Year: 2003
Developer: Idol FX
Publisher: iGames Publishing
Game Genre: FPS / Survival Horror
Narrative Genre: Horror
Every real horror fan should play to Nosfertu: The Wrath of Malachi for the sake of putting himself in the skin of a person who must deal with Count Malachi (Orlok?) a Transylvanian vampire notable for his disregard for social conventions and for his despicable perfidiousness in luring a complete family to his castle to feast on them.
This game implements a very innovative map generation system that makes each new game started a new experience since interiors are generated randomly.
Playing as James, the player is visiting Malachi’s castle in Transylvania to attend his sister’s wedding to the count. When the game begins fifteen relatives of the player are absent and James must rescue them. They are being held captive in different parts of Malachi’s castle and each of them is scheduled for execution at a predetermined time of the night.
James has a stamina meter that decreases when he runs and fights. The accuracy when using weapons with low stamina (high fatigue) is somewhat affected and this forces the player to rest often.
Before the final showdown against Malachi the player will have to fight his way through the labyrinthine corridors and rooms of the castle for finding and killing six different vampire/demonic bosses and their minions like the un-dead, devil dogs, taunting gypsies, ghouls, desmodiij (humanoids), vampire shadows (floating dark shapes), lesser vampires, demons, demodus (mothman-like demons) and a few more enemies.
Given the several mobs of vampiric origin around the castle, it wouldn’t be right if it wouldn’t feature classical vampire-hunting weapons and goodies like consecrated water, garlic and crucifixes among other slashing and fire weapons. But it does, and with some cool twists like, for instance, the capability of allowing the player to bless reservoirs of water with the crucifix to replenish the chalice of holy water.
The standard mobs’ behavior is very unpredictable and surprising. They will chase the player through different rooms, even from the top to the bottom of the castle’s towers. They will appear out of nothing and mince the player to shreds in the twinkling of an eye.
The bosses are notable for their viciousness and that is why it’s advisable to carry a few wooden stacks while venturing into the hot areas of this game because, of finding these bosses sleeping in their coffins, it will take a single stack on their hearts to finish them, thus sparing the player of a confrontation where a lot of ammo (and energy) would be spent.
Taking the rescue of each relative as a single mission, when the player finds any given relative, and frees him/her, the mission is far from over. To finish it, the player must undo his steps and take the NPC to the sanctuary at the entrance of the castle. This may turn out being quite a feat to accomplish. These friendly NPCs sport some level of AI for following James, but most of the time they are going to need several attempts from the player showing them the way to follow him. Their AI could be improved for allowing them to act more real and following always the player and running away or dodging the enemies’ blows in the case of finding some of them in the way back to the sanctuary.
Like I said at the beginning, The Wrath of Malachi is a must for any serious horror video-game fan. The times a video-game scared me are just a few, but I must admit that Nosferatu was one of those games. Specially when I started to play to it, I was somewhat freaked out by the shadow vampires in particular and by the way how, in the most unexpected moment, some foes will just burst from the floor and attack me.
When for some reason the player can’t rescue one or another of the relatives and he/she dies the vibes evoked by the FMV cutscenes are also very lugubrious.
If you liked (as I do from my childhood) the Nosferatu version of Dracula, you should play to The Wrath of Malachi. You won’t be disappointed
