If you’re 12 and your video game knowledge is limited to current or recent consoles, he’s a quick history lesson. Night Trap is an interactive movie video game developed by Digital Pictures and originally released by Sega for the Sega CD in 1992. However, it should have been originally released in 1986 for the Project Nemo. The game is presented primarily through the use of full motion video (FMV), meaning it’s an interactive movie. It’s also a game that with Mortal Kombat, Doom and Lethal Enforcers that forced the industry to create the ESRB ratings system. In Night Trap, the player takes the role of a special agent tasked to watch over teenage girls visiting a house which, unbeknownst to them, is full of danger.
25 years after it’s Sega CD release and over 30 years after its original shooting, it comes back as a Remastered and completely reengineered port for the PlayStation 4. Although the acting and dialogue hasn’t aged well, it’s still a trip in terms of gameplay and is one of those games you have to just try.
The way the gameplay develops is simple and organic. The player watches live surveillance footage of the house and triggers traps to capture anyone seen endangering the girls. The primary antagonists are Augers, vampiric beings who want to capture the girls for their blood. The player can freely switch their view between different cameras to keep watch over the girls and eavesdrop on conversations to follow the story and listen for clues.
This is a game you need to experience for yourself if you consider yourself a lover of the industry. While it’s more or less like watching a live movie, being able to control things and making slight or huge changes within the storyline of Night Trap. Similar games like Night Trap are: Dragon’s Lair, Sewer Shark, and Mad Dog McCree, but being the most controversial, NT sets itself apart from the rest.
The visuals in the remastered version are a huge upgrade from the original game from 1992 from the Sega CD. What is also cool is that you’re able to change skin or should say filter from 1992, 1993, 1994, and 2017. Plus, you’re able to change the room icons from the original to the revamped version of the game. The whole game is more less a movie with a 70/80s style B movie. While you can’t get any more cheesy than that, you’ll be smiling throughout. The game’s story is so bad, but so bad in a good way. It makes you want to watch to the very end of the game. B-movie potential quality and the fact that they didn’t even try to cover some of the faces from the slow-moving and awkward vampires. So you know things will happen, and predict most of what to expect in something like Night Trap. Although it’s predictable, it’s an experience any hardcore gamer will enjoy.
As far as the audio goes, that’s where things get super funny. The music is cringe worthy, but in that ‘80s porno/bad sitcom quality. You also have actors featured in Night Trap who done sitcoms and movies like Dana Plato from Different Strokes and a few well-known actors making things even more awkward and silly.
Away from the audio and video, things come together well thanks to the gameplay. The controls aren’t hard based on the Options menu saying you change the color code of the system and also switching cameras and setting off the traps within the house catching the Black garbage bag vampires. But you have to be very quick on your feet- you need to switch between eight different cameras and make sure the Teenagers is safe and sound from the traps and the vampires within the house.
Overall Night Trap is a game that got a bad wrap thanks to the United States government, but it’s a historic title that is ultimately celebrated wonderfully in a remastered version that brings out all of the game’s finer qualities. If you never played the original from the 1992 Sega CD version or Mac/PC version, for sure the Playstation 4 one.
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