Night Trap

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.