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.
