Double Switch is a "trap-'em-up" game very similar to Night Trap in gameplay and visual presentation. The player has to manipulate cameras to avoid or set traps, affecting the course of the storyline which is represented by live action movie sequences.
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The legacy of the title may be enough to where it will be remembered for many years to come, but the quality of Night Trap wasn’t even close to being on the same level to compare to said legacy. Sure, the game wasn’t terrible, but it was pretty much the poster-child of cheap FMV CD games for the early 90s, with not much else to show for itself other then providing a hilarious “movie” to watch alongside it, which is probably a smarter thing to do than actually trying to play the game. But nonetheless, the game was still successful enough for Digital Pictures, selling 400,000 copies by 1998, so logically, they went ahead and continued making these FMV games for quite a while until their defunct in 1996. One of their most noteworthy titles that would follow Night Trap would release just one year later, and would simply be known as Double Switch.
Unlike with Night Trap, I didn’t know much about Double Switch when I initially went into it, as it didn’t quite have the notorious reputation that Night Trap had. I had assumed that it was just gonna be yet another generic FMV game that would scream “90s” in every way possible, which would be fun and entertaining enough to at least watch rather than play. Nonetheless, I went into the game, and I found that it was mostly what I was expecting, but surprisingly, I actually found it to be better then Night Trap, not just in terms of its gameplay, but also in terms of the movie that was being presented here. Yes, it does still carry some problems with it, as well as the movie itself having enough of that 90s cheese that could turn off some viewers, it was enough to keep me entertained, and the gameplay was satisfying enough whenever you got everything figured out.
In terms of the movie portion of the game, the story is completely insane, with there being a central plot that you need to focus on, while also being occupied by plenty of other sub-plots that are about as ridiculous as you would expect, which makes the story way more entertaining to watch, even if you once again can’t pay attention to most of it when you play the game yourself, the characters this time around are very enjoyable, with there being many different types of them here rather then just focusing on one group of high-school girls for most of the time, and each of them have just the right amount of bad line delivery and hokey acting to make them a joy to watch, the acting is appropriately bad, but once again, it does make watching the product much more entertaining, so I wouldn’t have it any other way, and the way that the characters move around and talk are overexaggerated and stupid enough to where you will keeping wanting to see what people do rather than focusing on the main objective.
As for the game itself, the gameplay is very similar to that of Night Trap, where you take control of……. yourself, I guess, look through a series of cameras that are placed all around the hotel that Double Switch is based in, use the many different traps located around the building to thwart the plans of any thugs that enter the building, gather plenty of different codes, as well as the locations of more hidden traps throughout the building, so that you will be able to make progress through the game while finding out what it truly going on around here, and while you do all that, enjoy some of the goofiest 90s FMV that you will ever see in your entire life. It is all pretty standard for a Digital Pictures product like this, and for most of it, it really only uses the movie footage as a means to draw players in, which was already enough for me, but thankfully, in comparison to Night Trap, there are some improvements to the gameplay here.
First and foremost, unlike with Night Trap, the locations of the thugs you trapped aren’t scripted. Yes, there are obviously scripted events that you will need to pay close attention to, but in terms of the regular thugs that you need to trap to proceed through the game, they all appear in random locations at random times, which makes it so that you can’t just blunt force your way through it using a guide, already making this more preferable than Night Trap. In addition to this, this game is also a lot more forgiving. When it came to Night Trap, you had to do all of it in one shot, going all the way from the beginning to the end and accomplishing the tasks almost perfectly, which made it really suck whenever you fucked up just one task, and you had to start all over again. Thankfully, in this game, there are three separate levels, or “Acts”, that you go through, and whenever you fail in one of these acts, you only get sent back to the beginning of the act rather then the beginning of the game, which is much more preferable then what we had before.
However, as is natural with these kinds of Digital Pictures games, there are still several things that are holding it back. For one thing, while I did say this game was more forgiving then Night Trap with the acts, the regular difficulty of the game was ramped up to make up for this. The amount of things that you have to do specifically in such a short amount of time, while also making sure to trap plenty of thugs in the process, is absolutely insane, and if you just fuck up even one of these specific tasks, such as missing a part of the security codes, or not using a specific trap in a specific event, then you will have to start all over again. What doesn’t help this is that there are specific traps that are ridiculously timed, especially in the later acts, where there will be a trap that you can activate at multiple points, and if you don’t activate it at the point that the game wants, then you automatically lose. Needless to say, this is extremely frustrating, especially when you need to utilize a separate trap button for a lot of the traps that affect the main story.
Overall, despite still being ruthless in plenty of places and having a lack of innovation for this type of game, I would still say that Double Switch is still an entertaining game, not just in terms of the ridiculous FMV cutscenes that play throughout, but also because of the satisfaction that you get from getting all of these codes and activating all of these ridiculous traps at the right time. I guess I could recommend you playing it for those who were fans of Night Trap, but for those who actually want to keep their sanity intact, then I would recommend just looking up the Double Switch cinematics all slapped together on YouTube, because again, that is the most enjoyment that you can get out of this game. Also, I wanna point out real quick that Lyle the Handyman, one of the main characters in the game, is played by Lee Ermey, the same guy who played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, so that is pretty cool. I just wished they allowed him to talk in a similar fashion to how he talked in that movie.
Game #422
Unlike with Night Trap, I didn’t know much about Double Switch when I initially went into it, as it didn’t quite have the notorious reputation that Night Trap had. I had assumed that it was just gonna be yet another generic FMV game that would scream “90s” in every way possible, which would be fun and entertaining enough to at least watch rather than play. Nonetheless, I went into the game, and I found that it was mostly what I was expecting, but surprisingly, I actually found it to be better then Night Trap, not just in terms of its gameplay, but also in terms of the movie that was being presented here. Yes, it does still carry some problems with it, as well as the movie itself having enough of that 90s cheese that could turn off some viewers, it was enough to keep me entertained, and the gameplay was satisfying enough whenever you got everything figured out.
In terms of the movie portion of the game, the story is completely insane, with there being a central plot that you need to focus on, while also being occupied by plenty of other sub-plots that are about as ridiculous as you would expect, which makes the story way more entertaining to watch, even if you once again can’t pay attention to most of it when you play the game yourself, the characters this time around are very enjoyable, with there being many different types of them here rather then just focusing on one group of high-school girls for most of the time, and each of them have just the right amount of bad line delivery and hokey acting to make them a joy to watch, the acting is appropriately bad, but once again, it does make watching the product much more entertaining, so I wouldn’t have it any other way, and the way that the characters move around and talk are overexaggerated and stupid enough to where you will keeping wanting to see what people do rather than focusing on the main objective.
As for the game itself, the gameplay is very similar to that of Night Trap, where you take control of……. yourself, I guess, look through a series of cameras that are placed all around the hotel that Double Switch is based in, use the many different traps located around the building to thwart the plans of any thugs that enter the building, gather plenty of different codes, as well as the locations of more hidden traps throughout the building, so that you will be able to make progress through the game while finding out what it truly going on around here, and while you do all that, enjoy some of the goofiest 90s FMV that you will ever see in your entire life. It is all pretty standard for a Digital Pictures product like this, and for most of it, it really only uses the movie footage as a means to draw players in, which was already enough for me, but thankfully, in comparison to Night Trap, there are some improvements to the gameplay here.
First and foremost, unlike with Night Trap, the locations of the thugs you trapped aren’t scripted. Yes, there are obviously scripted events that you will need to pay close attention to, but in terms of the regular thugs that you need to trap to proceed through the game, they all appear in random locations at random times, which makes it so that you can’t just blunt force your way through it using a guide, already making this more preferable than Night Trap. In addition to this, this game is also a lot more forgiving. When it came to Night Trap, you had to do all of it in one shot, going all the way from the beginning to the end and accomplishing the tasks almost perfectly, which made it really suck whenever you fucked up just one task, and you had to start all over again. Thankfully, in this game, there are three separate levels, or “Acts”, that you go through, and whenever you fail in one of these acts, you only get sent back to the beginning of the act rather then the beginning of the game, which is much more preferable then what we had before.
However, as is natural with these kinds of Digital Pictures games, there are still several things that are holding it back. For one thing, while I did say this game was more forgiving then Night Trap with the acts, the regular difficulty of the game was ramped up to make up for this. The amount of things that you have to do specifically in such a short amount of time, while also making sure to trap plenty of thugs in the process, is absolutely insane, and if you just fuck up even one of these specific tasks, such as missing a part of the security codes, or not using a specific trap in a specific event, then you will have to start all over again. What doesn’t help this is that there are specific traps that are ridiculously timed, especially in the later acts, where there will be a trap that you can activate at multiple points, and if you don’t activate it at the point that the game wants, then you automatically lose. Needless to say, this is extremely frustrating, especially when you need to utilize a separate trap button for a lot of the traps that affect the main story.
Overall, despite still being ruthless in plenty of places and having a lack of innovation for this type of game, I would still say that Double Switch is still an entertaining game, not just in terms of the ridiculous FMV cutscenes that play throughout, but also because of the satisfaction that you get from getting all of these codes and activating all of these ridiculous traps at the right time. I guess I could recommend you playing it for those who were fans of Night Trap, but for those who actually want to keep their sanity intact, then I would recommend just looking up the Double Switch cinematics all slapped together on YouTube, because again, that is the most enjoyment that you can get out of this game. Also, I wanna point out real quick that Lyle the Handyman, one of the main characters in the game, is played by Lee Ermey, the same guy who played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, so that is pretty cool. I just wished they allowed him to talk in a similar fashion to how he talked in that movie.
Game #422