A remake of Killing Time
A sophisticated shooter laced with gallows humor. Killing Time is no shallow grave. Its depth is well-conceived. Puzzle solving and strategic thinking are placed at a premium.
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A very cool bit of design for an FPS from '95 - no set of linear levels, but rather a single worldmap of interconnected zones that you can explore at will. Your ultimate task is to find a certain number of key items spread out throughout the entire map (to access the final boss), and all the necessary keys to open the different zones that they're hidden in. So there is something of an order to the exploration, but there are always lots of new places to go before you run into any roadblocks. The areas don't reset - enemies stay dead and ammo stays picked up, so there's a refreshing sense of clearing out the map as you go, knowing you'll be coming back to restock ammo on stuff you bypassed if you're low, or returning with a new key later to open a color-coded door you noticed the first time. I don't know of a lot of other FPS' that were doing this sort of stuff in 1995!
It works well with the story setup also - exploring the vast abandoned estate of a socialite who went missing with all their houseguests one fateful night, and learning about the vanished characters through live-action FMV ghosts playing out the story of what happened to them bit by bit as you stumble about the grounds. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it is exactly THE 7TH GUEST, and it couldn't possibly be any more clear that they looked at that extremely popular game and said "what if we did this, but with guns?". But to their credit, they figured out a good way to do it! It does work!
Technically. The problem is that this team obviously had no FPS design chops to speak of. As I said, the structure of the game is compelling, but the actual nitty gritty of the gameplay - the level design, enemies, weapons, gunplay, etc. - it all does "work" but it is fatally boring. Tons of zones are just a long hallway with a million tiny rooms branching off, and each room has a couple of enemies in it, and that's it. There are lots of different enemy types, but none of them are interesting mechanically or very threatening, so you're just going room to room, clearing it out, moving on, next one, clearing it out, next one ... and there are TONS of enemies, gotta be close to a thousand, total. Unless you're not paying attention at all, you'll never be in any kind of real danger because the enemies are so predicatble, and with only five or six total guns in the game, it gets boring faaaast. Clearing out the areas feels like homework, like doing your taxes. Coming off an extremely capably made adrenaline factory like CHASM: THE RIFT didn't do the clumsy, slow, near-pointless combat in this any favors.
So it's a real shame. The main design idea here is good, and there are a lot of interesting puzzles and touches and fun design in the manor and surrounding island grounds, but the main shooter gameplay is really just there, and unfortunately there is a lottttttttt of it to plow through if you're gonna get to the (confusing, dumb) finale. If you're a real sicko like me who loves first person open-world exploration and also specifically THE 7TH GUEST, and has himself had fun over the yeara envisioning what type of game that would/could be as an FPS, you'll probably be able to see it through. But real shooter heads will most likely fall asleep.
It works well with the story setup also - exploring the vast abandoned estate of a socialite who went missing with all their houseguests one fateful night, and learning about the vanished characters through live-action FMV ghosts playing out the story of what happened to them bit by bit as you stumble about the grounds. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it is exactly THE 7TH GUEST, and it couldn't possibly be any more clear that they looked at that extremely popular game and said "what if we did this, but with guns?". But to their credit, they figured out a good way to do it! It does work!
Technically. The problem is that this team obviously had no FPS design chops to speak of. As I said, the structure of the game is compelling, but the actual nitty gritty of the gameplay - the level design, enemies, weapons, gunplay, etc. - it all does "work" but it is fatally boring. Tons of zones are just a long hallway with a million tiny rooms branching off, and each room has a couple of enemies in it, and that's it. There are lots of different enemy types, but none of them are interesting mechanically or very threatening, so you're just going room to room, clearing it out, moving on, next one, clearing it out, next one ... and there are TONS of enemies, gotta be close to a thousand, total. Unless you're not paying attention at all, you'll never be in any kind of real danger because the enemies are so predicatble, and with only five or six total guns in the game, it gets boring faaaast. Clearing out the areas feels like homework, like doing your taxes. Coming off an extremely capably made adrenaline factory like CHASM: THE RIFT didn't do the clumsy, slow, near-pointless combat in this any favors.
So it's a real shame. The main design idea here is good, and there are a lot of interesting puzzles and touches and fun design in the manor and surrounding island grounds, but the main shooter gameplay is really just there, and unfortunately there is a lottttttttt of it to plow through if you're gonna get to the (confusing, dumb) finale. If you're a real sicko like me who loves first person open-world exploration and also specifically THE 7TH GUEST, and has himself had fun over the yeara envisioning what type of game that would/could be as an FPS, you'll probably be able to see it through. But real shooter heads will most likely fall asleep.
Lots of people in reviews seem to have trouble running the game but it's run perfectly fine for me aside from FMV audio stuttering and music suddenly stopping sometimes.
The pre mouselook shooter era, ah. For its era what stands out most is the fact that there's no levels, the entire island can be explored. Somewhat different from general open ended modern games too with the way that enemies and items won't respawn, when you come back you can even see their corpses still there. I like that a lot. It's nice honestly, going one way and finding out you don't have a key, then when you come back you see all the enemies you've killed. The FMV characters have relatively good acting by FMV game standards too, and it's neat seeing them in the world rather than being restricted to cutscenes. Though faces being a mess of pixels does detract from that. Neat setting too, Egyptian themed, but not Egypt, 1920s mansion of a woman obsessed with Egypt and immortality.
The pre mouselook shooter era, ah. For its era what stands out most is the fact that there's no levels, the entire island can be explored. Somewhat different from general open ended modern games too with the way that enemies and items won't respawn, when you come back you can even see their corpses still there. I like that a lot. It's nice honestly, going one way and finding out you don't have a key, then when you come back you see all the enemies you've killed. The FMV characters have relatively good acting by FMV game standards too, and it's neat seeing them in the world rather than being restricted to cutscenes. Though faces being a mess of pixels does detract from that. Neat setting too, Egyptian themed, but not Egypt, 1920s mansion of a woman obsessed with Egypt and immortality.
Trash
This horror FPS has good ideas but poor design makes it a boring experience. If Trilobyte decided to make a FPS instead of the 7th Guest, it would be like this, a shooter with puzzles in a fairly open world with lots of FMV. The FMV scenes are integrated with the world, meaning you walk up to nodes and the FMV of ghosts starts playing without it going into a cutscene. Weirdly enough, when they decided to bring it to PC and Mac, instead of just porting the 3DO version, they remade the game so the levels are better designed, and added a couple new weapons too. Unfortunately the FMV is lower quality and they made the enemies bullet spongy so neither version is ideal.
Some decent ideas, some funny FMV scenes and occasionally fun but its all kinda let down by some really poorly designed levels that often manages to be claustrophobic and maze-like in a bad way. Theres some fun here sandwiched between the door and key hunting but you feel there could have been so much more.