Not horrible, and the concept is nice. But the extremely outdated gameplay and repetitiveness is boring / sleep inducing
- Nice concept, going into people's nightmare to cure them of their phobias would have been interesting if done well.
- Could be enjoyed in very very small dozes over a long time. Say play a couple of levels every few days.
- The main character was enjoyable, especially the voice acting and comments.
CONS
- Too repetitive... move, shoot, next room, move, shoot, repeat. Might have been a fine game in the 90s but we are a long way from that.
- No real exploitation of the concept of nightmare... it is just a pretext to shoot monsters.
REVIEW
I would never have tried this game as the horrible reviews clearly marked this as a bad investment. However Steam had a special offer that let us play it totally free for a weekend so I gave it a shot.
First I must admit that the game was a little better than I had expected, it is not totally unplayable.
The gameplay is similar to serious sam in that you have to clear many waves of enemies. However combine the swarm of enemies with the sometimes extremely small space (and doors closing behind you) and things can become frustrating. Tip : don't play on the hardest difficulty.
I could only stomach the two first levels. I enjoyed the first thinking "hey, that's not so bad", but in the middle of the second level (at the door guardian mini boss) I got tired of the repetitiveness and was begging for any chance to save and leave without losing progress, but no luck with that so I kept playing. By the time I hit the boss, I was fed up with it and did not even bother beating it after dying a few times.
After a good night sleep, I was able to play some more and complete the game at around 30% then had to stop again. As I said earlier, the game is repetitive so it is best played in short sessions at a time.
I think this game could work if it was a lot less expensive (it is very simplistic and outdated after all), or if the levels were less long and straining (or less repetitive). I could be playing this every once in a while when I just need a stupid shooter for a change.
BOTTOM LINE
I might grab this if I find it at 5-10$, because it is not a totally horrible game to be honest. But at 30$? even 20$ on sale? Do they really think that it gives half the value of a Fallout3 or a Borderlands or even a COD2? No... DreamKiller simply provides poor value for its price, so check the bargain bin or skip entirely.