The 7th Guest: 25th Anniversary Edition

In theory, it sounds great to "remaster" the original game for modern machines and provide quality of life improvements. And actually, some of the additions to the game in this version are nice ideas: hotspots, skippable cutscenes, easier access to the map. However, from the moment the game starts up, you get the feeling that not a lot of care was put into this. The menu screen feels a bit thrown together, the MojoTouch logo looks surprisingly unprofessional, and the replacement for the original Trilobyte logo is bad (and ruins the game's intro's atmosphere). Presentation is important! As you actually get into the game, it still is basically "The 7th Guest," but it feels not very polished around the edges, especially where the new features are present. One very annoying thing is that the skeleton hand mouse cursor now seems to be entirely different and doesn't point at things quite right on-screen. Apparently this version includes the original "legacy" game too...maybe play that instead. Its a much better experience from a time when a game like this was a big budget event versus something thrown together to get a few more sales.

It isn't without it's faults, but I love The 7th Guest. If this was jsut a straight release identical to the original I'd have given five stars. My low score is due to the nature of the remaster. It's really bad. They've worked hard to suck out any charm or mood the original game had. The music is choppy, restarts randomly, and often cuts out entirely. Audio cues are out of sync with animations. Animations seem to speed up, slow down, and jitter randomly. Scene transitions have awkward strange pauses while the mouse cursor changes clothes. The screen is cluttered with always on tools and icons which detract from the immersion. It crashed on me several times. Bugs aside, I didn't really recognise any real improvements. The extra content is nice, but in game the improvements are almost universally bad.

I can not recommend this version of the game. In any way it varies from the original, the original is just plain better. And yet I have to recommend this package at the same time for the exact same reason. You see that vastly superior version of the game is included with your purchase. This version includes it as a goodies download. This should allow you to play the best version of the game hassle free. Add to this the sound track, cut scenes from the original, and even a downloadable novel to sort out that story definitively and I absolutely can and do recommend the total package... despite the main release you are expected to get it for being a cheap knockoff at best. At least if you are a fan of brainteasers, anyway. All horror story and themes aside, this game is just that: a collection of brainteaser puzzles, so if those are not your thing, stay the hell away from this one.

This is one adventure games I didn't play when it originally came out, so my opinion is of someone who's playing this fresh in 2023. To keep it short, the puzzles are dry, some are very unoriginal, and most aren't really well tied to the mansion. The story is non-sensical and does little to keep you invested in what's going on. I can't help but compare it in my head to Myst 1 and 2, which I also played for the first time recently, and how the puzzles were interesting and tied directly to the world you were in. If you're not buying this out of nostalgia for when you played it 30 years ago, I'd say don't bother.

The game has some really challenging puzzles, and some genuinly creepy elements. The music and graphics are clearly dated by todays standards, but for 1992 probably looked amazing, the acting is perfectly hammy too, all of which adds to the charm.