I loved the Nightmare On Elm Street movies. The first one was scary as hell, the others were entertaining, funny, and even scary in places. As far as horror franchises go, A Nightmare on Elm is probably the best. So, it was only natural for me to get the game. Whoops...
Picture the scene... 4 foot high snakes wander around Elm Street. Swarms of killer bats own the skies. Frankenstien's Monster like creatures slump around on the sidewalk. In one place, a spontaneous and constant meteor shower strikes down. All of the buildings contain man-sized rats, giant spiders and a few stray bats. A typical Nightmare on Elm Street scene, right?
Well, not really. All of the above is what you have to contend with when you are AWAKE! Yep. Damn skippy. Maybe because when I downloa... umm... legally purchased the cartridge last wee.... many years ago, it didn't come with a manual, so this makes no sence. But I doubt it. No amount of lies can explain what is going on here:
HE'S GETTING SPEARED BY THE WORLD'S CRAPPIEST BAT
INTO THE PATH OF A METORITE AND A SNAKE, WHY?
When the hero of this game is dreaming, all of the buildings go blue. The snakes are replaced with grey tigers. The bats now have freddy heads, as do the man sized spiders. The rats on the other hand have turned into Human Skeletons. In this dream state, sometimes Freddy attacks you. He attacks you when you're awake sometimes, too. But all is not lost... all you have to do is press "Select" when you are dreaming or in Freddy's grasp. Then the guy takes his clothes off an turns into "Gay Robin Hood".
THIS IS A DREAM WARRIOR, BEFORE AND AFTER
WATCH YOUR BACK, FREDDY...
That's not all, either. He turns into a lizard ninja and floating Elvis. This game is truely awful. It features typical, repetitive "this is actually a heroic game, really" music (Like the midi file playing... yeah, midis suck, but I want you to get the proper feel), but what the game makers fail to see is that you can't polish crap. When you go inside and take the mission to the proper battleground of one of the buildings, which are practically impossible to get into, until you realise only a random one of the first three houses can be entered (Even though some of the doors are wide open?!), where you must kill a claw on a rope to get a key to one of the other houses(?!), you'll soon realise that the missions are poorly concieved. You have to collect all of Freddy's bones in your area, otherwise your character will refuse to go to the next section of the house, even if the door is wide open, and you do this until you are all the way through the house, and then you must battle a Freddy boss, such as a huge claw on a rope. I doubt that Mr. Kruger has 100 leg bones. All of the bones are the same. OK, they could pass off the same bone 8 times tops. But that's not a Freddy skeleton.
If you plan on playing this game yourself, don't read on. You can read on if you get stuck on the last level, because it's got a terrible trick to it.
Now, when you have made your way through all of the buildings (which look strangely... exactly the same) that are all full of large mutant creatures that hate you, and have collected all of Freddy's bones, you must make your way to the boiler room of the school. Now, maybe the houses I have been to were exceptions, but I never ran the risk of falling to my death through thousands of random bottomless pits filled with jumping giant spiders. To get to a basement, I never had to fall down a large hole. And there was never a Frankenstien's Monster portal there, either. But when you finally figure out how to get to the boiler room (By falling down an un-marked pit that looks exactly the same as all the others, which took me ages to figure out) I was forced to battle the SAME bosses all over again, in a row, and then finally Freddy himself - who has got to be the easiest boss of the lot. Then I threw his 154 leg bones into the furnace, only to be given the generic ending. Something along the lines of - Freddy has been defeated. Now he is gone forever and the nightmare is over...
OR IS IT???
Let's hope so.
IRRITATION LEVELS:
MUSIC: 5
GAMEPLAY: 6
PLOT: 9
HERO(INE): 5
ENEMIES: 10
FAITHFULNESS: 8
BOSSES: 5
CONFUSION: 9
DIFFICULTY: 7
GRAPHICS: 7
TOTAL: 71%