key, make your way to the Main Castle which is just a giant labyrinth of almost copy-pasted confusing, tedious rooms, save another few NPC's, run back and forth, back and forth, eventually when you save everyone or theres no one left, you get a message saying "Its morning soon" and then you go to the Main castle. Then go back, find the basement, go through a portal where you fight Nosferatu himself. This fight looks cool, hes the classic looking 1920s Nosferatu. But mechanically, again, its disappointing. He just glides around and smacks at you. And shooting him doesnt do anything. Your sister is here and apparently you can't save her, she always gets killed by Nosferatu. You have to just go around the arena flicking levers on the walls until a sunbeam shows up and you guide him into the sunbeam. The assets are cool, the idea is cool, but again, weak execution. Then you fall into a pit, fight the final boss that just looks like some weird dinosaur monster. But again, I use the Chalice which is too overpowered, I just flicked holy water at it a few times and in 5 seconds I beat the last boss and thats the game. Cutscene where you and your friends leave the castle, end credits.

That's Nosferatu. Thematically its amazing, its almost this kind of Survival horror, randomly generated weird unique game. But almost every facet of the execution is disappointing. Mechanically the gameplay just kind of sucks. The whole concept of the randomly generated castle, plus feeling the need to speedrun to do escort missions just kind of sucks. The balance sucks. The physics and movement sucks. The animations suck. The AI sucks. So disappointing, but I would be lying if I said I didn't at least somewhat enjoy myself, even just for the cool atmosphere and presentation. At first I downright hated this game, but after understanding it a bit more I just kind of tolerated it and saw it through to the end. At least it only took 4.5 hours to finish.

5/10