In 1952, an Investigator (You) is searching for the archeologist Dr. Hauzer, who has disappeared. The Investigator finds a large house in the middle of nowhere that belonged to Dr. Hauzer. The home is built over an archeology site, with Doctor Hauzer having become obsessed with a deity named Kellbim. It is up to you to find Doctor Hauzer and what happened to his interns. One of the earliest Survival Horror games, Doctor Hauzer was released as a Japan exclusive for the 3DO by a development studio that was well-known for their detective\mystery visual novels, top-down RPGS, Point-&-Click Adventure games, and Japanese localizations of Western games like Prince of Persia up till this point. Doctor Hauzer was Riverhill Soft's first foray into 3D. Influenced by the successful Alone In The Dark, your character will navigate a fully 3D environment and die numerous times in the house's deadly traps, including some that are unavoidable for first time players. You have unlimited save games so you can view the death animations as part of the fun. You can switch the view between first-person, third-person, or overhead. Choosing a different view will help you overcome some traps, including some platforming. There are several major reasons why this game was never released outside Japan: It's relatively easy with no monsters to fight, is roughly 1-hour long, has an incredibly bad framerate that can get as low as 3 frames-per-second (the 4DO emulator can "overclock" the CPU up to 400%, making it less choppy), some music is plagurized like the theme song being a near identical copy of the Beetlejuice movie's theme, and was on a platform that was already failing in the West. An English fan translation is available, with only the FMV's remaining untranslated.
Reviews View More
Been wanting to play this for years, albeit more as a fan of the PS1 title Overblood (which was made by the same folks behind this) than someone delving into the history of 90s survival horror games. It's also my first time playing a 3DO game, and hopefully I'll be doing more of that in the future now that I've got the 4DO emulator.
This game's quite cool, though it's funny how short it is. I always assumed people were sorta exaggerating when talking about its length, but no, it's a really brisk game you can beat in an hour. Admittedly, that's also something of a feather in its cap since you don't have to invest so much time into it, whether on your first go or upon replays.
It's got a variety of neat tactile puzzles where you examine the environment and use items you pick up to solve problems; I'm a sucker for those kinds of puzzles in adventure games, which is partially why I gravitate more towards the fully 3D style of 90s adventure gaming where this sort of thing was fairly common.
The only thing I don't really like is that the base framerate is maddeningly slow. I normally don't care about slow framerate, especially in games that are already sedate to begin with. But depending on the room you're in, the game can chug so hard that it makes trying to turn or move around an absolute arseache. I had to resort to overclocking the CPU after a few minutes just so I wasn't getting frustrated at the slog.
On a more positive note, playing this helped me to appreciate how Overblood basically carried over a lot of what this game was doing (even down to the different camera types you can switch between to better navigate places), and expanded on those ideas with the dual-character setup, a more in-depth plot, scenarios where you have to respond in time, and combat encounters.
It's a cool little adventure game, and one I'm chuffed to have finally gotten round to. : )
This game's quite cool, though it's funny how short it is. I always assumed people were sorta exaggerating when talking about its length, but no, it's a really brisk game you can beat in an hour. Admittedly, that's also something of a feather in its cap since you don't have to invest so much time into it, whether on your first go or upon replays.
It's got a variety of neat tactile puzzles where you examine the environment and use items you pick up to solve problems; I'm a sucker for those kinds of puzzles in adventure games, which is partially why I gravitate more towards the fully 3D style of 90s adventure gaming where this sort of thing was fairly common.
The only thing I don't really like is that the base framerate is maddeningly slow. I normally don't care about slow framerate, especially in games that are already sedate to begin with. But depending on the room you're in, the game can chug so hard that it makes trying to turn or move around an absolute arseache. I had to resort to overclocking the CPU after a few minutes just so I wasn't getting frustrated at the slog.
On a more positive note, playing this helped me to appreciate how Overblood basically carried over a lot of what this game was doing (even down to the different camera types you can switch between to better navigate places), and expanded on those ideas with the dual-character setup, a more in-depth plot, scenarios where you have to respond in time, and combat encounters.
It's a cool little adventure game, and one I'm chuffed to have finally gotten round to. : )
this feels like if a text adventure game made by an A-Level Computer Science Student was remade into a 3DO game
One of the pioneers in the genre to use use fully rendered 3D environments and character models opposed 3D pre-rendered graphics. Good puzzle solving, trial and error pace complete with unique death animations. Short but sweet experience that includes a good introduction and ending cut scene that ties the story together. Would have been a low score for its abysmal frame rate due to lack of hardware knowledge and or hardware limitations. Since I completed it on emulation I was able to boost CPU speed allowing for smoother gameplay in that case would be a higher score.
Long before the advent and action games text adventure games (also called interactive fiction) ruled the pc market. Since horror fiction is a popular genre its only natural that horror interactive fiction would be made. Eventually the graphics would allow for interactive fiction to become adventure games using interfaces like point and click which also developed horror themed settings. Other games like 3D Monster Maze and Sweet Home would experiment with using real time action to create horror through escaping monsters or resource management.
Its with Alone in the Dark that you would see 3D real time combat combined with resource management, however Alone in the Dark also featured heavy adventure game elements (inventory puzzles, instant death traps, and unlimited saves to mitigate such fail states) and platforming that would be stream lined with Resident Evil. Doctor Hauzer in some way serves as the opposite of what resident evil did to alone in the dark rather then simplifying the adventure game elements to focus more on real time combat and resource management Doctor Hauzer entirely cuts out real time combat to focus solely on inventory puzzles and instant kill death traps.
This reduction in scope makes sense when you consider that is one of the first, if not the first, fully 3d rendered game on a console, and it looks pretty good. The rooms are all super simple usually just being a mostly empty squared with rectangle dressers and maybe like a couch and the polygons look pretty pixelated, but the textures are actually pretty nice and the main character has a detailed and expressive face' plus using modern emulator enhancements the graphics clean up nice. These at the time cutting edge graphics come at the cost of the game running at a glacial pace and the game being overall very short (however modern emulator overclocking can render the game fast enough to be semi playable). The ability to change from a fixed camera, to an over head camera, to a first person camera is also a nice touch as each perspective is useful depending on the room. The major issue with the graphics is that most items aren't rendered in the rooms so you end up having to inspect every drawer, table, and shelf to find items.
The adventure game stuff here is very simple and a mostly linear matter of collecting items and solving very easy puzzles. There is also a jump used in a single very low stakes platforming segment. The most interesting thing here is the amount of hidden optional secrets. There are puzzles and items used solely to find lore text or unlock doors which can be unlocked in other ways. For instance you can do a strange puzzle in a room of full of eye paintings to get a key to a room with the ghost of Hauzer. There is a boarded up passage in that room you you cant acess yet. later you will travel through some secret passages get the crow bar and pop out into the ghost room where you can crowbar down the boarded up passage. This makes the eye room key totally useless as you will enter this room regardless if you lock it or not. There is another optional key which has the same weird properties of unlocking a room you can access another way. Really there are many secrets still left to find in this game. I found Hauzer's diary 2-4 meaning there is a 1st diary I missed. There is also a gas can item that does nothing so maybe its also associated with a secret.
The story here is pretty simple and bare bones and based on hauzer finding some hieroglyphics that prove the truth of Genesis and the existence of cherubs and the garden of eden. Why do hieroglyphics prove a hebrew story is beyond me but it does add a bit of religious flavor to an otherwise generic story of a scientist going crazy trying to being his dead wife back. Usually in these stories the villain has some crazy plan that will destroy the world or harm a lot of people but beyond killing his workers before the game starts Hauzer just seems to be chilling now. Which makes the whole story seem pointless.
Looking back on reviews from this game is interesting as when it came out it got heavy coverage (even from western media where the game didn't come out_) for its advanced graphics. In general reviewers seemed split on if the game is a bland alone in the dark rip off or an atmospheric adventure. For my money the game scarcely deserves the survival horror label it gets but its still interesting none the less. One final bit of commentary i saw from a reviewer compared the game to a 3d version of a cinematic platformer like Out of this World. This is an interesting perspective but the animations are too simple and the platforming too lacking to fit in with that genre in my opinion.
Really I can't rate Doctor Hauzer its one of those games which is firmly entrenched in its time. It was a graphical showcase which succeeded in showing that fully 3D games could be rendered on a console even if this came at the cost of making a good game. Really this game is mostly just known as a historical stop gap between the more famous Alone in the Dark and resident evil but there is enough weirdness and secrets to make it worth a playthrough for any gaming history or horror buffs.
Its with Alone in the Dark that you would see 3D real time combat combined with resource management, however Alone in the Dark also featured heavy adventure game elements (inventory puzzles, instant death traps, and unlimited saves to mitigate such fail states) and platforming that would be stream lined with Resident Evil. Doctor Hauzer in some way serves as the opposite of what resident evil did to alone in the dark rather then simplifying the adventure game elements to focus more on real time combat and resource management Doctor Hauzer entirely cuts out real time combat to focus solely on inventory puzzles and instant kill death traps.
This reduction in scope makes sense when you consider that is one of the first, if not the first, fully 3d rendered game on a console, and it looks pretty good. The rooms are all super simple usually just being a mostly empty squared with rectangle dressers and maybe like a couch and the polygons look pretty pixelated, but the textures are actually pretty nice and the main character has a detailed and expressive face' plus using modern emulator enhancements the graphics clean up nice. These at the time cutting edge graphics come at the cost of the game running at a glacial pace and the game being overall very short (however modern emulator overclocking can render the game fast enough to be semi playable). The ability to change from a fixed camera, to an over head camera, to a first person camera is also a nice touch as each perspective is useful depending on the room. The major issue with the graphics is that most items aren't rendered in the rooms so you end up having to inspect every drawer, table, and shelf to find items.
The adventure game stuff here is very simple and a mostly linear matter of collecting items and solving very easy puzzles. There is also a jump used in a single very low stakes platforming segment. The most interesting thing here is the amount of hidden optional secrets. There are puzzles and items used solely to find lore text or unlock doors which can be unlocked in other ways. For instance you can do a strange puzzle in a room of full of eye paintings to get a key to a room with the ghost of Hauzer. There is a boarded up passage in that room you you cant acess yet. later you will travel through some secret passages get the crow bar and pop out into the ghost room where you can crowbar down the boarded up passage. This makes the eye room key totally useless as you will enter this room regardless if you lock it or not. There is another optional key which has the same weird properties of unlocking a room you can access another way. Really there are many secrets still left to find in this game. I found Hauzer's diary 2-4 meaning there is a 1st diary I missed. There is also a gas can item that does nothing so maybe its also associated with a secret.
The story here is pretty simple and bare bones and based on hauzer finding some hieroglyphics that prove the truth of Genesis and the existence of cherubs and the garden of eden. Why do hieroglyphics prove a hebrew story is beyond me but it does add a bit of religious flavor to an otherwise generic story of a scientist going crazy trying to being his dead wife back. Usually in these stories the villain has some crazy plan that will destroy the world or harm a lot of people but beyond killing his workers before the game starts Hauzer just seems to be chilling now. Which makes the whole story seem pointless.
Looking back on reviews from this game is interesting as when it came out it got heavy coverage (even from western media where the game didn't come out_) for its advanced graphics. In general reviewers seemed split on if the game is a bland alone in the dark rip off or an atmospheric adventure. For my money the game scarcely deserves the survival horror label it gets but its still interesting none the less. One final bit of commentary i saw from a reviewer compared the game to a 3d version of a cinematic platformer like Out of this World. This is an interesting perspective but the animations are too simple and the platforming too lacking to fit in with that genre in my opinion.
Really I can't rate Doctor Hauzer its one of those games which is firmly entrenched in its time. It was a graphical showcase which succeeded in showing that fully 3D games could be rendered on a console even if this came at the cost of making a good game. Really this game is mostly just known as a historical stop gap between the more famous Alone in the Dark and resident evil but there is enough weirdness and secrets to make it worth a playthrough for any gaming history or horror buffs.
the greatest power point presentation that I've ever played
A graphically impressive 3DO game and an early entry into the 3D survival horror genre (predating RE by two years) that isn't all that fun to actually play. Still glad I got the chance to do so though, thanks to the hard work of passionate nerds who thanklessly give up a lot of time translating a game only five people have probably heard about.