Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi

RECOMMENDED. It runs smoothly, the end goal is well established and you are given the guns to deal with the obstacles. You should give the game a chance, it has a lot of cool factor in it because of how well the horror setting is established with situational music and it puts the old and slow Nosferatu films into a real time tempo. It is not too long, you can beat it in a day. Any longer and the game would turn into a repetitive drag. The bad parts: 1) respawning enemies - Every time you leave a room, there is a random chance to spawn an enemy into your current room and its spawn point can be next to you. This is bad because the enemies are fast, hit hard and do mostly melee damage. This is irritating as hell. Once you start getting plenty of firearm ammo, you can delete them fast, even without the broken-tier-effective machine gun. 2) Enemies in general - There is no reward for killing enemies, though you have to do it because they will get you from 100 to 0 fast if you try to ignore them, even the least powerful dogs. The only good thing about them is that they do not attack the escorts that are following you. You cannot hit stun enemies - if they are close enough to hit you, they will eventually start hitting you, even if you seemingly hit-stun them - the damage happens regardless of whether the strike animation plays or not. The jumping ones are worst as the damage always happens before the animation plays. The animation issues make reading the enemies not very fun or useful as it makes little realistic sense. 3) It is a rush game where you have to save your dudes before their elimination times happen. In practice, this means you will have to quickly blow through the enemies and collect stuff to not be late. You cannot have too much fun with this game, it is work. 4) The procedural level generation sucks. It reuses the same room layouts so often you'll be locatinally confused when you arrive into the third identical room. Also, maps tend towards maze-like.

This is a really solid old horror FPS that fully succeeds in what it's going for. A classic gothic vampire story in the style of the actual Nosferatu movie. A lot of the vampires are textured in such a way that they look like they came straight out of the movie, with grim ashen faces dimly lit to express their features. It's not an adaptation or anything, but rather it's inspired by all vampiric horror themes. Giant bats, ghouls, gargoyles, ghosts, there are no weird subversions of the setting here. But that's not to say the game wasn't innovative. It goes for a "constant horror/tension" approach in its pacing and enemy design. Basically, every time you walk through one of the doors in the castle, there is a chance an enemy will spawn somewhere in the room. Where? Behind you, in-front of you, above you? You won't know, but you'll hear it. A growl or screech from somewhere, and an eerie orchestral piece getting louder as the creature gets closer and leaps at you. It's brilliant. It's on the shorter side, being around 5 hours long, but every hour is packed with tension as you're on a time limit to save your kidnapped family members. The time limit is not super unforgiving but you won't be able to ignore it. All 5 hours are great gameplay though. Its well worth playing today.

Great sound and music! As well as nice graphics for the time that really fit the mood. The great music and sound really add to the overall atmosphere of this game. It's a really creepy game with plenty of scares. And I don't scare easy. I can't even remember the last time a game scared me! I consider this game a must buy for whoever likes horror games, fps games and games with great atmosphere. I can't praise it enough! Perfect for Halloween and October in general!

The game is an excellent example that can ruin a great atmosphere by poor gameplay and crippling defects. Indeed, the start of the game is superb and the music very good. You are immediately immersed in an atmosphere worthy of the best classic horror films. Unfortunately it degrades after a few minutes. The controls do not always respond optimally. The character animations as enemies are frankly limited. But the worst thing for me is the terrible difficulty comes from the fact that the enemies fall on you without knowing exactly from where! This is what makes the game frustrating. Moreover, we do not know exactly what to do and with whom. It's a mess because the potential was really huge.

Absolutely one of the scariest games I've ever played. It's a survival horror and NOT an FPS shooter. You don't have that much of ammunition and the weapons can be loaded only with very few rounds with each reload. Also, the random architecture generator makes the game to have a pretty decent replayability.