Research: Night Trap (The Game)

You see what I have to deal with?

Night Trap is not much of a game, at least by modern standards.  The level of player input is very minimal; the player switches between camera feeds in a house and activates traps to defend innocent in said house.  Not particularly exciting by any stretch of the imagination.  Truthfully, such was the fate of most FMV (Full Motion Video) games.

The game places you in the role of 'Control' in the Sega Control Attack Team (Special Control Attack Team on all other consoles), or SCAT.  Apparently, a bunch of teenage girls went missing at the Martin house a week ago for some reason, and SCAT, some sort of SWAT team knockoff, is the team to solve this mystery!

It's a good thing I didn't take this game seriously, or my brain would be in deep trouble already.

The game starts off by the player getting a sit-rep from SCAT leader Lieutenant Simms.  Belligerent and mustachioed, he told me how one of their agents hacked the camera/trap system last night and that I would be operating it to protect another wave of five teenage girls accompanied by an undercover agent, Diff'rent Strokes star Dana Plato Kelli (or Kelly, or Keli?  Each release has a different name).  Also, one of the girls brought her little brother Danny along.

You quickly find out that the Martins are a bunch of vampires that capture people, bottle their blood like wine, and occasionally give the bottle blood to lesser vampires, called Augers.  They are called Augers because they use a device that is a combination of a catch pole, a manacle, and a drill.  The manacle latches around the victim's neck, and the drill pokes through a hole in the manacle into the victim's neck.  Sounds scary and dangerous right?

Of course not.

Instead of stopping this immediately with a SCAT raid, SCAT decides to continue this undercover infiltration for... some reason.  Not that the Augers are all that scary; apparently, they are the loser vampires that don't have fangs or superpowers and can't suck blood on their own; hence their goofy weapon.  The costumes for the Augers are bizarre, and apparently they wear these all black clothes with balaclavas to keep their skin from falling off (which can be prevented by drinking blood).

Regardless, the proprietors of the house, Sheila and Victor Martin, greet the teenage girls and Dana Plato Kelli, take some bottled blood and leave the house in order to give it to the Augers so they'll stop raiding the house (the reason why the camera and trap system is there in the first place).  This leaves Sheila's and Victor's children Sarah and Jeff Martin, and cousin Tony to trap and 'bottle' the girls.

SCAT actually does send in a single guy early on for... some reason, but he gets caught by the augers and then is completely forgotten.  Why he didn't shoot them with his gun, I don't know.  Meanwhile, the teenage girls decide to have a party and sing the song "Night Trap," completely oblivious to the drilling and struggling noises.

Jeff walks in and tells Sarah that someone has hacked the trap system.  All the other people in the house kinda just sit in the background pretending to not hear Tony and Sarah talking at a normal volume.  Cousin Tony (who takes a cue from Corey Haim and wears sunglasses at night) falls for one of the girls because she looks like an old flame.  Danny gets attacked by Augers and runs out the back door.

Another SCAT agent, a black man, decides to pose as a Jamaican looking for his boat, and knocks on the front door.  One girls decides to change and apply makeup upstairs while the others go down to see Jamaican boatman.  Tony and Jeff just brush the Jamaican aside like you would a hobo.  The girls then proceed to eat cookies and ice cream while the girl beautifying upstairs is assaulted by augers, and flees out the second story window.  Kelli snoops around but is caught by Tony, who warns her to mind her beeswax.

Danny returns and tries to warn two of the girls, but is interrupted by screaming outside.  A neighbor named Weird Eddie startled one of the girls.  He tries to warn them of the danger of the Augers and Martins, but only Danny listens.  Weird Eddie gives Danny a laser gun and they decide to fight the Augers.  Dana Plato Kelli confides in one of the girls that she is an undercover agent.

Tony threatens one of the girls to leave and reveals the true nature of the Martins, and Dana Plato Kelli responds by pulling out a gun.  Tony then teleports next to her and disarms her.  He leaves, telling them to leave again.  Dana Plato Kelli tries to call for backup, but the radioman gets ambushed by Augers.  Danny proceeds to go on a rampage, killing Augers until he is disarmed and flees.  Two of the girls discover bodies in the kitchen and panic, running upstairs to flee from more Augers that have invaded the house.

The girls and Dana Plato Kelli regroup upstairs, but are split apart by Augers.  One by one, they are all split apart and escape, except for Dana Plato Kelli.  Tony appears and uses lightning powers to scare away the Augers chasing Dana Plato Kelli.  He then attacks Dana Plato Kelli, but gets caught in a trap (which he could've teleported out of but didn't).

What impressive lightning powers.

Sheila and Victor return and realize the Augers tricked them into leaving so they could loot the house's blood supply, while the SCAT team FINALLY launches an assault on the house.  The SCAT assault team and Dana Plato Kelli confront Sarah (who has returned from doing... something in the control room, I guess), Sheila, and Victor.  After the SCAT assault team loudly introducing themselves as SCAT with the straightest face they could muster, Victor invites everyone to the living room, where it is more comfortable.


Sheila and Victor give the SCAT assault team the straight dope on the Augers, the cameras and traps, to which the fake Jamaican black guy flips out in a very funky manner.  Jeff shows up in a manner similar to Sarah.  After Lieutenant Simms says "You're in serious trouble," Victor retorts with the oh-so-witty "No Lieutenant, I am afraid it is YOU who don't understand!"

Victor manages to toss a SCAT agent out the window behind him with an underhanded throw, not even bothering to turn around.  It's as if he knows that every SCAT agent is the biggest chump on the planet.  Fake Jamaican agent unloads his shotgun into Victor, and stands there with his jaw agape as Victor just laughs it off and chews the scenery.  Naturally, Augers and the Martins take everyone down except Dana Plato Kelli, although Jeff does get trapped in the process.

Dana Plato Kelli gets chased around the house by the Martins as they teleport and flash lightning (because they simply can).  Dana Plato Kelli is cornered, but tricks Sheila into falling for a trap that flings her out the second floor bedroom via a catapult made out of the bed.  Victor and Sarah chase Dana Plato Kelli into the bathroom but Victor makes the mistake of touching the closet, which is trapped.

A WALL TRAP!  AGHHHHHH!!!

Dana Plato Kelli runs into the hall, and Sarah is trapped in a hall trap.  Dana Plato Kelli then congratulates you, and stupidly gives you a chance to trap her as well (which is in my opinion the canon ending).  The credits roll, and play "Night Trap" again, for our pain.



Like I said earlier, there isn't much actual gameplay to review, hence the heavy plot summary.  I'm not going to analyze it much, since there isn't really much worth analyzing.  This game was more an experiment in interactive television and cinema than a standard game.  In the end, Night Trap turns into an exercise of memorization: You have to remember where each Auger comes and when, as well as trap them in order to perform well in the game.  If you want a perfect run with all Augers caught, you will be almost constantly flipping through the camera feeds, which makes it very difficult to absorb the story in one sitting.

As you can see, the story becomes very disjointed.

Night Trap bears many peculiarities.  While it's clearly intended to be a parody of 80s slasher film given the hammy acting, SCAT team name/antics, and complete goofiness of the laser guns/auger devices/traps, the game completely fails to capture the sense that you are actually controlling a security camera system; the camera follows characters, zooms, change position, and can even cut shots on the fly!  Not very immersive at all, unlike say Paranormal Activity.

The plot holes are pretty noticeable too; Why don't the Martins just use their vampire powers to incapacitate everyone, or to escape traps they get caught in?  Why can't the BULLETPROOF VAMPIRES just break out of the traps, especially if Victor can toss with an underhanded throw a fully armored man out the window?  So much is not explained particularly well.  Certain game over sequences don't make sense either.  If Jeff deactivates the player's control over the camera/trap system, the player gets trapped and falls into an abyss.  How?  In the game over sequences at the end of the game, if the player fails to trap the Martin vampires, Dana Plato Kelli gets restrained by Augers who were previously invading the house to steal from the Martins.  Why the sudden cooperation?

Argh.  My brain hurts.