The 11th Hour

The Return To 7th Guest

When the 7th Guest was released in 1992, it became one of the first CD-ROM blockbusters. Being packaged with new computer systems certainly helped sales but it was the incredible video and sound effects that really caught the eye of the market; what better CD-ROM to show off the powers of that new computer?

The original game combined high quality video effects with a creepy theme and devilishly difficult puzzles to solve. Gameplay involved trying to solve the puzzles with the reward of being able to see some more video effects. The 11th Hour is a sequel to the 7th Guest and takes place 70 years in the future. Trilobyte was not planning to do a sequel but market forces demanded one. If you remember from The 7th Guest, the evil toy maker Henry Stauf liked to grant twisted desires to his victims, well in the 11th Hour he grants your desire (for a sequel) and now he has come after you!

You play Carl Denning, an investigative reporter for a TV show. Robin, your producer/former lover was scouting out some mysterious murders that occurred around the old Stauf Mansion. One day a strange "Game Book" arrives at your door. It's a message from Robin. She is trapped in the evil house! Now it is up to you to save her by entering the house and solving Staufs riddles.

The gameplay consists of two major types of games, puzzles and treasure hunts. The puzzles are similar to the ones in 7th Guest, moving chess pieces, mazes, etc. but seem to be even more challenging. You can get clues from your Techno-Psychic Ally but try to use it sparingly because if you rely on it two much in the beginning, you will use it up and not have any help later in the game. The treasure hunt involves finding an object that Stauf gives clues or riddles about. These riddles involve plays on words and anagrams. You can get three or four clues on each of these by hitting the help button on your "Game Book." The game is divided into "hours" and at the completion of each hour there is a final puzzle that involves matching wits with Stauf. Winning the challenge from Stauf allows you to view the events you've witness in their entirely. The recaps are dramatic screening of the story shown in its entirety with all missing content seen for the first time. This sets up the story for the next "hour."

Playing 11th Hour is a real multimedia treat. The four CD-ROMs contain about an hour of 30 frame per minute video (TV quality) which is very impressive. The acting is on par with most CD-ROM movies these days (i.e. B grade). Some of the dialog is kind of strange like in a scene when your producer/lover is breaking up with you. She is in tears and Carl (you) doesn't seem to give a damn if she stays or goes. It kind of sets up the feeling that you're going to play a genuine jerk for the rest of the game. The game is rated PG but at times it heads for PG-13 territory. My wife points out that they must have sent out for a casting call for the most busty B movie actresses to play Robin. The player is treated to a brief flash of this cleavage early on in the introduction. Later you get to see a woman in full leather bondage type gear. If you pick the right women at the end of the game you might get lucky and end up in a motel room with one of them.

The audio is excellent and includes about 8 original songs from The Fatman who should be familiar to anyone into games. After all the Fatman is to games what Mike Post is to television soundtracks. The Mr. Death song is great with funny lyrics like "I can't take a bath, without Mr. Death scrubbing my back."

With all that praise for the multimedia capabilities of this disk, I didn't really have that great of an experience playing it. Now keep in mind that I am not a big fan of puzzles. My kind of puzzle is a word find. I got this game for my wife who is a big horror fan and likes to do crossword puzzles. We had played 7th Guest before and got through about half of the puzzles without cheating. When we started playing 11th Hour we were intrigued by the video and 3-D graphics but then we hit the first puzzle. We must have tried switching the white and black horses (chess pieces) around for an hour before our patience wore out and tried a clue "change the position of the two white knights with two black knights." No sh**! Hint: This puzzle requires 40 moves. Hint: Use a cheat!

Ok, let's try another one, a cash register puzzle. I think we tried that one for about two hours before I had to stop my wife from throwing the CD-ROM out the window. It seems we were thrown off by the display of 111 11 in the beginning of the game and thought that we were to add and subtract until we arrive at that number. Silly us, the object is to get from 162 00 to 81 81 by raising and lowering the cash register keys. The trick is to do it evenly with eight keys up and eight keys down. The treasure hunt riddles contain a lot of anagrams (words that when mixed up can spell other words) but are a lot easier to solve than the puzzles. All you have to do is find the object mentioned so some of them can be solved by blind luck. Find the object and you are rewarded with a video sequence.

You have to be a puzzle lover to enjoy this game. If you truly enjoyed the 7th Guest and perhaps found it a little too easy or really like challenging puzzles, than this is the game for you. If you are not into challenging puzzles stay clear of this game cause there is no "easy setting" -- although with some help from walkthroughs or cheats the puzzly-challenged can still enjoy the game unless you have an overwhelming sense of guilt. You can use the excellent walkthrough by David Melanson's at http://spoiler.et.ee/OTHER/Trilobyte/11.th.hour.1.txt. Virgin has a hint line but I personally would not want pay 75 cents a minute, besides my parent or legal guardian won't give me permission.

Review By GamesDomain