Freddy Kreuger is back in this 1989 action game. Chose from 5 nightmare characters including; Kincaid, Nancy, Kristen, Joey, Will and Taryn. The game begins when you must navigate a character through a neighborhood to find Freddy’s house (randomly placed and glowing), but beware because Freddy is chasing you and he better not catch you. Once you have found this house you enter and must search around his maze-like house for special objects including; keys, holy water, baseball bats, knife, and coffee. Travel through the house fighting skeletons, wheelchairs and other interesting and creepy enemies.
The deeper you get into the house, the more dangerous your nightmare becomes.
I played this game in the early 90s and it scared me then and continues to scare me now. The game is challenging and takes some practice to figure out. Finding the switches for secret passageways is challenging, but with some practice the game becomes easier. The graphics for this game are, of course sub-par compared to modern standards. However, they do effectively deliver a promising experience for the gamer.
Each level is like a maze and this provides an effective experience and compliments the game nicely. This game can be classified as a strategy type game considering certain weapons work better on certain enemies (i.e. baseball bats work better on skeletons)
and the fact that using your special power (which by the way each character has) adds a certain required strategy. Once you pass the first few levels the game gets more challenging and the mazes get more confusing, but, for a time the game keeps a player interested.
For me, the sound of the game was a little annoying, (reminded me of the classical telephone rings) and I played with the sound off. Thus, the sound is one drawback for the game. Another is that this game can get boring really quick because the enemies and levels never end up changing (especially since you are almost always in the house).
Overall, this game is better to be played in a short time period when you are bored. A nightmare on elm street is fun is spurts and provides a certain guilty pleasure for the gamer. It is not an amazing game that you can never put down, but it is also not a total waste of time to play. On a scale of 1-5, I would rate this game a 4.
