Graphics

WARNING: Tape jaw shut before playing

Following Nocturne's footsteps, Rustin Parr is one hell of a good looking game. We can see some pretty amazing backgrounds in the screenshots. Kudos to the artist for producing such lifelike, almost 3-dimensional settings, right? Wrong. That is a 3D background that Doc strolls across. It's not your typical pre-rendered 3D then squished to 2D trick either. How can we tell? Shoot something - the bullet mark will sit on a proper angle. Go behind an object - it feels "real". Watch as a Daemite jumps from a window - the background is much more than a 2D wallpaper.

Pure Carnage

Ahhh! Get AWAY from me

Again, as with Nocturne, what really impressed the heck out of us was the lighting scheme (which is another giveaway that this is a 3D world). Light plays naturally off of buildings, people, monsters, and fences. If it were not for the sheer terror this game induces, you'd be playing around with the flashlight through most of the game. Who needs monsters, NPCs and a plot when you've got one of the best technology demos on the market?

Speaking of technology, Terminal Reality updated the engine to give you an optional first person view. It's a set of black and white night vision goggles - they have a lot of static but sometimes you can't help but use them. The effect is spectacular, raising the hairs on the back of your neck to new heights - since suddenly you're a lot more vulnerable because you can't see the area around you.

Head shot!

Struttin' like nobody's business

Is that you Bubba?

Now what about character modeling? OK, OK, so Terminal Reality is suffering from a case of the "Croft cups" (check out the babe in the diner), but the only issue about this that really struck us is not that the breasts are so big, but that so many women in the game look so good.

The characters look particularly stunning with FSAA turned on - since they are generally the biggest moving things on the screen, they benefit the most from the elimination of jaggies and pixel-crawling. In fact, the effect was so dramatic that in scarier parts of the game I turned off FSAA to remind myself that it's just a game!

Oh baby, it's the Stranger

Hmm...

The models of course also have all the neat effects that they had in Nocturne - a wide variety of very smooth and natural animations, flapping clothes, lip-synched talking and so on.

Scenarios

The settings are just... creepy. Even in daylight, Burkittsville seems like the kind of town you'd live in only if you were a tree planted in the ground with no way to move. Not only are the people strange, but the place is a mess. And when night comes around - forget about it! Storms, thunder, rain, snow and flashes of lightning make a creepy if quaint town seem like a modern-day Tristram. That's the *nice* part of the game too - it gets worse the further away from town you go - much worse.

I seem to remember her. She needs a tan.

Not to mention clothing