Classic review: The 7th Guest (CD-i)

This review originally appeared in E10, July 1994. Trilobyte’s hammy horror has since been rereleased on Steam.

Some may argue that the CD-i needs a game like The 7th Guest like it needs a kick in the CPU. But seeing as there’s a distinct lack of quality titles for Philip’s machine anyway, Trilobyte’s infamous CD explore ‘em up finds itself teetering on the border of acceptance.

That’s not to say that The 7th Guest is a great game – no click-and-wait game could ever be classed as such – but it does go someway to make use of the CD-i’s DV cartridge – and the results speak for themselves. Unlike the PC CD-ROM version, this runs in 24bit colour at a glorious 24 frames per second. And a more obvious bonus is that you won’t need a doctorate in programming to get the thing up and running.

As far as gameplay goes, it’s fairly simple: you move around Stauf mansion searching rooms, solving puzzles and trying to find a reason for your very existence. Getting around the mansion is achieved by simply shifting an animated cursor around the screen and then pressing the button. But here’s where things get a little frustrating – as you’d expect with a CD-ROM game, you can’t move where you want to – only to predetermined points, all you’re left with doing is solving some rather obscure puzzle.

As there’s very little in the way of gameplay, The 7th Guest comes across as a lavishly produced puzzle compendium with minor adventure overtones. However, in tune with most CD-i software it exercises the brain and not digital dexterity; which is just as well – the CD-i controller is absolutely useless at accurate, quick movements.

Overall, CD-i 7th Guest is more of a demonstration of MPEG video compression, than anything else – the original PC version came on two CDs, remember. Newcomers to 3D games will surely be knocked out by this version’s visual appeal, but sadly it’s just a case of another CD title entering the domain of the ‘gamevideo’.

The post Classic review: The 7th Guest (CD-i) appeared first on Edge Online.

Source http://www.edge-online.com/review/classic-review-the-7th-guest-cd-i/