Night Trap

The Good
Woah!!!! O_O Its an interactive cheesy 80's horror flick!! >< These are real actors doing the scenes so it really does feel like an interactive movie! =D I laughed my ass off watching those cheesy early 90's girls "party". Its so weird to see stuff like this in a video game. Night Trap is truly quite the unique game. And... OMG... I am totally in love with the lip synching girl!! The one that screams 80's with her looks. You should see her acting! x_x

The Bad
The only downside is that it has two drawbacks. The first one is the lack of replay value. --;; Capturing gets quite repetitive. The second drawback is not being able to catch every aspect of the storyline in just 1 game because clips often play at the same time as others. It all depends on which room you decide to watch at a given time. You need to play the game several times to catch everything that goes on.

The Bottom Line
There are 8 rooms (outside, two hallways, bedroom, family room, kitchen, bathroom, staircase). The point of the game is to prevent as many creeps (the people dressed in black) as possible from going into the house and entering hidden passages (the house appears to be some kind of secret enemy lair). Each room randomly has things going on like the characters doing stuff and invaders coming in. You can only watch one room at a time. During a "creep scene" you have 1 chance and 1 second to execute the trap. BUT the trap will not work if your color code does not match the color code of the trap system. It starts out Blue but characters change it constantly. They say out loud what the new color is, but you won't know if you're not watching the room at the time.

The Good
This game, along with Mortal Kombat and several other more "gory" titles were reviewed by the US Congress in order to determine the video game ratings system as we know it today.

The idea here is that kids have been disappearing from this mansion, which happens to have a security system connected to video systems, and an elaborate trapdoor system. You've been "plugged in" to that network, and it's your job to protect the girls from would-be predators.

The particular scene that the Congress was interested in was the part where a girl comes out of the shower and is attacked by masked assailants.

The Bad
The acting. Okay, look at the box cover up there. Does that look like good acting? Yeah, that's basically the whole game. It's a gaggle of teen girls screaming and running away from guys dressed all in black. Let's face it, though.. we're not playing this game for the acting now are we?

The Bottom Line
This game is hilarious. Not just to play, but to watch. It's one of those games that is full motion video, and then the decisions you make cause different portions of video to play. You basically just wait till the right moment and push a button.

It's not as easy as it sounds, especially when you're laughing so hard at the dialogue.

This thing is a riot, especially when you have a large group watching. Try it out if you can find it!

The Good
The game DOES capture that horrible eighties slasher movie feel... because, in many ways, that's exactly what it is. It even declares on the box that it contains an hour and a half, almost, of real video footage... which is about how long most bad eighties slasher movies WERE.

Oh, and it has Dana Plato in it, which most eighties horror movies did not, but could have. It does bolster that "cheesy eighties" feel.

This could be a personal problem on my part... but the acting REALLY began to grate on me after a while. I mean, MOST bad eighties horror movies didn't have Laurence Olivier or Katharine Hepburn in them, but these actors make those bad slasher movie actors SEEM like they should be getting knighthoods from the Queen or something... I mean, they're BAD!

The Bad
This game, in many ways, exemplifies what's worst about full-motion-video computer games -- its lack of interactivity. In many ways, it feels like being stuck in a Motel 6 somewhere, with a TV set, and only eight channels. Seven of these channels are in fact hooked up to security monitors showing empty rooms elsewhere in the Motel 6, and one channel is showing the WORST sorority massacre slumber party movie you've ever seen.... and there's no way to speed things up. Much of the game is simply... waiting. This is NOT a winning recipe for a game.

The Bottom Line
The game sets you up as a member of a vampire hunters' organization. You are watching secret monitors set up at a house where a slumber party is going on.

The house actually belongs to a mob of vampires, who have set up the cameras and a series of traps, to catch the teen girls and drain them for later consumption... but YOU have hacked into their system, and will now use those monitors to track the VAMPIRES... and the traps to catch them!

Basically, you switch through a series of eight monitors, trying to catch that exact moment on any given monitor when a vampire will wander by so you can spring a trap on him. To win, catch all the vampires. To lose... simply let ONE coed get shellacked, and that's it.

The Good
Night Trap is the game that is famous for being famous. Parents and politicians, on the political left and right, used it as the poster child of an industry that (they felt) was out of control. Its place in gaming history is reason enough to give it a try. Compared to the original Sega CD version, the DOS version features superior graphics, an on-screen map, the ability to pause the game and a nice little documentary about the controversy that Night Trap generated.

The Bad
Night Trap follows a certain format that became all too common with these "interactive movies". Success depends on your ability to memorize the right order required to switch between a series of hidden cameras. If you trap enough yuppie vampires, protect the sexy co-eds and switch to the proper the security code you will save the day. Little free time exists to follow the B-minus, 1980's storyline and if you memorized the order on the Sega CD version, then you will find little challenge on the DOS.

The Bottom Line
Night Trap is famous for being famous. While the full motion video never went beyond a PG or PG-13 content rating, the technology was so advanced, for its day, that it became used as a scapegoat by a laundry list of parents, teachers, media critics and politicians. The game is worth playing for its history, especially if you enjoy these type of full motion video games. However, the game is not really that scary and its replay value is limited.

The Good
Night Trap was probably the first Full Motion Video game released for a home console, CD-ROM system. As games started to make the transition to the CD format, consumers eagerly looked at what this "Next Level" of gaming would offer.

Slasher film fans will recognize the game's storyline. Sexy college co-eds are vanishing. Local law enforcement is baffled, so a special military unit has been assigned to crack the case by focusing on the one thing that seems to link these disappearances: a Yuppie family and their lakeside cabin.

The special, top-secret military unit has set up hidden cameras throughout the cabin and you, with a little help from an undercover agent, have to switch between the cameras to protect the new batch of college co-eds.

It seems that the seemingly all-American Yuppie family are really vampires who, with an army of goofy-looking minions, have been devouring the nation's all-American, wholesome youth!

The Sega 32X edition of the game features much better Full Motion Video, in comparison to the original Sega CD version. This is because the 32X device can display over 32,000 colors on screen, while the Sega CD can only display 64 colors on screen.

The Bad
Night Trap is a B-minus slasher film earning a PG-13 rating. Despite the controversy that surrounded the video game, complete with Congressional hearings, the player is much more likely going to laugh at the cheesy production values, than find anything in this game comparable to an R-rated slasher film. It seems that the Next Level of gaming was mostly harmless.

As with other Full Motion Video games, the actual level of interactivity is pretty limited to switching between cameras, trapping a villain or overhearing a conversation. Little room for error exists and once you get past the initial awe at playing an interactive movie, Night Trap is not especially fun to play.

Either you fail to protect the kids (and have to re-watch the same video clips over and over again), or you manage to memorize when you need to visit a particular camera (and thus are treated to a fairly tame mystery).

The Bottom Line
Night Trap defined the interactive movie genre, helped pave the way for video game ratings and is so cheesy, you may wonder why this game has never been riffed by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 folks. Students of video game history should give this game a try, but if you want to see R-rated horror and suspense in a video game, I would suggest trying Resident Evil instead.