Night Trap is a tough game to review because it is
objectively terrible and one of the worst games ever made. It is an important
part of gaming history, though, and also has an undeniable charm to it where
you can have a good time with it even know it’s awful. As long as you know
going in what to expect, Night Trap is fun as a sort of novelty historical
piece. If you’re interested in seeing what the fuss has been about regarding
Night Trap for all of these years publisher / developer Screaming Villains
really went the extra mile for the Night Trap 25th Anniversary
Edition release as this is the best looking, best playing, and most
feature-packed version of the game. See our full PS4 Night Trap 25th Anniversary Edition review for all of the details.
Game Details
- Publisher: Screaming Villains
- Developer: Screaming Villains
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: Adventure
- Pros: It’s a piece of gaming history; the best version yet; lots of extras
- Cons: The game itself is awful
- MSRP: $15
Night Trap is a full-motion-video game originally developed
for release on the ill-fated Hasbro Control-Vision system in 1989. That system
never actually came out, but Night Trap was eventually released in 1992 for the
SEGA CD and has re-released a handful of times on other platforms since. The
game is probably mostly remembered as being at the center of U.S. Senate
committee hearings on violent videogames in 1993, which led to the creation of
the ESRB videogame content ratings system that is still used today.
The fact that Night Trap led to the ESRB is one of the
strangest / funniest things in videogame history because it is actually
extremely tame by today’s standards. So tame, in fact, that it was re-rated as
“T” for Teen instead of the “M” for Mature rating it originally received.
Playing the game makes it pretty obvious that the Senators who used Night Trap
as the poster child for videogame violence and sexual content didn’t actually
ever play it and likely never even saw it beyond cherry picked snippets that
weren’t really representative of the game.
The story in Night Trap has you playing as a member of Sega
Control Attack Team (yes, that’s S.C.A.T.) that is investigating the
disappearance of five teenage girls at the Martin estate. It turns out that the
house is full of closed circuit TV cameras and remote controlled traps, so
S.C.A.T. takes control of the system as another group of girls, including an
undercover agent, spends the night in the house. Your job is to protect the
girls from hordes of invading creeps called Augers who are actually vampires
and want to capture the girls for their blood.
The actual gameplay in Night Trap consists of switching
between eight camera feeds and activating traps when you see an Auger in the
room. A little onscreen indicator flashes when you can activate the trap, so
the game consists entirely of switching cameras until you see a bad guy,
waiting until the light flashes, and then pressing a button to trap them. The
traps have a color-coded security system, for some reason (to make it more
videogame-y, I guess), so you also have to swap color codes once in a while in
order for the traps to work.
Of course, Night Trap isn’t simply about catching the Augers
as there are also a bunch of teenage girls running around the house that you
can watch through the CCTV feeds. Watching the girls is how you get the actual
story of the game as well as how you know when to swap color codes – because
someone will literally say “We need to change the code to (color) now”.
The problem with Night Trap, however, is that it is
impossible to pay attention to both the Augers and story at the same time. If
you watch the story, the house fills with Augers and everyone dies. If you
focus just on the Augers, you don’t get any of the story. But you have to focus
on the Augers because they appear somewhere in the house pretty much constantly.
Playing the game “properly” relies entirely on trial and error as you memorize
the locations of the Augers on subsequent playthroughs. It, uh, isn’t especially
fun. Thankfully, the whole game is only about 30-minutes long when you do
everything right, so your suffering doesn’t last especially long. It only takes an hour or so total before you're figured everything out and "finished" it.
The 25th Anniversary Edition does make things a little easier in some key ways. In the older versions of the game the camera feeds were represented by static icons but in the 25th Anniversary Edition the camera feeds are actually little video thumbnails so you can see when an Auger is in a room and switch to it instead of just guessing. This makes the game significantly easier. Another nice touch is that you unlock a movie of all of the story scenes once you beat the game so you can actually watch the goofy, schlocky, cheesy, terrible 80’s story without having to worry about Augers.
The 25th Anniversary Edition has some other neat
features, too. In addition to the new interface mentioned above, you can also
opt to use the interfaces from previous versions of the game and it is
interesting to see how the game has evolved over the years. It also has to be
noted that the video quality is surprisingly good here as the developers were
able to use the original master footage – including some never before released
scenes - and didn’t have to compress the hell out of it like in every other
release. It doesn’t look great, mind you, but it isn’t terrible potato quality
like every other version of Night Trap. Other features include an interview
with co-creator James Riley and the Night Trap prototype game Scene of the
Crime. You can also play a survival mode where you just fight waves of Augers
until you get overwhelmed.
As a game, Night Trap is a pretty terrible overall
experience because it is just poorly designed. As a piece of history, however,
and as a novelty you play knowing full well it is going to be awful, Night Trap
is worth playing. The 25th Anniversary Edition is also surprisingly
fully featured with extra modes and easily the best presentation the game has
ever had. It isn’t great – in fact, it’s pretty bad – but Night Trap 25th Anniversary Edition is still worth a look purely for the nostalgia and history
around it. Plus the fact it is easily playable and accessible now on PS4 (and
soon on Xbox One) for $15 doesn’t hurt. If you’re even the slightest bit
curious, buy it.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher
