Graphics and Sound

Based on an uber-tweaked version of the Half-Life engine (hard to believe that old horse is still being ridden in this day and age), Nightfire delivers crisp, but blocky visuals. Character models appear overly burly and chunky for the most part, reminiscent of what we’ve seen with Quake 2 and games based on that engine. Animation is passable with enemies moving about smoothly, when the AI isn’t making them run headlong into walls. Thanks to above average texturing, the overall visual effect is acceptable; the graphics are nothing to write home about, but they’re not so horrible that it’s distracting. That said, I am disappointed that the game ran like such a pig on my machine. A game based on the Half-Life engine should be perfectly happy at 1024x768 with everything turned on, along with some Quincunx antialiasing. Unfortunately I had to do away with the antialiasing to avoid consistent slowdowns, and even then, the gameplay would stutter here and there, particularly on levels with an outdoor component.

Skeleton man

Girl

That's NOT her skeleton

Nightfire comes with plenty of cutscenes to spice up the intermissions between levels and sometimes within a level. Unfortunately, these scenes, despite using the in-game engine, are based on AVIs set at 512x384. That means they come out grotesquely blocky and pixellated when you’re playing at any decent resolution. Saying they don’t even come close to a Square or Blizzard-produced sequence is more than an understatement. They’re actually a step or two backward when compared to other modern shooters.

Too bad I have no crosshair

Oh it's back!

I think it's the service elevator

Nightfire’s sound is atrocious. Weapon sound effects are tinny and cheap sounding for a game that should have much higher production values. Adding a silencer to the standard pistol reminds me of elementary school and shooting spitballs through a drinking straw. The spin-up for the minigun in the game sounds more like a cheap blender than the kind of weapon Jesse Ventura carried in Predator. It doesn’t end there though – the sound in the game, particularly in multiplayer, had a nasty habit of cutting out for brief periods of time. The game’s music was utterly forgettable as well. About the only good thing we can say is that it’s dynamic within the game, meaning that the pacing would change and fade in or out depending on how much danger you were getting into (or out of).