Well, there are certain elements that need to be in place if a game is to transcend a simple shoot-'em-up and begin testing nerve as well as reflex. And as much as you want Nocturne to scare the be-jasus out of you, some unfortunate scripting and primitive game design prevents it ever threatening the integrity of your underwear.

Puzzles, then. We're talking mainstays such as delivering an item from A to B, or shooting monsters until one turns up a key. Too often, the greatest challenge rests in navigating from one location to the next after the switching camera angles have thrown your sense of direction. Corpses stay put and rot in most instances, so at least the emphasis on combat can provide a rather morbid trail of breadcrumbs.

Rewarding as it is to watch zombies picking up their own dismembered limbs to hit you with, combat gameplay is also a messy affair. Nocturne attempts to provide the full 3D freedom of contemporary first-person shooters when aiming your John Roscoes. But in a third-person view, the result is a fiddle fest of turning fast enough to keep up with the demons flapping above your fedora or gnawing at your spats.

But it's the craftsmanship of storytelling through narrative and cinematic technique that's painfully absent. In spite of chipboard acting and colander plot, Capcom's excellent Resident Evil built a sense of getting closer and closer to a malevolent entity in your bid to escape. Nocturne - which shares both aspects - doesn't give enough hints of the bigger picture, and the subsequent feeling of, "Why am I doing this?" as you go through the motions, reduces the horror to a series of shallow shocks rather than a growing sense of impending doom.

Interestingly, there's a job title missing from Nocturne's credits: Game Designer.