Corridor 7: Alien Invasion

Corridor 7: Alien Invasion is quite the anomaly, in that it's a good game that was put out by Capstone Entertainment, which is an oxymoron if you've ever heard one. But I wouldn't be saying Corridor 7 is a good game if I didn't have legitimate reasons to believe so, so I'll run down the list of positives and negatives. First off, in many ways this is an upgrade from Wolfenstein 3D visually. There's loads more color and moving parts on the walls, even see-through glass. Another visual upgrade it has over Wolfenstein 3D is a gradient acting as the ceiling and floor textures, with the gradient itself becoming darker the "further" from the player it is. This is a really cool affect that adds to the survival horror sorta atmosphere the game is aiming for, with areas farther from you looking darker as a result. In an engine with no lighting, I find that really clever and neat. Of course, if all Corridor 7 had on these other games was graphics / visuals, then it wouldn't mean anything at all, but it innovates in some cool ways as well. Health chambers and ammo/med stations make resource management a much more dynamic affair, requiring you to memorize their location on the map, as enemies don't drop anything that can really aid you. It encourages exploration, I find. The inclusion of night vision to see hidden enemies is also really, really cool. Another nice thing is that this game is shorter than Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone which helps curb its repetition at least a bit by comparison, at only 40 mandatory levels. Not all peachy though. Requiring the player to put on a visor to see invisible laser traps can go lie down, boooooo. Also the lack of any strafing hurts the player's movement. In a game like this where you often need to quickly find cover to avoid hit-scan hell, it can lead to quite a few cheap deaths. Level design is also typically less refined than its predecessors. All-in-all, my favorite Wolf3D engine game, but most definitely not a game for everyone.

Yes, the game came out when there was already Doom so it looks a bit older than it actually is... BUT to me the game still has a certain irresistable charme that is hard to put into words. Maybe it is because i like the Science Fiction setting a lot. I also do like the whole atmosphere of it. As simple as it may seem but there is a dense atmosphere. And always an omnipresent sense of threat when you are walking around the space station and always checking the map for enemy activity. The sounds they make, when they spot you, are creepy and sometimes you may alarm them all if you press a wrong switch. Design wise it really tries to make the most out of a simple raycasting 3D engine and if you like 90s 3D shooters from a time when they weren't called Ego Shooters yet, especially with a bit of a challenge while not being too unfair, you should totally give Corridor 7 a chance. It is a solid 4 out of 5 stars and really deserves a lot more appreciation then when it originally came out. Definitely worth playing :)

I bought this back in the pre-cambrian era when it was first released, I remember on the blurb on the box had a line to the effect "we think it's better than Doom", not a statement that was widely agreed with, I think. I had some fun with this, we were easier to please graphics wise back then. i remember it did have a fairly satisfying ending, somewhat repetitive in spots. May pick it up here just for old times sake, I have a soft spot for these old shooters. I keep an old DX4 100 486 with a 16 mb VLB video card and DOS 6.22 for thes moldy oldies. Yes, I am a dinosaur.

Out of many attempts to build new quality on Wolfenstein engine killed in crib by DooM, Corridor 7 is one of the best. Not better then the original wolf 3d - only Black Stone series managed that - but very much playable. If you like nostalgic pre-DooM experience this is good enough game. If you don't, it isn't.

Corridor 7 gets a lot of hate, and I'm unsure why. Yes, it's a Wolfenstein clone, but so what? Yes, its controls are awkward, but so was Wolfenstein's. Maybe I have a soft sport for C7 because it was one of the first PC games I ever played. Mazelike level design. Yeah, you'll get that with every game from this era (Rise of the Triad, Ken's Labyrinth). No strafe? Doom had that same control scheme in its DOS era. What sets C7 apart from Wolfenstein, in my opinion, is its goal. You are not collecting keys to find the exit. You know where the exit is. Your goal is to eliminate the aliens to unlock the exit. That's special because you must engage the aliens on every floor. You must deliberately seek them out to progress. No running past them in a speedrun. I still have my CD and I'm glad to replay this every now and then. It's a challenge, even by today's standards.