America, in an alternative 1930s: darker forces than economic depression and organised crime threaten the sanctity of the free world...

Of course, all this combines to prompt the Roosevelt administration to establish a clandestine organisation of monster-hunting paranormal investigators codenamed "Spookhouse". Don't expect any Mulder'n'Scully philosophising here, though. You play "The Stranger", a pin-striped detective with silver bullets in his twin .38s and gravel in his larynx. Faced with such a deadly prospect -- not to mention tax enquiries by the Federal government - Hell would be advised to freeze over for the fiscal year.

Nocturne is the latest take on the suspense-horror game, employing the format of third-person action adventure and claustrophobic camera views used to effect in such worthy predecessors as Alone In The Dark and Resident Evil. And if the setting sounds ludicrous, be assured that it actually works by deliberately adopting the pulp-fictional style of a graphic novel in which gothic meets film noir. It is, in short, rather cool.

Loathsome as it may be to talk about the technology so soon, it's also the emphasis of the game. Nocturne transports you from Bavarian forests to seedy Chicago warehouses, bundles you onto the top of a runaway train and then throws you off in a Texan frontier town without breaking a sweat. Be warned that you will need a PC with the processing power of a minor deity, and the Have-Nots among you shouldn't put too much faith in those minimum specs. Meanwhile, the Have-And-Then-Somes can look forward to super-resolutions of 1280x1024 (that's fine detail, in layman's terms); real-time dynamic lighting (you can do shadow puppets with the light sources); and fabric-flexing routines (er, your trenchcoat flaps attractively in the breeze). Although generated on the fly, the 3D environments look every bit as delicious as a pre-rendered backdrop.

Technically, it's got the lot. So why doesn't it work?