I absoutletly think it should be on GOG. But no signs of that happening.
I think the diffcultires people had with the camera and controls are a major reason the game more or less flopped when it came out.. Just read the reviews. Everybody loved the atmosphere and basic ideas of the game, but thought the controls and the camera were a real handicap.
(Another reason for the game's failure to sell was it was so demanding in terms of computer resources that few could run it without major slowdowns. Even people with the recommended requirements had running slow issues.
I almost never use cheat codes, but Nocturne is a game where they might help quite a bit..in the early stages of Chicago for instance.. It gets very frustrated getting killed by Gangsters you often cannot even see..and that you do not have a Doctor's Bag (health) makes matters worse. Once you reach the Nightclub and get a Doctors bag things become a lot easier.
I used the skelton key cheat in the graveyard of EP 4 because I had spent half an hour killing imps and still could not find the imp carrying the last key. And I stlll maintain the puzzles in that section were tiresome and illogical .

Correct! on so many levels :)

Honestly getting this game back has a little harder in many ways because the company is defunct...(trust me I learned the hard way on it).

Come on, it's 2020!

And not even the Blair Witch Games are here!

What the heck!

2018 - Diablo and Warcraft
2019 - Blade Runner
2020 - Nocturne + Blair Witch Project Trilogy

Yup....and it's a crying shame as both are good(despite their quirks)....I finished Nocturne and most of the first BW game and would love both to come here some day. :)

You have no idea how much i'd love for that to come true. :D

The main reason the game flopped is because both PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World magazines gave it extremely incompetent reviews which were ludicrously unreasonable & unfair. PC Gamer's review even published within it a screenshot of a female character's lower half and then the caption said that the reviewer's view was blocked by "his" butt, which is a prime example of how incompetent & grossly misrepresentative of the game that their review was.

And this was at a time before the internet was super popular, so at that time, most people got their gaming information from magazines like those two. If they said a game was bad, then that was a kiss of death for the game, because most consumers simply took their word for it and assumed that what they said was accurate, without ever realizing that they were lying, as the consumers never played the game and thus had no frame of reference to realize that they were lying.

Even now in 2020, the metacritic site does not even link to most of the great professional reviews that were published for Nocturne...many/most of which are not even available on the internet any more.

And not "everyone" had a problem with the controls and camera. Many of the best reviewers of the time give it 90%+ review scores, including Gamespy which gave it 94%.

The controls & camera are not nearly so bad as most of the highly critical reviewers make them out to be; their complaints mostly stem from their lack of skill at the game and lack of understanding of its mechanics, rather than problems with the game itself.

I'm not saying the camera and controls are absolutely perfect, but the reviewers who act like they are a total trainwreck are blowing the minor imperfections with them way out of proportion.

The controls and camera were bad, but so were they in basically every game with tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds, it was the usual flaw for horror games of that time.

The biggest problem were the streets in Chicago. You had that car driving around and shooting at you and camera angle changes every few steps and it was extremely disorienting and frustrating.

Shame they used pre-rendered backgrounds, because the maps are completely 3D, and they were very detailed for a 1999 game.

https://media.moddb.com/images/members/2/1010/1009749/profile/nocedit_2018-01-31_12-02-19-12.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/members/2/1010/1009749/profile/nocedit_2018-01-31_11-58-53-67.png

If this released in 2003/2004 with 3D rendering and free camera it would be a better experience.

The point about the Chicago streets, in particular, being messed up is accurate, but that's a relatively small part of the game. In total, it's what, 30 minutes worth of gameplay time, at most? The Chicago streets are only one section within a game that has 4 large acts in it, and each with multiple stages to them.

So it's not like that one section can be said to be representative of the entire whole game; it isn't.

As for free camera resulting a better experience: I'm not sure about that. I tend to think it would not have been. A lot of the great atmosphere comes from how the devs hand-crafted every part of each screen. With "free camera" that probably would result in a lot less of such hand-crafting and a lot more copying & pasting of the same assets over and over again ad infinitum (like most games do), and a therefore a very diminished atmosphere compared to the super strong atmosphere which is in the game in the way how it was already made.

They likely weren't incompetent, but rather more likely they weren't paid to give it a fair review(if the whole "bought reviews" thing went that far back, as I suspect it might have).

(Either that or they just didn't like it personally due to their tastes, which is an unfair metric but one some reviewers sadly use)

They weren't bad, but they weren't optimal either.....if that one thing(and a few other minor things) had been different it's likely the game would've gotten more positive praise and people playing it back then.


That along can turn someone off a game....especially one who wants to play from beginning to end and not skip anything(like you could in this game).

No one said it was, though.

I disagree.....i've seen similar games get the free look treatment and become much better(imo) for it, and I think that had they had the time/money they could've done it justice(free look I mean.)

Also as for copy pasting....the game had some copy pasting in it(or what seemed like it) to begin with....the forest sections/etc.

(That is to say the game had such in it already to a small degree and looked and played very well)
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I disliked that area immensely due to that part.

The levels/plot of that bit was good, don't get me wrong...but the camera/etc combined with those bits almost made me quit it for a bit(that and falling off areas due to camera changes while leaping from platform to platform).

Agreed...too bad it never got the "myst treatment"(i.e. a bunch of new versions).

Even if metacritic doesn't link to the reviews anymore...mobygames gives a fair overview :)

https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/blair-witch-volume-i-rustin-parr/mobyrank
GCW 2/10
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/blair-witch-volume-ii-the-legend-of-coffin-rock/mobyrank
GCW 3/10
https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/blair-witch-volume-iii-the-elly-kedward-tale/mobyrank
GCW 3/10

And when i look at the snippet from GCW yeah thats not a review more of a "i hate these games so they are bad" rant.

I assume you mean to have put fair in quotes? ;)

Dunno about the other two games, but the first game has some negative that might knock a few points(at most) off of the score....i.e. the one bit with a time limit(run to x spot in y seconds), and the confusing forest sections.

Otherwise the game did look good and was very good, imo.

Err no moby list quite a few reviews from good to bad thats a fair amount for me.

I never judged them they seem like the normal movie-licenced-games :)

My mistake, I thought you meant whether the overall SCORES for each game were fair or not. :)

I know I was just musing on that bit/the games. :)

Blair Witch Volume 1 was the best designed overall IMO, because it had interesting story, setting and characters, real puzzles and Doc was very charismatic. It really felt like a Nocturne game with all its charms. I agree forest was a mess, a lazy way to make the game feel bigger.

Blair Witch Volume 2 should have been a movie, it is very atmospheric and tells a story in an interesting way, but there is almost no gameplay. You move through linear maps, shoot few enemies and collect some items on the way, it is extremely simple designed game and shortest of the three. It is understandable considering it was the first game that developer ever made.

Blair Witch Volume 3 has the best action in all of the games including Nocturne. It had quick turn button, which helped a lot in fights. The developer took more freedom in their design and added many unusual, mostly magic weapons and there are several boss fights. They released Heavy Metal FAKK 2 the same year and you can see the influence of that game. Confusing forest maze returns here too. What game lacks is that Nocturne charm and occasional humor. Like Volume 2 it takes itself very seriously. The game felt more like playing a prequel to Clive Barker's Undying.

There was a time when I run a Nocturne game on my PC every time I get back home. I'm not sure how many times I completed the game, there was nothing like it and never will, BloodRayne is just a mere shadow. Blair Witch Volume 1 was a good game as well, but too short (if we exclude the forest section). My favorite were Episode 1 and Episode 4 with Epilogue. And the Stranger is the best dark character ever created imo.

I would buy Nocturne this instant if given the chance.

Agreed...it felt almost like a Nocturne game, and in a way it was(with the characters/etc).

BTW do you know of any ways to beat that timed bit(Stop the kid before he reaches the sheriff/etc)? If so feel free to PM me the answer, as I could never run fast enough and rage quit on it because of that.

Sounds like what happened to many Game#2s like: Devil May Cry 2, Dino Crisis 2....in how the first was better....I will still play it some day, though.

I will also play this one....also I didn't know they made FAKK 2(I played a bit of that years ago, but lost saves/etc for it and other games due to PC failures sadly).

And I loved Undying, so i'll likely like this as well when I do get it/get to it. :)


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Eh, I loved the first mission(swamp bayou) of Bloodrayne 1.....it captured all the feel of Nocturne, imo.

I loved episode 2 of Nocturne(swamp area) the best....but all were good to varying degrees. :)

Luckily I have both original(legally ought of course) disks AND a "borrowed installer" from the net to install it and run it in a VM on my new PC, but I would lso buy it here to support GOG and perhaps maybe some day get a sequel/prequel/etc. :)