Video quests are a dead-end branch of evolution. They arose because with the spread of the CD format, developers did not know how to fill the free space on disks. After all, even very good games from the early 90s, such as Doom, took up at most several floppy disks (if anyone remembers such a thing), but not 700 megabytes. The solution turned out to be merciless in its simplicity: the plastic vacuum was filled with videos with live actors. Someone simply diluted the gameplay with them, and someone made them alpha and omega, trying their hand at interactive cinema. There were also masterpieces here like Phantasmagoria, and mid-range products – for example, Night Trap. The company recently re-released the latter Screaming Villains — it’s time to find out if the anniversary version is worth the candle.
Night chatter
Certainly, Night Trap it’s stupid to underestimate. Because in 1992 it caused such a stir. Men in office were embarrassed by girls in swimsuits and scenes of violence, about which even the US Senate met. As a result, we received an ESRB age rating – this is how politicians and businessmen responded to the company’s video quest Digital Pictures and fighting game Mortal Kombat. Nowadays, the pictures that once shocked the public seem like childish babble – if someone had shown the senator then Joe Lieberman (Joseph Lieberman) stills from Outlast II or The Evil Within, he probably would have been struck. But one thing remains the same: garbage Night Trap was called 25 years ago. So don’t be fooled by launching it today. The conclusions you have drawn are plagiarism.
The game really starts out like an 80’s porn movie. Smiling girls in frivolous outfits chatter incessantly about all sorts of nonsense. Guys with hair styled from driving in convertibles in California, tucking their shirts into jeans and wearing sunglasses around the house. Special effects were challenged by a theater decorator who was dating Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Kubrick), but no longer remembers where. The action takes place to music created by accident – when a composer who had seen better days spilled bourbon on an electric guitar. He saw himself rocking out at Woodstock Jimi Hendrix (Jimi Hendrix), and now he writes notes for some low-grade fun. Damn this life!
In other words, there is a classic https://river-belle-casino.uk/ atmosphere here. By inhaling its hydrogen sulfide, you take on the role of a SCAT operative who is monitoring the home of the Martins. The goal of the mission is to find out what the hell is going on there, and at the same time kick all the bad guys’ asses. They propose to do this with the help of eight surveillance cameras and traps placed around the estate, triggered by a signal in close proximity to the target. Here you can remove the steps and, as if from a hill, ride the enemy to hell, there you can push the villain into the wall with a cabinet on a rotating axis. It looks simple, like switching channels on a TV, and it only takes about half an hour. But don’t tell me.
Enemies – they are represented by "ogres", clumsy creatures in black – climb in large numbers and from the most unexpected places. Can’t pause the game. And to use traps, you need to change access codes in time – characters casually name them during dialogues. That is, we had a “green” code, but a minute later it was “red”. If you didn’t overhear the conversation in time, being carried away by catching ninja vampires, select the code manually. With seven colors to choose from, it’s not that easy to do. That’s why many Night Trap is associated with cramming the order of actions, written out almost second by second.
Set of interfaces for 300
What do we usually expect from re-releases of classics?? First of all, work on the technical part and graphics. Let’s say a quest Tim Shafer (Timothy Schafer) Full Throttle to add something treasured to the title Remastered I had to redraw and re-voice. It’s reasonable to expect at least some simplification of the gameplay. Because with old games the devil himself will break his leg. Well, the price of the reissue should more or less correspond to the effort spent on it. Without focusing on nostalgia and the right color of grass. So which of these points is observed in the anniversary “Night Trap”?
Yes, actually, none of them. If you were hoping that better quality original videos would be found somewhere in the bins, give up empty hopes. The graphics have been updated literally to the knees. So look through the small window where the B-grade drama plays out with the actors’ adobe emotions. The sound remained the same: 100% retro from the Chamber of Weights and Measures – only a Nirvana concert recorded on a cassette tape by a person in the crowd would sound worse. For a quarter of a century, not a single living soul has touched the gameplay: either you catch enemies, or follow the plot – the latter invariably leads to defeat. A senior in rank gives you a fatherly suggestion, and start again. That is, the idea with live actors did not work here twenty-five years ago, and it does not work now.
This doesn’t mean the game hasn’t undergone radical changes. Miniature icons of surveillance cameras now display not a static background, but the real state of affairs. It has become much easier to see which characters are in which room and where enemies are sneaking from. To the traditional plot, the developers have added a Survivor mode, where you need to continuously neutralize uninvited guests with traps, without bothering to listen to dialogues. Finally, the most powerful claim to victory is the choice of four interfaces: in the style of 1992, 1993, 1994 and 2017. Well, is it a pity to pay three hundred and a few kopecks for such luxury??
The only reason separating the work of the team Screaming Villains from the trash can and giving a chance Night Trap 25th Anniversary Edition, is that quests look damn fun these days. Although there is not a single joke in the script (or rather, there is, but you know that humor of the 80s), this is the funniest game of recent years. She’s as crazy as the old Batman movies she plays in Adam West (Adam West). And laughter is useful – it prolongs life. And, as it turned out, not only people.
Pros: a chance to meet a living fossil; tasks require attention; at least it’s funny here.
Cons: gameplay is not for everyone; it is physically impossible to play and follow the plot at the same time; the changes in the reissue cannot be called fundamental; no Russian translation.
