Interface

Where's my third hand?!

Seeing as it is based on the Nocturne engine, Blair Witch 1 shares the same weakness: the interface. While the environments provided by the engine are spectacular and the realism present throughout the game is excellent, you're going to pay for it. Some of the most effective camera angles to give you a particular mood (read: fear) are also the angles that you'll have the absolutely worst time fighting in. There are very many tight, overhead or narrow field views that make combat a horror in more ways than the one intended. Why is this?

Night vision

Dark enough for ya?

Consider the control scheme - it's not unlike any other 3rd person game - you setup controls for forward, back, and strafing motions. You have weapon and item selection as well as optional mouse control for turning and vertical aim. Yet unlike Drakan, Rune or FAKK2, the camera doesn't follow the player around. Forward means forward relative to the way your character is facing --so when she steps from one camera zone to another, she might have been going away and to the right in the previous camera but in this one she's headed straight for you. This you can adjust to fairly easily, but strafing gets more complicated since Doc is constantly facing different directions. Right-strafe might mean you go away, closer or left.

Otherwise, the control setup is very easy. Everything not on Doc herself is done by point and click - face the object/person, click, and it gets used. Items on Doc are best selected with keyboard controls. Two buttons cycle through your inventory while a third uses them. Health packs can be set to auto-use in your options - very useful.

Aww... how cute, a training sequence

Bring it on sparky!

Gettin' around downtown

Interacting with townsfolk and objects in the game is extremely easy. Any object you can "use" is highlighted when you face it. Characters will speak their bits and leave you alone to figure out the next person to approach; unfortunately, you have no dialogue choices yourself. Generally the game tells you (via Doc's own thoughts) who you should talk to or what you should do next. These are short, mini-cutscenes that help advance the plot by explaining the puzzles you just solved.

The control scheme is fully customizable - for FPS players, the standard WASD layout works quite well, and you can bind weapon selections to the keys around WASD as well as the 'draw' key (to draw/holster your gun). The draw key seems to be there more to annoy with pseudo-realism than anything else. After all, if you're going around with a simple pistol in your hand, do you really need to holster it to open a door? I think not.

Zap!	What a big head you have!