Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Masterpiece"

The setting is the early 1920's and you control the hero Patrick Galloway, a WWI veteran and occult investigator. Armed with a revolver, scrye powers and the Gel'zibar stone, you visit an old friend who believes that his two brothers and two sisters who had died dabbling in dark magic have gained powers to return as the undead and have introduced demonic horrors from other dimensions to this world.

From then on, prepare for the fight of your life as you witness the macabre and supernatural. Your search begins in a gigantic manor and estate where you find a dimension of Oneiros (a floating maze-like world where the denizens attack by altering your mind), then you search a cemetery and a mausoleum, then onto an abandoned monastery and its underground catacombs and travel to a dimension of the past to regain an ancient and powerful weapon that will serve as your best chance in beheading the four siblings for good. During all of this you battle Howlers (resemble werewolves that sprint and jump with claws that quickly rend at you), Skeletons (that keep rising from the dead), undead monks and other supernatural creatures that sometimes appear before you from thin air. If you can defeat the first sibling (she is kind of a sexy vampiress that throws flaming skulls at you), you continue to a lighthouse and search the coast to find a cove where you eliminate a fanatical group of pirates where evidence points back to the mansion where you face the second sibling (a nearly invincible man who wields an axe). You will learn of a tower that leads back to Oneiros where you battle an arch-enemy from your past who has enslaved its residents. Then you return to the mansion to eliminate the third sibling (a sickly man with hooked chains coming out of his body and twirls to snag and slice you into pieces). Then you find the entrance to Eternal Autumn, a tropical, prehistoric-like world of the fourth sibling's creation. Once defeating its apish creatures, you take on the elder sister who floats over you with blimp-like appendages and summons demon after demon to destroy you.

Once the last sibling is dead, you return to the island of Standing Stones to summon the Undying King where you must somehow destroy it to seal the dimensional doors forever.

Throughout the game, you will gain powerful weapons and will increase your knowledge of occult-type spells. In addition to the revolver (which can be quite challenging to use against the Howlers, makes the game somewhat difficult when it is your only weapon at first), you will gain a shotgun, Molotov cocktails, a supernatural war cannon, an enchanted scythe, a spear-gun (has a sniper mode) and phoenix eggs (somewhat hard to use effectively). You also wield the Gel'zibar stone, which is not a weapon as much as it can be used as a force field to throw an enemy backwards or over a cliff. Spells include attacks like ectoplasm, lightning and skull storm as well as defensive spells like dispel magic, invoke, haste and shield. You can also cast a scrye spell that gives you detective abilities, showing the truth behind paintings and blood patterns in certain rooms as well as revealing ghosts from the past who will tell you their secrets.

Overall, this is a great FPS with heavy horror themes. The fighting aspect is done very well, is fast-paced and never gets bogged down when combining attacks with weapons and spells. The mood is perfect; such as when in the mausoleum, certain large areas are barely discernible and a fog creeps along the ground giving you that chill factor. When attacked in the darkness, you will make out images of the monsters from the brief flashes when firing guns. A memorable scene when travelling along the coast towards inland, you can just make out a galloping creature heading towards you, then another and another appears, streaming down a long, sloping hill. And all you can do is wait and prepare yourself for the onslaught. Another scene has you scaling along the walls and rooftops of the mansion where your vision is distorted from a hard rain, and is slightly deafening with the occasional crackling of thunder.

The background scenery is pretty good but the sky, sun and ocean sometimes looks flat, being that the game was released in 2001. This is not necessarily a bad thing since this brings a tone of being trapped in a landscape and that you are truly isolated from receiving help from the outside world. With the addition of the bizarre landscapes of other dimensions, with its invading creatures that bring interesting ways to kill your character, and being able to kill the creatures in very violent ways, everything seems to come together to make a great horror game from beginning to bloody end.