Corridor 7: Alien Invasion

The pInnacle of entertainment software indeed

I actually enjoy it, use right click to move forward and tight alt to strafe just in case you need to back up

Шутер категории "B", базирующийся на наработках Wolfenstein 3D, попутно также во многом отсылающий, с одной стороны, к Doom, а с другой - к Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. Качественно игра уступает обоим, но свой определённый шарм, делающий серьёзную ставку на атмосферу хоррора, имеет. Сюжет предельно незамысловат - в условно недалёком будущем (2012 год) учёные на Марсе находят некий артефакт. Его начинают подвергать исследованиям, и, как это позже случится в Half-Life, что-то идёт не так и начинается вторжение чужеродных монстров разной степени колоритности, от зелёных гоблинов и красных роботов до мимикрирующих под мебель существ. Среди них также нашлось место и нескольким боссам, первые встречи с которыми могут несколько озадачить. Одинокому пехотинцу предстоит расправляться с противниками на протяжении 36 уровней (30 основных и 6 бонусных) в версии игры на дискетах и 46 - в случае прохождения издания на CD, где среди прочих изменений был также предусмотрен мультиплеер, предлагающий собственные карты. Арсенал орудий достаточно типовой и чем-то особенным не выделяется, кроме разве что факта наличия мин, которые иной раз удобно применить против особо крепких противников и инфракрасных очков. Большинство локаций представляет собой довольно запутанные лабиринты, исходя из чего играть на сложности выше, чем "Лейтенант", что примерно эквивалентно умеренной, не рекомендуется. Градация званий влияет на три основных момента - общее количество монстров; число противников, которых необходимо уничтожить, дабы покинуть уровень (на "лейтенанте" достаточно 75%) и исходное наличие, либо же отсутствие карты. Во втором случае можно изрядно проблуждать в поисках таковой. Как и в Blake Stone между уровнями ходит лифт, правда, здесь нельзя возвращаться назад. Иногда таковых может оказаться несколько и есть шанс попасть в бонусную секцию. Секреты активируются за отодвигаемыми стенами точно так же, как в двух упомянутых ранее играх. По мере прохождения обстановка приобретает всё более чужеродный и, местами, жутковатый вид, техногенные базы сменяются подземельями, выполненными в кислотных тонах. Вместе с тем встречаются всё более причудливые и опасные противники, наиболее надоедливым видом из которых являются некие мохнатые и рогатые красные существа, использующие подобие своеобразной снайперской винтовки и умеющие становиться невидимыми. Отдельной, но опять же отнюдь не уникальной, фишкой игры выступают камеры, в которых можно подлечиться, подобные по своей сути тем, что наличествовали в вышедшем в том же году System Shock. В качестве ключей используются карты доступа синего и красного оттенков, искать которые предполагается в окрестных терминалах. При этом есть риск вместо ключа доступа активировать тревогу, оповещающую ближайших противников. Одним из наиболее удавшихся моментов, помимо общей атмосферы, можно назвать в целом неплохое звуковое сопровождение, хотя при этом музыка конкретно в CD-издании подобрана достаточно неудачно и по этой причине в настройках стоит выбрать AdLib. Не самый примечательный и далеко не изысканный, но и не лишённый определённых достоинств, шутер. Если с основными произведениями жанра вы ранее ознакомились и ищете что-то ещё, более-менее приемлемое, попутно при этом из первой волны таковых, то Corridor 7 может оказаться удачным выбором. Если же для вас всё, что по качеству хуже Doom, по умолчанию отметается, то, наоборот, имеет смысл пройти мимо.

I rate Corridor 7: Alien Invasion 3.5/5. This game is pretty good overall and is one of the best uses of the old Wolfenstein 3D engine (other than Rise of the Triad). Featuring a very good, very memorable old Ad-Lib synthesized soundtrack and an extremely diverse set of enemies, this challenging, tactically-oriented action game is surprisingly atmospheric. This game's store page preview fails to do it full justice. It is far from perfect however; The “CD quality” music option plays mostly garbage (especially compared to the very good alternate Ad-Lib synthesized music). The extremely pixelated graphics have aged poorly, making it impossible to see clearly into the distance. The sound quality is very, very poor by today’s standards, consisting mostly of various buzzing and thumping sounds (each one has a particular meaning though). The controls (even though they can be reconfigured to custom keys) can be very clunky with no ability to simply assign ‘strafe left’ or ‘strafe right’ to particular keys (you’re going to have to get used to an older way moving your character, either one which incorporates a generalized strafe key used in conjunction with an arrow key or a control scheme which is not very dependent on sidestepping or strafing at all but instead more focused on turning quickly. Reminds me of: Wolfenstein 3D (due to low-end graphics and controls), FEAR (creepy, dark atmosphere, office environments, a few jumpscares and surprisingly tactical gameplay) and Half-Life 1: Opposing Force (takes place inside a secret government facility and aliens from another world have invaded and you are a soldier sent in to clean up the mess) and you get weapons and health from somewhat reasonable places in the environment. But this game is much older than FEAR or Half Life. Corridor 7 in detail: + Good, simple story (or at least the underpinnings of one). Astronauts discovered a mysterious alien object on a distant planet in our solar system. They take it deep inside a secret government facility and begin testing. Their tests activate it, a portal to an alien world opens, aliens rush through and take over the facility. The aliens begin using the facility as a foothold from which to launch an invasion. You are a first scout (I guess you could pretend to be a scout team with each of your weapons being a separate team member if you want to imagine a more realistic scenario) sent in to find out what happened to the facility’s original personnel, shut down the alien portal and secure the facility floor by floor. I imagine greater human forces are right behind you as you proceed from floor to floor but it is your job to be on point, clearing the way for their arrival. + Corridor 7 features a fantastic and extremely challenging variety of enemies (including enemies that can move at higher speeds, shapeshift into other objects or cloak themselves from sight) and has a good variety of weapons. These features combine to create a wonderful sense of tactical gameplay throughout. To top it off, there are several good boss fights with particularly powerful enemies. The enemies are interesting looking too. While some wear body armor, power armor or are bio-mechanical, many wear surprisingly “primitive” styled clothing, as if they have advanced to such a degree technologically or physically that they no longer feel that they require protective clothing and their cultures have come full-circle on the subject of clothing, (or perhaps they are from lower-technology cultures which the alien empire has forcibly absorbed and is using as slave labor). + Very challenging but (at least on the easier difficulties) not extremely frustrating (I played on Lieutenant difficulty) gameplay. The difficulty does ramp up to become utterly impossible on the higher difficulties however. Be warned, this game is probably best experienced on Lieutenant difficulty. + Exploration is often rewarded. While you don’t always have to kill every enemy on every level (at least not on the easier difficulties), it is often helpful to do so as you will often find additional armor, supplies and even weapons which you may otherwise miss. + Good gameplay length. I completed this game in about 7 hours. Although it could feel repetitive at times, clearing one level after another, I wasn’t ever too bored due to all the varied tactical situations and wide variety of enemies. It felt like the game had exactly the right length. +/- This game features rare, random and fairly effective jumpscares. Occasionally, an apparently telepathic boss alien will send you a telepathic jumpscare (at least that’s how I interpret it) in the form of an ominous red-skull face appearing at you from nowhere in conjunction with a ghostly sound. It sounds silly but even with Corridor 7’s obsolete graphics and sounds, it is SURPRISINGLY effective. +/- Terrible “CD quality” music but very good, alternate Ad-Lib synthesizer music. There is only 1 single “CD quality” song that is any good, the very first one. In my opinion the rest of the “CD quality” soundtrack is utter garbage. The alternate Ad-Lib soundtrack music option is the soundtrack which the 3.5 inch disk version of this game had and is really, really, really good overall. It is not a soundtrack to be missed, greatly adding to the atmospheric quality of this game. It can be found on Youtube if you want to preview it. +/- Mediocre controls which can be partially reconfigured. Corridor 7 has old school controls which can be reconfigured to custom keys but they remain painfully old school. There is no way to assign particular left or right strafe keys. A single strafe key must be used in conjunction with other direction keys in order to strafe or sidestep. Having a comfortable key configuration is vital in this game as the fights are fast and brutal. Most enemy weapons are hitscan (there’s a Wikipedia article about hitscan if you don’t know what that is). Hitscan weapons at close range can be extremely challenging and the alien weapons are extremely damaging (as are yours). Using cover and the element of surprise and any other tactical edge you can get becomes extremely important in Corridor 7. Some enemies move pretty fast and many will behave in a surprisingly tactical manner, tracking you by sight and sound in addition to gathering reinforcements. +/- Corridor 7 has dark, atmospheric graphics that have aged really, really badly due, primarily, to the far higher resolutions games can now run at. The colors and environments in Corridor 7 seem perfectly reasonable and many of the glowing computer panels and high-tech laboratory devices seem pretty cool. The Alien areas are suitably alien and horrific. Unfortunately, the resolution is so poor that it seems your character must have severe astigmatism and has mysteriously lost his glasses. You are EXTREMELY near sighted. The effect is so severe that Corridor 7 may at times feel as if you are playing as Mr. Magoo during his younger years when he was a top-secret Black-Ops soldier. Sometimes you’ll just have to use your tiny minimap to aim at distant enemies (or to even know that they are there, cloaked or not). Good luck. - Generally terrible sound quality. The sound effects generally sound like strange buzzing and thumping sounds and I mostly had them turned down so I could barely hear them (so they could still be useful but not detract from the nice Ad-Lib synthesizer music). Remember the sounds in Wolfenstein 3D? Corridor 7’s sounds are a lot like that except the music is way better. - Only 1 ending (2 if you count dying). You cannot change the plot. You cannot try to make peace with the aliens by killing fewer of them each level. There are alternate bonus levels to find but finding them does not change anything other than your high score (which, these days, seems odd to have in a game of this type).

Another game from Capstone made in 1994 and was WAY better with WAY more resources than Doom!

I could've played this game when it came out, but I skipped it because I had other (Doom) games to play. Enjoying this game now without the nostalgia glasses on is difficult, but I can see it being one of my favourites FPS games if I'd given it a chance back when it was released (if it would've come out before Doom). https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3238139968

There are aliens out there, somewhere. I strongly believe this.

This game would've been a success but it came out 2 years too late. DooM was largely dominating the gaming market and any Wolfenstein 3D clones, including Corridor 7, were sadly considered obsolete at the time. Nevertheless, it's still fun to play in 2022, even it it lacks a little originality (especially the level design) The gameplay can be repetitive but there's things in the game that differentiates itself from Wolf3D (keys are replaced by terminals that activates colored doors, ammo and medkits are in cabinets, health recharging stations are present, etc.) To my opinion, Corridor 7 should please any early 1990s nostalgic gamers, even if it isn't perfect.

This is the most superb old DOS games ever! It has an original creepy atmosphere and it is playable even in our modern age. If the basic controls are uncomfortable, you can set it up at your convenience. I love its retro atmosphere, its voice and audio effects, l like that l can set up its difficulties, that l can save the game anytime (though l have to stop playing for that time) and that it has a small map on the screen etc. I think this game is really player friendly retro piece. I recommend it.

A DOOM-inspired alien-invasion shooter made with a heavily-modified Wolf3D engine. Move over, 'Blake Stone' -- 'Corridor 7' is boss around here! The game is fun and atmospheric, with distance darkening & an almost-too-weird rogue's gallery of enemies to combat. From the start, you're the boots onboard a space station, tasked with investigation & extermination. The texturing is colorful-but-bloody -- akin to its fore-bearers like 'Wolfenstein 3D'. True to the box art, you are equipped with a visor (Enter), that gives access to additional spectrums. The current functionality (as of 2022/03/05) of this DOSBox port is, sadly, a bit wonky -- with QoL options that won't stay set, screen tearing and resolution issues, et al. It is still playable, but can be frustrating with its antiquated mouseglide controls. This title could really use a sourceport to modern standards -- and ECwolf (currently v1.3.3) promises to do that with the future roll-out of v2 ... but when that can be expected, is anyone's guess...