When it came to the world of video games back in the day, in their initial stages, things were always going to be pretty restricted. Since most games sold were primarily made on cartridges, not too much could be done to further enhance the experience of playing a video game past the primary gameplay, with elements like story, characters, and cinematics either being used with text boxes, or kept primarily on the back burner to focus more on the game itself. However, that all changed with the introduction of CD based technology, and all of a sudden, video games were changed forever. No longer were developers held back by the limitations of developing games for cartridges, being able to produce much higher quality content, process more information at once, and produce them at a much quicker rate then ever before.

This has been the standard used ever since the early 90s, and while not everyone jumped on the bandwagon immediately, and despite the age of CD-based games seemingly coming to an end, this is how video games have been able to produce much bigger and better content over the years, and not much has changed to keep this line of progression from stopping. However… back in the early days of CD based games, there was one type of game that were quite commonly made on CDs back in the day, which made them seemingly undesirable just for how low the quality on these products can be… FMV games.

For those who are unaware, FMV games are where they take actual “movie-quality” footage of real people, and incorporate gameplay around it, making the events seem more real, and to get you more invested with the game. These kinds of games are still being made to this day, and despite how there have been much better and more valuable products made with this style nowadays, back in the day, they were anything but valuable. If you were to want to see what kind of waste was made using this format, look no further then what was made for the Sega CD, an add-on for the Sega Genesis that was able to play CD-based games. For all of the games that couldn’t just be regular ol’ Genesis titles with some added flare, most of these titles suffered from extremely poor video quality, terrible performances and story from the videos themselves, and extremely confusing gameplay surrounding it, making you most likely give up on the game before trying to properly figure it out. And out of all of the FMV games that plagued the Sega CD, none of them are as noteworthy or as infamous as the one and only Night Trap.

When you take a look at what Night Trap has to offer nowadays, you gotta admit, it looks pretty fucking stupid. With it’s terrible acting, poor quality footage (at least with the original version of the game), and it’s sillier moments that can be seen throughout, most would probably write it off as nothing more then “the funny FMV game”, which would be an appropriate assumption to make. However, back when the game initially came out, it had a bit more of an… infamous reputation. Violence in video games had been becoming more prominent at this point, not only with the plethora of games already out there that could be classified as violent when looked at from a specific angle, but also with newer titles like Mortal Kombat, which made “realistic” graphic violence and extreme kills one of its major selling points. Needless to say, these kinds of games caused a bit of a negative reaction from the United States Senate, with Night Trap being no exception.

Now, is Night Trap really all that violent? Honestly, no, or at least, not in the general sense. As one can clearly see, it is pretty damn goofy, what with the way that the enemies move around, the way they get trapped, and even with how the characters react to them. Although, there are some scenes that did cause a bit of an uproar, specifically with one of the character’s deaths, and while it, again, does look somewhat goofy nowadays, you can kinda understand why kids shouldn’t see it without some proper warning. Therefore, due to this, along with what both Mortal Kombat, Lethal Enforcers, and Doom offered, this lead to the development and creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, or ESRB, a ratings system that is still being used on video games even to this very day… even though most people would agree it doesn’t mean jack shit half of the time.

So, with a reputation like that which the game carries with it to this day, an outsider would likely suspect that a game that was able to do that should be one that must really be a sight to behold, and one that must still hold up even to this day. However, in reality… it really doesn’t. I wouldn’t consider Night Trap to be a bad game, or at least, not one that would fall under the same hatred as games like E.T. or Superman 64. Rather, it’s a bad game in the sense that it really is the prime example of what these shitty FMV games were like back in the day, with terrible video footage and weird-as-hell moments and acting, barely any gameplay to go alongside it, being needlessly frustrating for newcomers, and leaving you feel empty inside when you actually do manage to complete it. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to play an experience. I would say this is almost on the same level as something like The Room, where the experience is so goofy, weird, and stupid, that it is very fun to experience, and if you don’t take any of it seriously, you can have a good time with it.

Since this game likes to treat itself like an interactive movie, I feel it is only appropriate that I do the same for now. The story is basically every single generic horror “slasher” film ever made, which was probably intentional, given how goofy it is presented, so it makes sense, the characters are all incredibly generic archetypes of what you would typically see in those films, but there are some stand-outs among the bunch, like some of the girls and Eddie, the acting is, again, pretty bad, but much like The Room, a good number of the performances and delivery of these lines make it much more entertaining, the way that the augers fall into traps is very over-the-top and exaggerated in the best possible way, and it has moments throughout that are pretty stupid, but again, pretty memorable at the same time.

Obviously, it’s not meant to be a proper film through and through, so there are plenty of moments throughout that don’t make sense, and you will constantly be taken out of it whenever characters talk directly to the player, but that was the intention, so I can’t really complain too much about it. And in all honestly, treating this game purely as a film and nothing else is probably the best way that you can experience it, given that the main game itself is all focused primarily on one aspect of the footage, that being trapping the augers. This does lead to one of my problems with the story though, which is more so the game’s fault, but it is still an issue: if you play through the game the way it was intended, you will barely experience the story at all.

Right after getting the instructions on what you are supposed to do, you are thrown right into the game, and you have to start going around and trapping augers immediately, or else risk missing them and getting a game over. However, while all of this is going on, the live-action footage is being played in other parts of the house, meaning that while you are doing all this, you are pretty much going to miss most of the plot. Yeah, you can chime in every now and then whenever nothing is going on, but trust me, if you plan on making it through the game, then there will be very few moments for you to do this, which does really suck, as again, the dumbass live-action moments are the best parts of the game. It’s not a complete deal breaker for those who just wanna play the game, but it is still an issue overall.

In terms of the gameplay, this is where things start to go from being the pretty fun kind of bad, to just being flat out bad. If I were to describe the main gameplay of this title in a way that makes sense, I would say that this is basically Five Nights at Freddy’s before that series existed (I know, I’m sorry for making that comparison, feel free to laugh at me). Throughout the whole game, you will be surveying the house the game takes place in via security cameras placed throughout, looking out for augers that will be creeping about through the night, making sure to trap them whenever you can so that not too many end up infesting the house, and changing codes whenever you can so that the traps will still work. It all may seem very simple, and yeah, it really is, but trust me, whenever you are actually taking control yourself, it is anything but simple.

For the original Sega CD release anyway, you have no idea where any of these augers can be, so you will be constantly switching these cameras around in a panicked rush, hoping to catch them before they escape, and 9 times out of 10, you are guaranteed to miss at least one of them, making you even more stressed out, and rush through the cameras even faster. It is really a test of memorization and reflexes, making sure you memorize where augers can appear, what part of the screen can they appear on, where the traps are, when to set off the traps, and when they actually start to interact with the characters themselves, then that just opens up a whole nother can of worms to deal with. Needless to say, this is NOT easy whatsoever, because if you aren’t familiar with what you are getting into, you will have almost no idea what you are doing, relying only on the instructions that you are given at the beginning, and even then, that may not be enough to fully take the augers down, causing you to have to start over again and again and again, all in the vain hope of maybe, just maybe, you won’t screw up this time. It also doesn’t help when there are plenty of instances where you will encounter moments where you MUST take down a specific auger at a specific point in order to keep going, and if you don’t do it correctly, well then tough shit, back to the start with you.

But fear not, as there is a bit of a method to the madness, because despite how random and fast the augers come at you whenever you play the game, you then start to realize something: everything is all predetermined. All the locations of the augers, when they will show up, what order they show up in, it is ALL set in stone from the very beginning every time. The only randomized aspect of the game is the color of the code that you will need to change it to throughout the game. So, if you want to get a leg up on the game after it screws you over after so long, just look up a guide, follow it exactly as it says, and you will manage to get through the entire game without missing a single auger whatsoever, and trust me, getting through the game like this after I trial-and-errored my way to death many times… it was cathartic, to say the least.

However, while it may be cathartic, this also raises up another issue: once you know everything is predetermined, the game also loses its replayability. If you know where everything is every time, then there would be no point to actually reexperiencing the game again, unless you wanna do so for the goofy-ass story, in which case, you can just look up a YouTube compilation of all the scenes and call it a day. This may seem like a random point I am making that means nothing, but to that, I refer to a title made by the same developers as this one, Double Switch. Gameplay wise, it is almost the exact same as Night Trap, although what sets it apart from this game (aside from everything else) is the fact that all of the normal enemy trappings happen at complete random, meaning that with each new playthrough, there will be a new set of people going in a new order that you have to figure out, which makes things more satisfying, especially when you manage to conquer the challenge for yourself. Unfortunately though, this game doesn’t share that similar quality, and suffers because of it.

Overall, despite it’s extremely goofy and enjoyable story and acting, as well as that feeling when you finally manage to get everything down just right, Night Trap is the poster child for FMV games for all the wrong reasons, providing frustrating gameplay with no true reward for conquering it, terrible visual quality (at least with the original version), strict punishments for messing up just once at specific points, and carrying a legacy that it certainly could never live up to. I would recommend it solely to experience the so-bad-its-good performances and story, or maybe for those nostalgic for this age of games, but for everyone else, then there is no reason for you to come back to this. Although, at the end of the day, no matter whether you agree with me, disagree with me, or you want me to shut up, I think we can at least all agree on one thing… the Night Trap song is a fucking banger.

Game #311

Back in 1992, many games led to controversy in the US regarding their violent and sexual content. Because see, "film like rating systems" did not exist in the games industry until that point, and societal pressure was not there to create something like that until this fateful year and the year after it, where we saw the release of games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and, yes, Night Trap.

Night Trap released on October 15, 1992, was developed by Digital Pictures and is an FMV (full-motion video) game. Teenagers are having a sleepover at a mansion that is infested with vampires, and you, the player, watch surveillance footage of eight rooms in the house and partake in a hundred QTEs to activate traps around the house whenever these bad guys trigger them. You can fail a few times, but fail too often or fail at critical moments and certain characters will die.

Production values here are really poor, and there is never any actual blood seen in the game, though a drill-like device pouring red liquid out of a victim through a tube is the most controversial moment you will find here. The victim doesn't die, it continues on screaming and struggling to get out while she is getting carried out of the room, but it was a moment like this that had Night Trap added to a congressional hearing in 1993 alongside Mortal Kombat and Doom.

The result of this hearing? The creation of the ESRB, a self-regulatory organization that assigns ratings to video games in North America to this day.

Night Trap received a 25th anniversary edition in 2017 and can be played on PS4, PS Vita, PC and the Switch these days. Its ESRB rating? T for Teens...

GAMEPLAY | 14/20

Usually with my reviews, I talk about the story first, but I think this game should be discussed the other way round for clarity. As explained, this game is mainly a QTE game. Robbers (vampires) sneak around one of the eight rooms, sometimes on their own, sometimes in pairs. As soon as they reach a platform with a trap, a bar will turn from green to red, which is your cue to click on the screen. This activates the trap and a short clip of them being dropped into the floor, engulfed by a bookshelf or thrown out of the window is played, among others. During all of this, the main characters walk around the house and play out the story, at first oblivious to the dozens of robbers walking around the house.

What makes this game difficult are three things. First, at times, robbers show up on two of the eight screens. The traps don't activate after a set amount of time that they are on the screen. One trap might take 10 seconds to trigger for one robber, the other might just take 3 seconds to trigger it, meaning you might find yourself waiting to activate a trap on the wrong screen, therefore missing the trigger on the other. The game keeps a counter running of "Possible captures" and how many you actually captured. Capture too few and the game is over, requiring you to restart from the beginning unless you reach a checkpoint halfway through.

Second, the story is cheesy as hell but you of course don't know that at first, and when big moments happen, you find yourself suspensefully watching and missing out on the robbers sneaking through other screens in the meantime. Not letting this happen is one part of the challenge.

Finally, you don't just have to wait for a red light for your cue. That would be too simple. There is an additional colored code that you need to have selected for the triggers to work. There is orange, red, green, blue, yellow and purple to choose from. I believe there are 4 or 5 times during the game where the color changes. The only way to know which color you need to be on next is by listening to the characters. At very specific times in the story, they will talk to each other and say things they "I will change the code to green". If you miss this, all you can do at this point is just guess, which usually means you will miss a few traps.

I've heard plenty of things about this game since the release of its anniversary edition in 2017. A lot of it was and is negative. Having played this game myself, unbothered by the controversy and humored by its cheesy story and low production values, I don't really understand the hate. Is it a great game? Objectively, no. Is it bereft of fun? Absolutely not. I played this solo, but I can only imagine how hilarious this would have been had I played it with friends, which I plan on doing some time in the near future for sure.

The gameplay is extremely simple, but challenging and quite simply fun. Perception, quickness and a good memory will be the only skills you need in this game, and I really enjoyed how that translated. My only critique here would be that having to constantly check for robbers means you will not catch a lot of the story. Though I will go over that in the next part of this review.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10

The story in this game is cheesy, cringeworthy, trashy and plain bad. Let's get that out of the way first. As someone who can enjoy low production values from time to time though, I had my fun with it. You are part of the SCAT (Sega Control Attack Team for the Sega CD version, Special Control Attack Team for the others), which was alerted to the disappearance of teenagers at the Martin winery estate. As the game starts, a new group of teenagers are invited over to this place.

The SCAT team gives you the overseer role and tasks you with using the traps around the house on any suspicious people roaming about, whilst the overall goal is to keep track of the three teenagers and their two parents as they have a party with a suspected group of victims.

The game takes place in one continouus loop of roughly 25 to 30 minutes on 8 screens, each depicting a different area of the house. As you take care of the robbers/burglars/vampires, you also can simply switch to the screens with the main characters and listen in on their conversations. The problem is that most of the time, robbers are walking around, which means you can rarely listen to them for more than a few seconds uninterrupted. This has one good and one pretty bad point to it.

First, the good. If you fail to trap enough robbers, the game is over and you restart. This happened to me a few times, and with each run, I caught different conversations and learned more about the game's story, which mainly included hints given at the true nature of the hosts.

The bad is that the game's design pretty much doesn't allow you to catch all of the story unless you do dozens of playthroughs. Being stubborn and saying "I'll just listen for this next playthrough" doesn't work, because if you don't spend the time catching robbers, you get the Game Over screen after just a couple minutes. Personally, this wasn't a big deal to me because you don't end up missing much, the story isn't good and the gameplay was the fun part to me here either way, but how you feel about all this will depend on how OK you are with admittedly trashy games like this, which I personally think have their own charm, especially if the gameplay itself is, to this day, pretty unique.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10

This is an FMV game. An interactive movie. So while the acting wasn't great, voice acting WAS present here, which in itself is unique for this time. There isn't much of a soundtrack here. Most of what you will hear comes from a specific part of the game where the group of teenagers start singing. There are some horror themes that play whenever you are in a room with robbers though, which added something I'll call "funny tension" because they just walk in the weirdest way possible.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10

Hard to rate this part considering that this is an interactive movie. I'm giving it a 7 for the following reasons. First, I'm rating the setting of the game and the style of it all. It certainly has that 90s feel to it and is charmfully trashy. Second, the costume design and the walk/crawl mix that the robbers do is hilarious. Finally, the UI, which looks different depending on the version you play but succeeds in giving you a clear overview. Here I can only recommend going for the 25th anniversary edition at this point though, since that one actually has the screens at the bottom show what's going on in each room, while older versions only had a stock image displayed and made you memorize the exact timing and locations of when and where you would find the robbers.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10

If the atmosphere this game was going for was of the "comedy horror" genre, this works. You are part of the SCAT team, and you have sent a teenage girl in to aid you, so sometimes you will find her talking into the cameras and addressing you that way, which is a nice touch.

As for the suspects, they have an ominous presence to them in the way they walk and talk, they drink suspicious red liquid and there are some teases of their true nature every couple minutes which was pretty neat.

The SCAT team pulling the plug on you when you would let too many robbers pass by was also a nice touch, instead of getting a simple GAME OVER screen.

CONTENT | 7/10

There are 100 captures to be done in this game. If you want to try and get all of them, you can play this game for hours. In terms of your first full playthrough, you can expect 1 to 2 hours of gameplay. It's not much, but it's definitely the perfect amount for a game like this. That said, there isn't anything else to it besides the mouse clicking during appropriate times, so this game is what it is.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10

You have eight rooms to observe and need to do so with constant focus. Sometimes, the game cleverly takes your focus from you without you noticing, and half a dozen robbers scroll by before you notice. I found this to be a well designed game on that front on most levels, apart from the fact that the story cannot really be properly observed due to the constant interruptions.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10

This game was partly responsible for the creation of the ESRB, it is one of the most well-known FMV games of all time and it has the type of gameplay that (almost?) no other game has ever done. I can't say that a series of games like this would work, but for a one-time thing, this was a great concept.

REPLAYABILITY | 3/5

Replay value comes from all those extra story bits you'll get to see that you probably missed in earlier runs and from trying to capture all robbers.

PLAYABILITY | 5/5

Works well at all times.

OVERALL | 67/100

If you are OK with the low production values, the cheesiness and the one-dimensional gameplay, there is a good chance that you will have a fun 1 or 2 hours with this game. Personally, I had a blast, and I didn't expect that based on all the negative things I had heard about it.

(This is the 73rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)