8 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 6.8 hrs on record (3.1 hrs at review time)
Posted: 23 Dec, 2014 @ 9:31am

I loved this game back in the day and I still love it now. Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi is a very interesting little horror FPS. It takes heavy influence from the classic horror films backing in the early 1900s (Nosferatu, Dracula, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Frankenstein and so much more) and brings it all together into an old school first person shooter much more akin to Wolfenstein 3D. The story is, your sister is getting married to the son of a wealthy count in Transylvania where you and your family have gone to visit to take part in the wedding ceremony but you arrive late to the party and it soon dawns upon you that things have gone horribly wrong, only to find out that the castle is haunted by vampires, wraiths, zombies, ghouls, demons and what other kind of classic monster you can throw in there. The count aims to resurrect the almighty Malachi and to bring the world to an end and it's your job is to save your family and to put a stop to the count from resurrecting Malachi.

Since this is a Steam review, I want to break it down into simpler, more straight forward lists of pros and cons:

Pros:
- Open, explorative level design
- Interesting weaponry
- Fun gunplay
- Great aesthetic, has that German Expressionism vibe to it
- Really creepy and atmospheric
- Old school, using medikits to heal as well as allowing you to carry all weapons and as well as powerups throughout
- Very challenging even on easy for your first run
- Randomly generated castle with each new playthrough (Some landmarks will stay the same but it's so you're not lost)
- A wide variety of nasties of the night to fight
- Enemy and item placement is randomized, leaving you wondering what's around the next corner
- Fantastic amounts of replayability
- Captures the feel of the classic horror films pretty much perfectly with it's soundtrack, story, theme, melodramatic voice acting, etc

Cons:
- Some of the geometry can be very dodgy, making you get stuck or fall through places
- The geometry can glitch out really badly sometimes, leaving holes to the neverending void of nothingness
- The graphics look a lot like Quake 1 despite being released in 2003
- Animation quality is quite laughable
- The Wolf 3D maze-like levels will confuse a lot of people, just make sure you remember the layout when exploring
- You are timed against a pretty strict clock, while times moves realistically you will often find yourself too late and some of the people you're meant to save will die off (The level design makes that even more of an annoyance)
- Hit detection can be a pain sometimes
- Not enough powerups in my honest opinion
- Health and ammo is a little too plentiful, it can kill the survival horror element of it sometimes
- The last boss is far too easy and underwhelming despite his cool design
- The game runs for roughly 2-3 hours, that's too short for most

I think Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi is a really great game with awesome ideas, good level design, solid gunplay and great survival horror experience. Taking ques from Wolfenstin 3D and being inspired by the films in the early 1900s makes it a pretty fantastic game for horror fans or old school FPS fans to pick and play for a little while. The level of replayability comes in by obviously completing the game in several difficulties but also saving your family members and completing the game as fast as possible, that leaves plenty of room to replay the game if you're really into it.

Overall I would recommend this with all my heart and soul, it's so much fun to play and with it's short length, it's great to kick back and relax and watch the afternoon or evening go by playing this, by then you might have beaten the game already. But it's always fun to come back to every now and then. Your first playthrough will take you a lot longer, respectively, and you will lose some of the people you're meant to save and by the end of the game you will just want to hop back on the horse and do it all again, this time doing it faster so you can save everyone and that makes it a very fun and addictive game to play.
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