The 7th Guest

The Good
The 7th Guest was amazing for its day. It may not have been the first multimedia title, but it defined the term and set the standard for many years. High-resolution video (albeit letterboxed), rich MIDI music score, and lavishly-detailed rendered scenes simply hadn't existed before 7th Guest--or if they did, certainly not all in the same title. (And certainly not working on a single-speed CDROM drive on a 386!)

7th Guest contained a system where you could bypass a puzzle if it was too hard. But doing so got you an "alternate" ending that wasn't as enjoyable as the original ending. To the victor go the spoils...

The Bad
People tend to be more vocal about what is wrong with a game than what is right. Sadly, I'm no exception. Don't get me wrong: The 7th Guest is a great title that people owe it to themselves to play... it's just that there are some things that could have been improved that were completely unrelated to the fact that it was a first-generation product:

• The acting. I don't know if Trilobyte was either short on cash, inexperienced, or simply didn't have a large cache of talent to pool from, but it shows.
• Insanely impossible puzzles. Just when you think you've got them all figured out, the microscope puzzle hits you. Based on the Ataxx/Othello game variant, this puzzle has the difficultly dialed way up. While that puzzle isn't required to finish the game, the Knights puzzle is. The Knights puzzle, I have concluded, is unsolvable by human intellects.
• Navigation. You are forced to watch the movement from location to location. It is completely possible, technologically, to simply include a full final frame of the animation and just jump there.

The Bottom Line
A must-play. You owe it to yourself to play the title that defined the 'multimedia' industry for years to come.

The Good
'The 7the Guest' is an interesting history lesson, and a fascinating glimpse into what seemed to be the future, 1994-style. Coming out at a time when the fast-moving polygons of 'Alone in the Dark' were a novelty for the PC, '7th' used breathtaking, fully-rendered backdrops which your viewpoint swept between, as you navigated a haunted house. At the time, it seemed magical, and the fact that the 'game' is essentially a series of complex logical puzzles strung together took a while to filter through. After an ecstatic critical reception, the game fell so far in people's eyes that the sequel (the '11th Guest') was virtually booed off the stage. Of the 'Interactive CDROM game' genre it spawned, 'Myst' and 'Riven' became huge freak hits, but that was about it. Nowadays it's quite nostalgic, but not actually much fun. In its favour, it's still quite atmospheric.

The Bad
Bad things? Once you accept its nature, it's technically competent, although the acting is diabolical.

The Bottom Line
Odd early history lesson, and primary cause of 'Interactive CDROM' mania.

The Good
"The 7th Guest" was one of the first CD-ROM based computer games to really demonstrate the advantages of abandoning the traditional floppy and 3.5 disk medium. The game's full motion video clips and computer generated rooms, CD-quality music, sound effects and the risque horror themes were all really cutting edge for the computer gaming industry.

The Bad
The technological breakthroughs displayed in this game are probably lost on many contemporary gamers. First generation Full Motion Video (FMV) was no where near movie quality and almost all FMV games had B-acting and production values. While the sound effects and music are still impressive, modern gamers will likely judge "7th Guest" in terms of gameplay and horror themes. The puzzles that existed in each room tended to be very challenging and only provided short FMV clips as a reward. While the horror themes were pretty cutting edge at the time, all of the game's supernatural elements, mild profanity and sexual innuendos may seem tame in comparison to subsequent CD game such as, "Phantasmagoria 2", "Resident Evil" and "Grand Theft Auto".


The Bottom Line
"The 7th Guest" earns a place in gaming history for its ambitious usage of the CD-ROM medium. New technology had made this game possible and the creators of "The 7th Guest" showed us just how this new technology could change gaming. Today, the game may have lost some of its dazzle but it is still fun to play if you are up to facing the difficult puzzles and the mildly risqué mystery and intrigue.

The Good
7th Guest is a fantastic visual game. Back when games were on floppies, here this one comes on a CD! The technological leap ot CD based games had arrived. For better or worse, now we are stuck with them.

The graphics for its time are astounding. A fully rendered 3D house with intricate puzzles and ghost like actors. It amazes me just walking around in the game how fluid the graphics were... and this was 7 years ago.

The gameplay... hmmm... How to sum it up. It was unique. If you are into puzzles... especially in the mathematical puzzle-type books, you could probably find all the solutions at your local library (or in my case, I had solved them originally on paper - check the telescope puzzle for an example). Some original puzzles were good, including the Coin/Card flipping puzzles.

Sound was eerie. Period. The "Come Baaaaack!" When you leave the game sends chills down my spine every time I hear it. And the background music is creepy in a childish way - which fits right into the game itself :)

The Bad
Some of the puzzles - as mentioned in other reviews - are too darn hard. The telescope game is one I NEVER solved. If you like Othello/Ataxx, then you got this one solved, but the AI in that game alone ruined the "move around the house and solve puzzles" mood for me.

The control - as in walking around the house - could be very difficult at times. It only took a single click of the mouse to go from Point A to Point B, and if you didn't want to go there, well tough... you went anyway. It could get very frustrating trying to move around the house.

The actors could have been better, and the plot was decent, but seemed very vague and fractured. Maybe because of the puzzles you chose to solve and the order that they are solved in?

The Bottom Line
Depends on your taste. This is pure puzzle solving extravaganza with a decent plot woven in. Like puzzles? This ground-breaking game is for you. Dislike puzzles? Try a different game.

The Good
The puzzles and soundtrack were great. The effects were pretty good too. If you haven't found him yet... look out for the stupid dog (Was it a dog?) that scared the bejeezus out of me at 2am all those years ago (I still laugh at myself today for it).

The Bad
Yeah, the acting was bad. The interactivity of the game wasn't the best either.

The Bottom Line
All of the puzzles are solvable, although some are more difficult than others. I was able to solve all of the puzzles by myself at the age of 13/14 when the game first came out. For it's time, this game was one of the best I have ever played. Certain parts still creep me out to this day. This was the first good puzzle game I had played. Like stated earlier by others, the "kids" today may not dig this game, but I know some of the people my age would still play it.

The Good
revolutionary graphics; heralding a new era in gaming history

The Bad
puzzles can be stupid and boring at times

The Bottom Line
A must play; if only for historic reasons

The Good
At the time, this game was known for having great graphics and sound. I guess that should count for something. Oh, and at times it's also extremely challenging.

The Bad
Well, basically this game represents almost everything that was bad with the early cd-rom era. A lot of flash but no fun. The intro movie had real actors, but man was it boring. The game itself had a story, also played out by actors, but the story is far from compelling, and the actors suck. Furthermore the quality of the videos isn't very good. But worst of all, this isn't fun to play. Just walk around in a pre-rendered (but ugly) house and solve tedious puzzles. When you solve a puzzle you are rewarded with one of those terrible video sequences and off you go to the next boring puzzle. This is just as bad as Myst, and at the time, almost as popular. I'm the first to admit it, I just don't get it. This is supposed to be a horror game. The only horrific thing about it is the boredom it generates. And, of course, the awful and extremely ugly design. Those mid 90's cd-rom graphics, how I do hate them.

The Bottom Line
A very not at all scary horror game. And not fun to play either. Very popular, and a classic, though, for some strange reason. It's a strange world.

The Good
This is the first CD-Rom game I ever played. It was a mind blowing experience. The spooky narrator told the story of Stauf, complete with video and foley sounds. As you wandered around the house, you would stumble across puzzles that would unlock doors and show videos of the seven guests.

As you would solve puzzles, Stauf's disembodied voice would taunt you when you lost. Normally I would find that feature annoying, but the actor performing the voice of Stauf was so hammy that you couldn't help but enjoy it.

The very best part of this game was the soundtrack. The Fatman and Team Fat managed the impossible. They created a brilliant, immersive set of themes that translated very well through the imfamous FM midi chips that were ubiquitious at the time.

Gramme Devine designed a video compression that worked pretty well for a 486. The video was the best at the time.

The Bad
This game was pretty difficult to get running. The Dos limitations required a lot of work to free up enough conventional ram. (Bill Gates fault more than anything.) The game was also very picky about the video configuration. If you didn't have enough ram on the video, the game wouldn't run.

And there's this one puzzle, the puzzle that just can't be solved.

The Bottom Line
Blast from the early days of Multimedia. I doubt kids would like this game, but its great for nostalgia minded folks like me.

The Good
Aah, The 7th Guest :-) I bought it a few months after we bought a single speed CD-ROM-equipped 386 in 1993. The game cost a fortune (330 shekels - today's equivallent of about $80), and - since I bought it in the middle of a school day - brought a huge amount of attention to the little package.

The game simply blew me away - smooth (not 100% on my single-speed though), beautiful animations, actual video (which was, for the time, a technological breakthrough) and very difficult gameplay. The music was so dramatic and enveloping I still listen to the CD soundtrack to this day.

The Bad
Some of the puzzles are just damn difficult, most mention-worthy is the microscope puzzle in the basement which is just DIFFICULT. I did finish the game eventually, and I still find it an awesome experience at 1am with the lights out and volume cranked up...

Also, I have to agree with Jim - the actors are rather terrible.

The Bottom Line
A wonderful experience you will never forget.

The Good
The atmosphere and riddles where fantastic for their time and the ghostly animation was one of the first interactive little movies we ever saw. Also the playing hours where reasonable, probably because of some hard riddles.

The Bad
People of the new generation that didn't like the game because they didn't play it at that time and get mentally frustrated because of it's success, It deserved it greatly.

A mess to config the right graphical card (same for 11th hour) at that time. Some puzzles are real HARD. We wanted more rooms more riddles.

A kind of game that dissapeared in these times, only Pandora Box from Microsoft did a little bit look a like game with many puzzles

The Bottom Line
The creation of the interactive video games