Nightfall Review

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Nightfall

Review by Orb

Well, I seem to be in a “trapped in a pyramid” scheme.  First Secrets of the Luxor and now Nightfall. Both games, however, are wildly different.

The closest thing I can liken Nightfall to would be the wonderful and popular Mac shareware game Giza, which I admit to putting in more than a few hours on. The graphics of Nightfall, however, are much more highly advanced than Giza’s (of course—this isn’t shareware, it’s a full-course meal).

Nightfall begins in a Egyptian tomb and plays in Realtime 3D. You are an Egyptologist who has sneaked into the tomb only to be trapped by loose rocks; now you must explore deeper and deeper into the pyramid to find your way out. You are pulled forward and given clues through scraps of messages left by a previous archeologist. The story is pleasant but minimal, always a favorite with me—I puff up and explode if confronted with too many details to track. It’s based on a legitimate Egyptian legend, which offers an air of authenticity to the story.

One of the most interesting things about Nightfall is the gameplay itself. This has to be one of the most highly original adventure games to make it out of the “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to …” stage in a long time.

Let me try to explain this without giving away any of the puzzles.  You must do certain specific activities in a sequence in order to complete the game and get through all the levels, but this is done in a very subtle and original manner. In other words, you must use your head and pay attention to your environment to spot what the puzzles are and where the puzzles are located. Still with me?

Gameplay also uses an unusual and highly innovative (for an adventure game) mapping system of which I’ve only seen the likes in such action/shooter games as Pathways into Darkness. The maps only show as far as you’ve traveled and are extremely necessary to get through the game (in my personal experience). Also, the game is written in a series of levels, something unheard of in adventure gaming, and gameplay from the combo of mouse and keyboard to the levels and degree of exploration needed and mapping system is built like one of the myriad levels-based shooters out on the market now.

I don’t know about you, but shooters have always been very disconcerting to me. I always want to walk around and explore and look at all the rooms and the stuff, and I am always taken aback to be accosted by a warrior/mutant/soldier/giant bug with a big fat gun, and I invariably pause too long and get shot and killed. Then, of course, I have to go back and do everything I’ve just done and remember to shoot him first, etc., ad nauseam. (Of course I was the kid that was always chosen last in gym class because I would invariably duck when the ball came at me.)

For this reason and no other you should go out and try Nightfall.  You get all the best elements of the shooters you’ve seen great screenshots of but couldn’t stand playing, rolled into an adventure sandwich. The incomparable freedom of movement makes Nightfall the most innovative adventure game to hit the Mac in a good long time.

Now, in the interest of fairness, what I didn’t care for: there are 14 levels. I felt that after about the fourth or fifth level, these became a bit redundant as all were very similar, at least until the last few, where they did begin to change in their style.  The look is of a very realistic tomb. There are no flashy colors here; the game is designed to be a very accurate depiction of the inside of a pyramid, and it does pull this off. But I am a lover of the flashy in-your-face neon surrealism of Shivers 1 and 2 and their ilk. The graphics were flawless in execution but not my cup of tea.

Ambient and well-designed music is prevalent at each level and thoroughly enjoyable. The sound effects are great, but they could be louder and in greater quantity.

Puzzles are clever, some easy, some more difficult, running the gamut, but I found they began to get old in some instances as, after a while, there were the same or similar puzzles on different levels. Puzzles requiring inventory became tedious, as the inventory only stores one item at a time, causing long trips back and forth to get items moved around. The puzzles were designed specially for 3D, a pretty whiz-bang feat.

Nightfall was designed using a first-person engine, and it was designed from scratch, involving writing two million lines of code, which should get a gold star even though we don’t give scores for programming!

Altor, the publisher, has accommodatingly packaged Nightfall with saves for levels 2 through 13, which makes it possible to play levels in any order (pretty unheard of for adventure gaming), as well as editing tools and some source code, including code for AI, 2D, and a bit of 3D for the public to use at their will. 

Overall, Nightfall only misses the gold star for what I felt was a redundancy on the design of the levels and some puzzles. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Altor Systems Publisher: Altor Systems Release Date: February 1999

Available for: Macintosh

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Screenshots

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System Requirements

100 MHz or faster power Mac (150 MHz and up recommended) 640×480 screen in thousands of colors System 7.5.3 or better (8.1 recommended) 9 MB or more free RAM 3 MB of free hard disk space 4x CD-ROM drive

Where to Find It

Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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