Corridor 7: Alien Invasion

The Good
The first thing I noticed about Corridor 7 is the lengthy cut-scene showing what happens. A space ship goes to Mars. There, a team of scientists finds a mysterious object and return it to Earth to store in a research facility. The object opens up a portal to the aliens homeworld, and the aliens jump in and chaos erupts. This scenario is not new to me, since I have played games that have a similar storyline. This story, however, helps set the atmosphere, making you want to start your mission straight away.

Your mission is to destroy as many aliens as you can. Somewhere on the floor is a floor plan that will extend your proximity map, helping you locate all aliens on the floor, not just the one. You can view the proximity map while you are playing the game, and this saves you from having to press a key to view it, like other first-person shooters around its time.

The only weapon that you carry at first is your shotgun, but as you travel between floors, you will be able to pick up much, powerful weapons. Once you have destroyed all aliens on the floor, you gain elevator clearance, meaning you can can find the elevator and get to the floor below. You usually go to another floor using the same elevator you came out of.

The enemies are quite colorful. They range from floating eyeballs and Gremlin-like creatures, to aliens that morph into everyday objects to horrendous beasts. There are usually bosses every five levels, and these bosses take quite a pounding. The more you use your weapon to kill aliens, the more its ammo is going to be wasted, which is all the more reason why you should refill your ammo by getting it from storage units or from alien charge packs.

You may remember an old high school saying “Mates always stick together”, in which your friends always protect each other. This statement also applies to Corridor 7. When you kill an alien with one of your weapons, other aliens that heard your weapon going off will come out of their rooms nearby and hunt you down. And more often than not, there is more than one of them coming after you at once. This is proof that the enemy AI is smarter than those from past first-person shooters. Another example is when they just come up and start shooting from behind you, forcing you to quickly turn around and start pumping bullets into them.

The graphics are very good, and they make you feel that you are walking in a futuristic office building. The first twenty floors consist of offices, with man-made technology. Most of them have moving lights so that you can look at how nice it looks and use it as a marker so that you do not get lost on the floor. The next ten floors after that are redecorated to their own satisfaction. Each wall is basically a basic color and has designs that actually looks like as if they were made by aliens. I was lucky enough to own the CD version which gave me access to the aliens homeworld, which are the ten extra levels.

The game's soundtrack is excellent. It may be repetitive at the start of the game, when you are exploring the first four floors, but after that point, you will get some variation in the music. Some of the music have that energetic tone to them and it doesn't make you turn it off.

What amazed me the most about Corridor 7 were the features not present in other first-person shooters around its time. You can use teleports that will warp you to other areas. There are red demons that have the ability to morph in and out, usually in front of your own eyes. These demons can be visible all the time if you use the visor equipment to keep track of where they are going. The visor is also used to locate invisible force fields or determine whether a monitor gives you access to red or blue doors, or nothing at you.

The Bad
Although this game had cut-scenes, they are rather choppy, even if the game's minimum system requirements have been met.

I didn't like the way that all of your weapons share the same ammo, meaning if I am using the one weapon, such as the Alien Assault Cannon, until I have run out of ammo on that weapon, then when I go to change to another weapon, I find out that it is empty as well. Then I have no choice but to use the Taser, which is a very weak weapon.

In Corridor 7, you only have one life, and the game ends when that life gets lost. After this, you have to suffer watching the fanfare screen, then the title screen, and finally to the main menu, instead of going straight to the menu.

The game was released in 1994, so you'd think that it used the DOOM engine. The game actually used the Wolf3D engine, which is too bad since everything including the graphics would have looks much better.

The Bottom Line
Corridor 7 implemented features that other first-person shooters around that time did not have, including cut-scenes, the ability to teleport, both force fields and monsters that are invisible, and monsters that are able to morph. The story is not new, but at least it gets you into the game. The graphics and sound are great, but they would look and sound much better if the game used the DOOM engine. If you like playing first-person shooters, no matter how good or bad they are, then give this game a go.

The Good
Why does everyone keep saying that this game sucks? I mean, come on. It used the Wolfenstein 3-D engine because Capstone apparently couldn't afford the Doom engine, and this game was released just a few months after the original Doom. And if you're going to call this game "monotonous", you might as well call Wolfenstein monotonous as well, something that you're not doing right now. And I can honestly say that the level designs are up to the Wolfenstein engine's capabilities. Come on, give Capstone a chance.

Corridor 7 isn't really anything groundbreaking, something you'll evidence from the fact that it uses the Wolfenstein engine. But it still delivers plenty of fun moments, cool weapons, and nasty monsters that should please fans of first-person shooters. It wouldn't be wrong to call it "Wolfenstein in a sci-fi setting". There are a few cool innovations in this game, too, like morphing monsters, invisible monsters that can only be sighted with your infrared goggles, and night vision.

The Bad
I don't have anything bad to say about the game, still considering that it uses the Wolfenstein engine.

The Bottom Line
If it were released about a year earlier in its current form, it would've been revolutionary. Still, as it stands, it's an awesome Wolfenstein-style game that's a lot of fun to play. Many would think this is just another Wolfenstein clone (especially given the crappy user reviews), but you should still give this one a try if you're a fan of the genre.

The Good
This was released shortly after 'Doom' (the advertising slogan being 'Prepare to meet thy Doom', with 'meet' crossed out and replaced with 'beat'), and was hyped as a serious competitor. However, it's based around the 'Wolfenstein' engine, and despite its historical status as an early example of engine-sharing (unless you count 'Manic Miner' and 'Jet Set Willy' of course) it's not actually very good.

The Bad
Pretty much everything that is wrong with 'Wolfenstein' is wrong with this, except that whereas 'Wolfenstein' is acceptable as a historical document, this isn't. Therefore, the gameplay is extremely monotonous, the graphics are chunky and unattractive, and you just run around shooting things over and over again. The sci-fi setting should help, but doesn't, as everything looks goofy. It's basically a sub-standard shareware game granted a commercial release.

The Bottom Line
A poor early 'Doom' competitor based around the 'Wolfenstein' engine. Not good.

The Good
The box art isn't THAT bad, the music is pretty cool, if annoying at times, and the weapons are fun to find and use, the aliens are pretty neat looking, and the games sci-fi theme adds a cool touch to the overall experience.

The Bad
First of, this NOT a DooM clone, its a poor Wof3D clone, using, amazingly, the same engine, in 1994! What was Capstone thinking?

The graphics, for a start, are terrible, although not as bad as in Nerves Of Steel. The wall textures are horrendously pixelated, as are the aliens, weapons, and the floors\ceilings. They make poor use of the engine in that area to start with.

The gameplay is, well, the same as every other FPS. You run around, grabbing health and ammo, red and blue key cards, and kill stuff. The catch here is that you need to go back to the elevator to exit each level, which is where you start each level! The in-game auto-map helps you through the levels however.

Back the levels, which suffer from each level being to similar the last one. The level design is not very creative, and won't do much to keep players interested in the game-world.

And finally, the box says that it uses an "Enhanced Wolfenstein Engine".

Enhanced? I think not!

The Bottom Line
Capstone once again rose to their notoriety as the worst game developers in history with this awful Wolf3D clone. Really NOT RECOMMENDED (lest you say i didn't warn you).