Corridor 7: Alien Invasion

Capstone are now infamous for the abominable Tekwar Build-Engine FPS. Before that, they made a few Wolfenstein engine style FPS that were basically B movie level: Operation Bodycount being perhaps the worst. Terrible sprites, sound effects, level design, everything basically. Corridor 7 is not far off this. I've owned the game since release, played it a lot back when my PC could not play Doom, then never gave it another look when I upgraded. But perhaps its low rent sci-fi ambitions still hold some appeal? Even if they do, you'll encounter very repetitive, maze-like level design, random and pointless item placement, weapons that are useless, near-invisible pain triggers and more. Perhaps the best part of the game is its music, as both the MIDI and CD soundtrack actually have some quite memorable "game-rock / EBM / techno / industrial" pieces. Not amazing, but curious. Don't rush to this. But, if you do still harbour some liking for old school Wolfenstein type FPS games and haven't played Corridor 7, I'll be "kind" and say that for a couple of quid it's... barely playable B-gaming from one the 90s most infamous game developers.

I played Corridor 7 for the first time when I was 11-12 years old. Then I did not go through it to the end. Of course, the game is not for everybody, but personally I like its gloomy atmosphere. Now I'm 35. I bought it as soon as I saw it and went to the end in 9 hours. Started a new walkthrough on higher difficulty. Those who do not care about the graphics, but who care about the atmosphere, will come.

Capstone the "Pinnacle of Entertainment Software" has a checkered history of mostly bad games. Corridor 7 is probably the best of a bad batch and certainly a lot better than Body Count. Corridor 7 had a few interesting gimmicks like night and infrared vision for spotting hidden enemies and also featured a map where Wolf3D didn't. Capstone also managed to kluge together some haphazard multiplayer. Since the game is one big bug hunt and Wolf3D is pretty limited on map variety to can get boring pretty quickly. It's a game you played back when because there was nothing else to play and one you probably play now because you have some nostalgia for it. The soundtrack by Joe Abbati is also very interesting and contains some very good tracks making great use of the old FM Synth cards.

Proudly displaying "Enhanced Wolfenstein 3-D engine" on the back on the box, but released the year following Doom, it SOUNDS like Corridor 7 would be dead on arrival. That Capstone Software logo isn't doing it any favors either, but SURPRISE, this is actually a pretty fun game! The premise of involves you in government facility wiping out a set number of invaders per level, which varies depending on the difficulty setting you play. The game features a fairly diverse set of monsters for you to fight, and an equally diverse set of weapons to dispense them. It does nothing to reinvent the wheel, but what it does do is offer a fun experience.