Game 54: Escape From Monster Manor

Name:Escape From Monster Manor
Number:54
Year:1993
Publisher:EA
Developer:Studio 3DO
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:5/5
Time: 12 hours 10 minutes

There are three kinds of shooters that get under a ten on Almost a Famine; Games I just don't get, like the arcade titles; Games that are just old, like Battlezone; Games that are actually horrible to play and experience, like today's title. Why must I find a new low in the latter category monthly? New, from EA, the latest bottom of the barrel title. Escape From Monster Manor! Monsters that require absolute precision to kill! Levels that feel like inescapable hellscapes! A soundtrack that's just a bunch of people screaming! A joke fitting to the 3DO, a system known for FMV trash. Imagine being some guy who spent all that cash on this system, tired of the FMV crap, finally finds something resembling a good game, only to have reality cruelly crush his hopes and dreams.

Borrowed from Mobygames

 But, let's go over the claims on the back of the box first.

•  Its not that fast, in fact, its very slow compared to other games of its time. My neck's sore, but that's from staring at this piece of crap. I see nothing that couldn't be done elsewhere.
• Its not that fast, in fact, its very slow compared to other games of its time. My neck's sore, but that's from staring at this piece of crap. I see nothing that couldn't be done elsewhere.
• Battalions? Yeah. Shoot, would have used a Battalions of Fear joke if I knew that was the case. The clay was okay but the translucency was a problem.
• Enter at your own risk! Yeah.
• Discover keys...these are baic game elements.
• Use your map or you may be lost forever. True.
• Eerie music [...] set the mood. Is that mood lost in a theme park haunted house? Then yeah.
  
  

So, as you can tell, I'm not favorable towards this game. I never had a good opinion of it, but it still didn't make me hate the game. I only felt mediocre about it, not outright hatred. Then the spiders came, good god the spiders. You don't automatically hit them like the other enemies, you have to wait for them to attack. They have next to no rhyme or reason to their attacks. They jump around. This is all annoying when they're pressed against a corner, and you're waiting for them to start walking forward. The jumping is always to the right. The only guarantee is that they will attack just before they would be free of that corner, and they jump a lot when they're next to you. Imagine if in Doom the only effective strategy was to let an enemy attack you.

Oh, but I'm not done complaining here. The enemies were never good. Okay, stop-motion animation is underused in video games, and I have no feelings on the matter irregardless, but four enemies and four boss variants is nothing. One of the enemies, a skeleton in a robe, basically disappears halfway through the game or about 6 levels. That's three identical enemies. Remember that 1monster.wad? Where each level only has one enemy type? Try doing that for 9 or even 30 levels, Doom meisters. There's no AI, they just go straight at you. They're interesting in that they don't activate until you see them, well, slightly outside your sight range. A concession the game doesn't offer in reverse, they have small hitboxes for their sprites. Which makes hitting them tedious. And they stack up in a single space. That's right, those ghosts? There could be any number in a single tile from 1 to 100. Its noticeable with ghosts because there are many times when so many stack up their transparency effect disappears. Their attack naturally stacks too.

This isn't even the worst level

What really cemented my hatred of the game was the level design. It was never exciting, but it was playable. At the same time the spiders appeared every level turned into a maze. You know what's bad level design? Every corner hiding another enemy. You have to maintain vigilance at all times or you'll get hit by the something. And you can run past enemies, so you might end up getting a ghost behind you. They have a short recovery time, which is fun. But the mazes are all basically the same, here's a snaking corridor with enemies, here's a diagonal one, and here's the small item room it leads to. This wouldn't be so bad if they didn't decrease the gameplay speed of an already slow game to zero. The diagonals in particular just slow the game down.

Death screen

The difficulty of these levels is really schizophrenic too, you have some that barely offer any health and ammo, followed by some with them aplenty. And look at this screenshot of the map screen, its one of the later levels. Blocking scenery isn't shown on this map, so some of the shortcuts you might be seeing don't exist. These levels feel like they've been made solely to justify the cost of the game and to pad out the running time. Some of them take close to an hour to finish, and this is all if you don't die.

To top things off, the playing of this game is not the most satisfying experience in general. The game tries to put weight into everything, it takes a moment from you no longer pressing a movement key before the player stops. The gun pushes you back with every shot. These felt interesting at first but by the end just made it like running around with weights on your shoulders, or like being underwater. Not pleasant, regardless.

And then we have minor problems. Doors are only opened by keys, but beyond one level there's little point in the system. For a horror game, there's not much beyond minor window dressing. I don't care for the start button starting a new game on the menu, too many games have that as an accept button. The interface, while minimalist, does leaves me disoriented. It is cool that health is reflected by how damaged your hand is, but it just reminds me of Nitemare 3D again, and I really like that game.

Some of the sounds used in the game are from Doom. The wallhump sound effect is a pain effect here; The demon awakening sound effect is in one of the music tracks. My previous experience has no bearing on this, but they're not well-used here. Not that any of the sounds in the music tracks are used effectively, since they're background tracks. Its bizarre, what is it supposed to be? Are there actual people getting torn apart? Why am I not seeing them? Is it just the ghosts? Why are some of them doing that and not just attacking me? What reason is it there from a game perspective? How does hearing the sounds of gruesome death improve gameplay in any way whatsoever?

Weapons:
You have one weapon, a hitscan lightning pistol. There is no melee attack. Standard stuff, but wait, there's a problem, you have 100 ammo, but you drain 5 with each shot. That's 20 shots, ammo comes in 20 packs. It does feel weighty, but at the same time it doesn't feel powerful. 0/10

Enemies:
You've got four enemies, they're okay, melee and a ranged one. If the game just consisted of them, this would be acceptable. Certainly not good in any way: They're set up in precisely the most annoying placement at all times; They don't have long recovery periods; There can be many in a single square, troublesome for the ghosts; Their hitboxes seem very small compared to their sprites. No, what makes this category outright horrible are the spiders. You can't shoot at them unless they're attacking, and there's no set pattern to their attacks. While the ghosts were the most deadly, the spiders were just so tedious to deal with. 0/10

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
A new standard in bad level design has arrived. It starts off innocent enough, following standard level design, rooms, not great. If it was just that it'd get a few points...but by the halfway point each level is just an overwhelmingly long maze consisting of hundreds of enemies, barely enough ammo to kill them all, and just everything intended to shallowly increase level length. 0/10

Player Agency:
The player is very slow, turns very slow, moves very slow. These are big levels. I didn't find out until afterwards that there's a strafing function, the problem was due to my emulator not recognizing the shift keys properly. That doesn't really change anything, since strafing was never really necessary. Its faster though, curiously. 1/10

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
It starts off with a cookie-cutter Halloween theme, before turning into a haunted house theme park attraction theme...then finishes on a "I live next to a theme park, right next to their chainsaw bloody clown haunted house and their rollercoaster that they have to clean bodily fluids off every time it runs. Teenagers think my house is part of the park, and constantly try to break in. I want to move away, but I'm stuck at a dead end job, during the nightshift." 0/10

Graphics:
Everything looks much the same as everything else. There's no real variety to things, every part of the level looks much the same as a different part. There's little variety, and static props and enemies are consistent across all levels. Further, wall graphics at either side of the wall look weird in their distortions. A weird complaint, but its very distracting. 1/10

Story:
Cheesy narration aside, just a generic spooky mansion containing a magical item. The intro tries to go for a big payoff and the ending is more disappointing than a text endscreen. 0/10

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are fine, I guess. No enemy alert sound, which is a problem. The problem is the music, good god the music. Or soundtrack, since half of it isn't music. I never thought I'd say this, but you shouldn't have enemy sounds in your soundtrack. You shouldn't have scream sounds in your soundtrack. You shouldn't have any kind of sounds in your soundtrack that distract from the game itself. The music is generic, just harpsichord noodling. There's also not much of it, every track is really short as is the amount of them. 0/10

That is...2 out of 100. A new low in shooters. Would I recommend this? Yes...to game developers. This is the kind of crap you need to know to avoid. You don't necessarily need to know the good, you need to know what common pitfalls others have. What else can I say that no one else has said? Its really bad, that's what. My opinion is apparently unique. Judging by reviews both modern and vintage, I am the only person who thinks that. I also think this is the only review by someone who beat the game, so take those statements however you will. Although the official 3DO magazine in the UK gave it a 2 out of 10, which I think is most telling of all.

Of interest is the lead developer's own LP. It explains a lot of the problems I had with it. And a lot of things I didn't. Its worth listening to in the background on its own merits, if not because of the game, but because of the sheer amount of technical knowledge relating to 64 bit era. And it even explains the biggest problem. Turns out the game was developed in 6 months because the last game was something that would take them considerably longer than the amount of work they already put in. It should be noted that even he didn't beat this game.

As an aside, I've spent some time compiling what games on the 3DO I should be playing. There are an astonishing 44 games that I've put in my sights, and quite a few of them are actually pretty cool looking. That's not including some of the Japanese ones nobody has any info on, which I'll probably give a quick check to. What's more astonishing is the number of EA titles there are, surpassing the amount 3DO or Panasonic put on their own console. These are legit exclusives to the system, for the most part. The only thing I find curious is the lack of sports titles. I wonder if that contributed to the death of the console, as there aren't any beyond racing or golf games. I think mine and others mocking of the 3DO's library is unfair. However, feel free to continue mocking the CD-i and Jaguar.

As another aside, the level designers which crashed the lead's career; One of them would go on to working on Hellgate: London, Dragon Age II and Mass Effect 3. Which if you haven't played them, also have have tedious level design. I don't know if the same guy was responsible, but it seems a reasonable accusation. And another was one of the testers. Sigh...

Next time...something better, which statistically, has to be true.

Escape From Monster Manor: Hiding Behind Locked Doors

This isn't supposed to be like one of those internet funnyman shows. I'm not supposed to be finding a new masterpiece of suck, I'm supposed to be finding hidden gems. You and I know there's nothing good hidden in the rest of this game.

That's spooky, I'll give 'em that. And the music isn't some annoying garbage anymore. It actually is starting off competently...which is strange at this point. Nothing in the imminent area, followed by a series of rooms full of spiders. They jump down from the ceiling, and they do that at precisely one block away from the far end of the area. Its precision, but its clever...wait, I just called this game clever. Its getting more suspicious. Ghosts appear, but they're usually in a reasonable location, not dozens of hiding places in a 6x6 room. Ammo galore. Oh, no, what is going to happen? What awful monsters are hiding here?

But no, it continues being good. A maze that's actually good, a new kind of door. Level design linking back on itself that, surprisingly, isn't done in the confusing way it was in previous levels. This isn't to say that it redeems the game, but now the only problems are due to the game's non-level related elements, ones that are inherent to other parts of the game. Like ghost transparency or having to backtrack for ammo. I do die once, but I can honestly say that's my own fault.

There's a big treasure room near the boss of this floor. Its interesting...and yet, its not a prelude to something horrible. Same old boss, same old.

Lone Catacomb...what, Creepy Catacomb was too on the nose? This is where they're getting too clever with key placement for their own good. All the items, rather. The opening area is a large circle, there are doors leading inside the circle, and doors leading outside the circle. The doors inside all seem to lead to ammo and health, but require two keys and have no keys inside. The doors on the outside require one key, but offer little if any health and ammo, further, they're not guaranteed to have keys inside them.

This kills me. There's just no ammo and health here. I guess the idea is you're here good enough to beat this level with that ammo or you're just supposed to avoid doors that don't have the goods you need. Several times, I've had to get enemies away from the path forward or just rush past them. This isn't good. I've been through most of this level and I've seen nothing of the medallion piece or the exit. You're not supposed to be playing a level just to bypass most of it on the final try. That's not good game design. At least, its not good game design nine levels in with no hint of this being the ideal playstyle. I am not even sure this level is possible. It doesn't feel possible.

In the interesting of saving my time, I decide to do what any good reviewer would do when faced with an insurmountable task, cheat himself full ammo, turn off the in-game music and start blasting to the sweet sounds NWOBHM sounds of Satan. There are a few things I learn. One, Satan instantly makes any game better. Two, if you fire fast enough the game momentarily craps itself, cool. Three, the exit on this level is at the end of a long hallway. A long hallway the longest damn hallway in any game I've ever seen. See, the problem with these twisty hallways where behind every corner is another enemy is that the way back is incredibly boring. Four, the medallion piece is at the center of a maze.
The perfect playthrough of this level requires you go into that maze, never miss, go to the northeastern outer door, because the one to the left of it is blocked from the exit, never miss, and somehow beat the boss. Presumably at some point a human being played this and thought this was okay. I'm still going to try to legit beat the rest of the levels, with the actual sound, but I'm not upset I cheated to beat this one.

Last group of levels. First, Tombs of Doom. Now we're rhyming? This reminds me a lot of Nitemare 3D. Spooky outdoor garden was a significant amount of gameplay there. It also suffered from having no melee weapon, but it made up for that in other ways. Here I'm just seeing what lovely things I'll be killing ten hours later. Feels like the head monsters have a little delay before you can kill them now, but nothing interesting so far. Scratch that, that's just the first two.

Now I realize what the problem with the enemies is, they have no alert sound! Explains why I've had so much trouble with enemies sneaking up on me. Its a curious combination. Not unlike Catacomb Abyss, and yet, Abyss was ten times better. An interesting thing in the opening hedgemaze, doors that open when you're a certain distance from them, but closed otherwise. You'd think they'd plot a better use of it before now, but I'm not a professional level designer or anything. The level's proceeding as these usually do, tedious, obnoxious, but not offensive. Ammo is sometimes in short supply, as are keys, but I generally have enough for the most part. My fears of a large generous ammo supply before a huge battle turns out true. A dozen ghosts, plus two boss ghosts, in a room just filled with ammo. I don't know how many there are, they cluster together. Which makes them hit hard and are generally annoying to kill. I don't die to that, I kill them all, no, I die because one of the heads one shots me from full health. I think I'm done playing this level legit. Its not that this level is some nightmarishly difficult thing, I just want to end this with a win. I turn the music off again too, this time for some Saviour Machine. There's just not much to the level after that, I almost had it beat. Turns out about a fifth of the area is completely unnecessary, but you're not going to find that out unless you go there first. The narrator is apparently a music track, figures.

The next and I hope final level, I turn back on the in-game music, it seems like a new track, but I'm keeping infinite ammo, because screw these spiders. The level is "Ghastly Graveyard", and it lives up to that name. When it isn't just another hedgemaze. So many enemies seem unreachable by design, and I'm not sure if I'll ever reach them. Small concern. I discover, much to my distaste, that the game is slowing down a lot on this level. I don't know if that's the emulator's fault or not, I really don't care too much, but it did result in my death, I can't shoot because of it. Only sometimes though, but it turns battles that really shouldn't be deadly into deadly battles.

I find it just another sign of bad game design that even after getting an unfair advantage I still have to be completely alert on every corner. SWAT 4 is less stressful than this game. Eventually comes a more crypt-styled section. I find it not a good sign that I have 7 keys at this point. I also consider it bad that it took me nearly 90% of the game to find the medallion piece. I think its in absolutely the longest possible place for it to be.

Do you really wanna know what the ending is? Shiny mansion, "You have collected the talisman, but for how long?" I mean, why bother making an ending when nobody is ever going to see it. At least its not a stupid win screen...yippee. As meaningful as the end boss. Note I did not mention the end boss before now, because it was the same boss as every level.

Final Time: 12 hours 10 minutes

Escape From Monster Manor: Key Hunt

As an aside, I made a few mistakes during screenshot selection for this entry, confusing some from a later level for these levels. I'm not even sure I got the right levels here to begin with. I think that says something about this game's level design, and its not good.

Another day, another level. These levels seem to be two in the same style, then a style change. This is another long large crypt. I'm pretty sure this game had the most testers of all the games I've played. Why does it have worse quality control than even one-man operations? Its not complex or anything like that. This level features the return of the spiders, and yet, its so much easier than the first spider level. Oh, no, the soundtrack has the Doom demon awakening sound effect in it. That is some unlucky game design right there. Its not even music at this point, just a heartbeat sound effect, storm and screams.

That's not even getting into this level. Its an absolute nightmare. Its an endless maze. Corridors that loop back on themselves, corridors that look the same, and the corridor that you didn't go down had all the ammo. It feels like there's just not enough ammo here. Look at this map, its exactly the same in the areas I didn't put down. What makes this level troublesome is not the difficulty of it, its not that difficult, just long. Long levels like this are the kind I miss being able to save anywhere in. I have to be really precise with the spiders, or I'll waste too much ammo on them. If I waste too much ammo on them, I won't have enough for the ghosts, but if I don't do it quickly enough, I won't have enough health for the ghosts. None of my deaths are actually related to this, they're all out of ammo deaths or the one time I ran past a ghost, and ended up getting backstabbed while not understanding what was going on.

What when through the minds of this level's authors, I wonder? Did they realize this level was trash, but were forced to put it in due to time/difficulty? Or were they naive, thinking they were creating some great difficult level or something? I can offer no answer to this, but none of the employees on this game worked on many shooters. I'm not happy when I finally finish it. What's next, I wonder, something about jewels adoring my corpse. Greed is a sin, so roughly the narrator is saying now. As if I would care if I didn't get points for it. As if I care at that.

Grotty Grotto. Yeah, they have names, I just don't really give a crap. Oh, I'm sorry, there's a monster at the start. Just mark off another bad level design choice. The level is split at the start, one half leading to the exit, another leading to a spiral mine containing the medallion piece. The mine has doors, but you don't have enough keys to handle that properly entering, and exiting who cares at this point? I wonder if this section inspired Junji Ito to make Uzamaki? You know, like "Hang on, this is a spiral and I feel like I'm in Hell. I know! I'll make a story out of this."

The boss is put in a questionable place here, a shifting corridor. Many enemies have been placed in such places before, but a boss? I didn't even know that was possible, but there you go. The level end narration just waxes on about health and ammo.

The second cave level, "Cave Grave", hyuk hyuk hyuk, is another long twisting level. So many twists. Its a repeat of the track with the narrator on it. At least there's music, I guess. Its just heads and spiders here, which technically means all enemies are ranged, but the spiders have such short range it doesn't matter. I'd like to go a level without having to take a look at the near left or right whenever I enter a room, because that trick is getting old and tedious. Much like the rest of this game. There is scarcely enough ammo to get by. By this time, I know whether or not some side rooms have ammo or just treasure, but I go through the treasure rooms anyway, so enemies don't come back to bite me.

These skulls seem absolutely impossible to hit at times. At first I thought it was just because I was clipping the walls, but then I started noticing it happening elsewhere. Enemies I had the tip of my gun pointed at, with nothing in the way. I think there's possibly something funny going on, especially when they attack. Its nearly impossible to hit them when they're throwing out a huge burst of projectiles. I think this is because the projectiles have a hitbox, but they don't get destroyed when that happens. This is just cruel game design. The objective of this level is to find two keys at the end of this huge maze, because the level exit and the medallion piece are near the starting point, just behind a door. Even managing to actually complete this bad boy took a hour, and there's just little strategy to this game beyond looking out for gotcha traps. Turning around? Oh, there's a guy I missed. Returning to get more ammo? Whoops, spiders. Look at this map. This is what hell is. This is what hell is.

The final boss are two of the heads, only now they're stronger. I didn't have enough ammo for them, but I did manage to bypass them. Seems like they're not necessary to beating the level. Good. That was much longer than necessary. This is the kind of crap you need to relax from. Brutal death metal is more melodic than this stuff.

This Session: 3 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 6 hours 50 minutes

Escape From Monster Manor: Jumping Spiders

Oh, good, more yelling in the background. Wait, what even is this music? Its got the usual slow Halloween noise for a slow section, then it goes into double time and the narrator says "Tread carefully, now". Electronic Arts published this crap, folks. Pretty sure these animated heads are in time to the music, but I also don't really care. They're just here to be spooky.

Look, ghosts. Actual freaking sheet ghosts. Electronic Arts published this crap, folks. When they die, the sound they make is that generic "ooooo" ghosts make that no reasonable person would ever say if someone wasn't offering them money. The ghosts are faster, but otherwise not different than the other dudes.
This level tries to be a lot more open-ended. I don't think I mentioned it in the first entry, but in this game, every door is opened by a key. Any key, they're all generic. The way this level is open is there are a dozen or so doors, many of which lead to exactly the same location. Here, that means you have quite a few more keys than you really need if you're not opening doors you don't need to open. Oh, and one of the doors has nothing but a key inside, which would have been fine if I didn't miss it the first time and walk all the way back there. That's not a fun proposition when this mansion is apparently next to a theme park. I'm not terrified, I want to move to someplace less annoying.

By the end of the level, I have a headache, a few narrow scrapes with death, and a distaste for the game. I'm starting to notice that enemies are awakening slightly outside of the player's vision. Its playable, certainly, but its not something I enjoy playing. The boss is a reskin of the ghost. Yippee. The narrator says something about spiders. Things underfoot.

Oh, look, obvious foreshadowing is obvious. Granted, this first group of enemies nearly gets me, but there isn't much difference from what the narrator said. This isn't going to be anything but a generic Halloween-style horror game, and its going to rigidly stick to that format. You've got to wait for the spiders to jump, they shoot venom for reasons, which has a very obvious problem. I consider myself an average player, in terms of skill. I feel like I have to time things absolutely perfectly in order to hit these things. They're random in attacking, and I'm hitting my limit for reaction time. Not to mention they dodge after attacking, so if they aren't in a hallway you aren't hitting them. I get killed multiple times because these guys just can't be killed in a reasonable way.

So much for playable. If it isn't regular death, its death by a lack of ammo. This is level 4. These are going to be all over the rest of the game, aren't they? You might be thinking, just go to the location of the medallion and the exit, problem solved. Yeah, no. The way this level is set up, you absolutely need all the ammo here. Even with that its very touchy. My ultimate solution to the spider problem is getting them up close and hoping I hit them before they hit me, they seem to be less random in that case. Speaking of random, it seems like the enemy placement is slightly randomized each time. Several times enemies weren't where they were before. By the time I finally finish the level I barely make it out, grateful that the yet again generic boss is a generic boss. I guess the playtesters had a much easier time of it than I did. the narrator goes off about something, but I miss it, grateful to save.

The next level, in comparison, is considerably easier. Imagine the secret crypt level from Heretic, but done in the Wolfenstein engine, badly. No spiders, despite being a crypt with ample opportunity to put them in. Just ghosts and the floating heads. A couple of interesting things here, firstly, see-thru walls. No, not that impressive, but considering the tech this game has, impressive, some enemies are hidden inside these kinds of rooms, a few are blocked off entirely. The things you can deal with when you don't have an end of level enemy percentage. Secondly, if you're smart, you can rack up a lot of spare keys. Several doors are literally pointless, they just open to a wall. This would be clever if the map didn't show what was behind a door. I manage to get through this level quickly, owing to the rather non-descript location of the exit and luck. Oh, no, my perfect score.

This Session: 2 hours 30 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 20 minutes

Escape From Monster Manor: Cheesy Immortals

Ah, the 3DO...or is it 3D0? I never know. Released in 1993 as a sort of "mature" video game console; It was plagued with the sorts of problems all early CD-based consoles had, 700 MB of space and nary a clue of what to do with it. Keep in mind, your typical non-CD title reached 4 MB at this time. Its no surprise that FMV shovelware littered these consoles. Makes that price of 699$ in '93 money a hard sell.
Now, of course there were actually good games released on the 3DO, because you don't last 3 years on shovelware alone, its just that if you're not rich, little justifies the pricetag. I have a favorite on the console and I wouldn't pay that price...probably because it was ported to Windows later. But today's not that favorite, today's Escape From Monster Mansion. I'm in a mansion and I need to find talisman pieces to stop an ancient evil. That sounds suspiciously like a certain shareware PC game I just finished that wouldn't cost me the same as a decent stereo setup.

 

An intro cutscene, making real use of that CD. There's a cheesy narrator talking up the horrors of the mansion. He's some immortal who tells us we shouldn't be scared, we should be terrified. He goes on to explain the backstory, the talisman was created by a cult for some reason, which protected them against evil. But they were consumed by greed and lust for power, so they torn the talisman apart. This rendered it useless, and caused evil to rise. I'm not entirely clear on what happens next, but the person who brought all the fragments together put them in this mansion, his descendants fled when evil returned, a dark god approaches, and this place is too dangerous even for an immortal. That's either a lie or the truth, but we'll see soon enough. Before I get into it, I should mention the game let's you practice each individual level. Interesting.

It starts off good, no monsters in sight. I get used to the controls. A typical setup I believe. Movement, shooting. But curiously there are three menus. One that just pauses, one that returns to the main menu, one that brings up supplies, from there you can bring up the map.

I walk around a little, there's a spirit phasing in and out of visibility, but he's just scenery. The real monsters are these hilarious claymation puppets. I think they're claymation anyway. They die in one hit, and whenever you get hit you give off the Doom wall-humping sound effect, among others. They approach on Catacomb rules, you see them, they attack, you don't everything's fine.

Its a fairly standard Wolf clone set in a mansion so far. Spooky scenery, like this hanged dude, or chairs rocking by themselves. Its a play for points deal, so there is a lot of treasure. The hand reminds me of the one in Nitemare 3D...but it couldn't be the same...could it? I guess the guy behind that has cribbed a few things, but that's fairly major. Anyway, the game itself feels very weighty. The player has momentum in movement and the gun pushes the player back a bit, even though its a lightning gun and there's no reason for it.

There's very little complexity to this game, just walk along a hallway, kill enemies, find items. There are health and ammo items. I like how a sound plays if you have full health/ammo and run one over. Even the boss is simplicity itself, zap him a dozen times, then exit the level.

At the end of the level the narrator talks about the guy who entered before me, and how he's dead. Okay. That's something I needed to know, game. It appears saving only happens between levels. I think the 3DO has a lot of save space for its time, but I could be wrong, its not like I'm playing it on original hardware.

 

The next level throws out screams and monsters eating people into the background track. That's effective for a level, but I see this going badly if it returns. This level proves more tricky, although its still not very complex. Nothing's ever in the middle of a series of rooms. It opens with three doors, and the one on the right fully opens. It gets tricky in that here the doors are some considerable ways apart. I say tricky, because I thought I missed a door somewhere, but it turns out I didn't. Come to think of it, that might be a subtle sign this isn't that bad.

Once again, the same boss. He got some backup. I didn't mention them before, but there are these skulls that are ranged enemies. They start off human-looking before turning into the skulls. They hit hard, but that wasn't what was tricky here. No, the tricky part is that I run out of ammo. There's no melee weapon, not that you'd want to use it. I have to go back, grab ammo, then come back.

Eventually the lack of supplies hits me hard and the skulls actually kill me. That hand gets pretty beat up, making the whole HUD very subtle, although you can use the supply menu to see the values. However, the skull on the game over screen looks very familiar. Hmm...it must be a stock effect of some kind. Maybe in another EA game...hmm...The second time around I don't have much trouble, probably because I better ration ammo.

This Session: 50 minutes