Night Creatures

~ NIGHT CREATURES ~

Manley & Associates / NEC

HuCard

1991

Hm, where to start with this one...

Well, I love NC, and I've played through it many, many times, but make no mistake: it is a kitsch classic through and through and NOT a quality product. Having fun with it necessitates that you be willing to laugh at it and forgive the MANY technical and mechanical problems that plague it. There's so much outlandishness that you'll have to tolerate...

The controls are "floaty," to be kind, and the collision detection is out-of-this-world awful. Blows that appear straight and true go right through your adversaries, allowing them to knock you around the screen, rendering you helpless as you're endlessly bobbled about. You must take ridiculously unfair deaths in stride if you're going to make it to the end of the adventure. You have to be the sort who'll find humor in a poor ungainly fellow being gang beaten by bats and rats until he meets his doom. If you're not that sort, then don't bother with this game.

The characters are quite the goofy bunch. The main guy looks like a stooge, with his awkward gait and crimson trousers. At the bottom of the screen is a portrait of his countenance, which gets even sillier looking as he undergoes his gradual transformation into a night creature. And then there's the "wise woman," who looks like a portly Aunt Jemima (as once acutely noted by VG&CE) and gives advice in the form of laughably stilted and inarticulate blurbs.

The enemies are also ridiculous. Many of the bosses can be taken out with just one use of an item or weapon. Cerberus here is one of the silliest bosses in history. He charges at you only to turn tail and flee when you swing your sword. Once you've completed your futile swipe, he comes at you again, only to run away again when you take another hack. So proceeds the inane affair that was supposed to be the dramatic commencement of the final stage's boss gauntlet.

The animal forms are nearly worthless. Yeah, you can change into four different beasts (bear, wolf, badger, and owl), which seems cool, but you won't need to make much use of them. Take the badger form: there's one part in the catacombs level where you'll have to make use of it to get through a narrow opening.

That... is the only time I use the badger in the whole game.

And let's not forget about the "eerie" three-song soundtrack. Yep, a quest game with only three tunes. The "instrumentation" is hilariously poor.

Should you be able to endure all that stuff, you'll discover that the ending is very brief. If you don't find the "joke" funny, you might just find yourself pissed that you wasted twenty minutes on the journey.

Basically, if you're thinking about buying NC or giving it an honest go, you've got to decide if the above-listed items will amuse you or simply mark an effort of poor quality and irritate you. If you're up for some lowbrow hijinks, try it!