I remember when I found out this game was coming out. Already a huge fan of the 7th Guest, I just couldn't wait for the next time I would get to run around Henry Stauf's mansion and through another tail of deamonic horror. So I eagerly awaited the chance to pick it up as soon as I could get my hands on it... and for the first time, my good old 486 was simply not good enough to play. It had the specs, but the game for some reason would only run in black and white. Disappointed, I put the game away...
Until my next PC (a Pentium II) would be more then beefy enough to play with it several years later. But by this time, I was already playing other games that would become all time favorites like the original Deus Ex, Descent 3, and System Shock 2. So it would fall to the wayside uncompleted. And there it would remain: just a set of discs in a "book" that would remain on my shelf for many years and even through two moves. But lately, I've been itching to take it on like unfinished business. So I opened up that old dusty book and popped disc 1 in. Welcome back Mr. Stauf... my how we've missed you.
Story: Carl Denning is having a rough time. His producer Robin Morales has been missing for three weeks. She had gone to Hudson, New York to investigate a wave of similar disappearances she believed might be attached to the Stauf mansion: a rather legendary haunted house in that neck of the woods. But for Carl, his own conscience is giving him a hard time about it. Not that long ago, they had also been lovers. Robin broke up with him, unable to take the reputation sleeping with the star of her show was giving her, and Carl didn't handle it well. That night he left after suggesting he would get lucky and she would wind up one of those women who disappeared.
Guilt ridden, Carl keeps away from people as much as possible. But a delivery at his door changes his plans. Inside the unassuming package is a portable computer system that confirms his worst fears as it plays footage of Robin stuck inside that horrible house and desperate for help to escape. He has no choice if he wants to be able to look himself in the mirror ever again. Carl gets on his bike and rides off to enter the house and rescue his ex from a little pocket of hell in this world.
From this basic point, you will play as Carl as he wanders the mansion looking for Robin and dealing with the ghosts that call it home. But this is only one part of the story, as you will also get a good look at what Robin was up to while she was away and how she got stuck in this house. These details will be dealt to you as you progress through the game in the form of FMV cutscenes that when put together make an hour long movie (and in fact one of the rewards for finishing the game is the ability to play this from start to finish without interruptions). And while I would never write home about the flick, I would say the plot it explores and events it gives you are fairly well written, if low-key. There is a lot here to enjoy and egg you on to keep playing to see it's conclusion.
But if there is any issue with the plot, it is that conclusion. The last scene in the game just feels like the campiest thing you will ever see before the curtains draw on the final cutscene. But this is only part of the reason the ending is kinda off. The rest is something we will get into when we get to the gameplay of this title.
7/10
Graphics: This game, while not that bad looking is based almost completely from using video designed around hardware capable of streaming video at 300k (or roughly 1/3rd of a megabyte) per second. It is simply not going to be a great looking game by today's standards with just how pixelized that kind of video will have to be to even begin to work.
And getting past that, the graphical and video tech is going to also hurt the game. For most of the game you will be running around a CGI rendition of Stauf's mansion, and while it looks very good when gazing across the room, being up close with anything reveals the limitations of the day with detail levels that any modern first person shooters would be embarrassed to have on it's walls... and this game is made up of videos to animate moving between still scenes. As a result it does look good, but it can tends to look very dated.
And the FMV cutscenes definitely add to this feel tremendously. As noted in the story section, they combine to effectively be an hour movie, but that movie has the look and feel of a made for TV 90s special. From the quality of effects to choice music to the styles worn by the people playing their rolls everything screams it. It doesn't look good, but it is oddly charming all it's own.
5/10
Sound: The music from the 7th Guest is incredibly iconic and memorable, and this game right here takes full advantage of that, remixing several tunes for it's own use incredibly well. And the new stuff fits the feel of it perfectly, leading to an absolutely beautiful feast for the ears.
Which is certainly good news as through most of the game you will not hear much in the way of sound effects. What is here is either in a cut scene or one of the very few a puzzle might have. It sounds good and fits what's going on for the most part, but it's sparse due to the nature of the game itself.
And those cutscenes are definitely going to be the star here, for better and for worse. Much like the visuals, the audio here screams 1990s TV special mixed with an 80's slasher flick. The actors keep in character well enough, but are stuck with some ridiculous lines that you are not going to be able to help but laugh at, right from the opening scenes before the game begins through the end. And yet for the campyness (or maybe because of it), there is a charm here so many games trying to be serious simply miss. It's a throw back, it's sometimes hilariously bad, but it's never not entertaining for all of that.
7/10
Gameplay: The 11th Hour is a point and click title shown from a first person perspective with a very specific flow which will be made clear within the first 30 minutes (tops). Using the cursor icons to identify what will happen, you will click about the screen to move around the mansion in a scavenger hunt following clues by the main antagonist Henry Stauf. You will know you have a new clue to resolve when a blue ring and pager-like beep play around that cursor. Clicking anywhere in the top black bar above your view will bring up the computer device, show the clue, and give you the pleasure of hearing Stauf read it. If this doesn't make sense, clicking the help or fast-forward button will offer you help to figure it out from the young lady who sent Carl the machine in the first place, which usually will make identifying what you are looking for very easy. This is also where the game handles managing your save games as well as the map.
This map will prove incredibly valuable, as it will show you where in the house you have access to. You see, rooms in this game will either be unavailable, locked behind a puzzle, or searchable. At first very little of the house is available to enter, and any room you can reach will be locked. To unlock it, you must enter the room, find the puzzle of the room, and solve it. These puzzles can be anything from moving plates around a pentagram to several games you will play against the owner of the mansion himself. But the game will only tell you the rules if you go back to your computer device for help. And if the puzzle really has you stuck this same button will ultimately ask if you want it to solve the puzzle for you. There is no penalty to doing this aside from Stauf NOT getting mad at you for winning, so yes, this is an "easy win" button if you want to skip anything too difficult/frustrating/time consuming.
Once you have unlocked a room, you can search it to find the object Stauf was hinting at, which will reward you with progressing the game itself. This concludes said rythm of the game: get clue, unlock rooms, and search for the object the clue points at before getting the next clue and a new part of the story. But it also here where the last part of the game becomes jarring as everything boils down to a choice of 3 doors directly after finishing the last puzzle with no chance to save, requiring you to commit to the ending you choose before the end credits. It leaves an awkward feel for an otherwise campy and enjoyable brain teaser you were offered through your entire adventure.
6/10
Bugs: This is where I have to bring up bad news about the game. There are multiple versions of The 11th Hour out there and the most common one to find is the release on Steam and Gog.com. While this game was originally released for DOS, these stores are selling the rerelease made for Windows 95 back in the day, and this sadly spells stability trouble.
- Crashing: Yes, this game crashes. I originally tried this version of the game for the convenience of it all being loaded onto the hard drive and no disc swapping, but the first time it crashed (in about an hour of gameplay) I changed my mind. Unlike most games that break, this was a hard crash that while I could see anything I used calling a window properly, would not let allow itself to be shut down or let go of the screen to let me take care of the issue. I had to tell my gaming rig to restart to get out of it.
- Stutter: The unfortunate side-effect of playing this game directly from disc is due to the nature of CD-ROM. At times, the game had to pause to start up the disc spinning and/or find and load data from the CD for the screen screen. These pauses were annoying, but tended to go away as a given game-session continued and never much more then that.
Score:
7/10
System Requirements:
Windows:
- 1.8 Ghz Processor
- 512 MB RAM
- Anything supporting Direct X7 (DirectX 9 reccomended)
- Windows XP/Vista/7
- 2 GB hard drive space
- 486 DX2/66 Mhz
- 8 MB RAM
- MS-DOS 5.0 or Win 95 DOS-mode
- 4 MB hard drive space
- Dual Speed CD-ROM (300kb/sec transfer rate)
System Specs:
- AMD FX8350 (running at 4.0 Ghz)
- 16 GB RAM
- NVidia Geforce 960 with 4 GB VRAM
- Windows 10
- DVD-ROM drive
Windows: Gog.com
DOS: To play the DOS version of this game, you will need a few parts. These are the ones I used
- CD-ROM copy of the game (found on Amazon)
- DOSBox (free software)
- D-Fend Reloaded (Free software) Please note this software comes with DOSBox as part of it's installation. Installing this on it's own is the easiest way to set this up.
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