Horror Zombies from the Crypt (PC) Review

Inspired by the horror cinema of the British film production company Hammer, Horror Zombies from the Crypt looks like it takes place on the set of any of its movies… or, to be more precise, all of its movies, since it's a roller coaster ride full of werewolves and vampires, witches and headless ghosts, Frankenstein's monsters and possessed armours… and zombies, of course, lots and lots of brain-eating zombies. Even so, it has that special charm of cult horror cinema, and actually remains atmospheric even to this day.

Unfortunately, the conversion from Amiga to DOS, has left the game with a few altered, and even missing things. For starters, the colour palette is a tad more limited and darker than the original, and while this actually enhances the mood, it makes everything look boring after a few hours. The music, or the lack of it, is an even bigger problem, because the Amiga version featured a wonderful cover of Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights. Even worse, the sound effects are surprisingly bad, or, to be more specific, so-bad-that-they-are-good, especially the deafening dying "scream" of the enemies.

Gameplay-wise this is basically an action-adventure where the player has to find keys, kill enemies, avoid traps, and solve some minor "puzzles." It's very arcady, both in terms of its simple-to-grasp mechanics, as well as its unfair challenge. Ever had a friend who boasts about beating something like Dark Souls. Simply put this game on this poor fellow's hands and then begin your clichéd evil laughter, because this is one of the hardest pieces of software ever made, and, like most bad games of the distant past, the difficulty is less about skill, and more about bad design.

First of all, the character is a slow-moving wuss, evident by the scared way he walks. He only has a throwable dagger (which must be rediscovered every time a new level begins), and he actually dies in one hit, which, by the way, makes him commit suicide in an extremely gory way, because he falls to his knees and rips his face off while his brain explodes! Who can blame him, though? He moves very close to the edge of the screen, and, most importantly, the hit detection is very bad, with many deaths looking as if the monster killed him with its bad breath or something

Unfortunately, the biggest problems lie within the level design; level design heavily built around trial and error at its absolute worse. The haunted mansion everything takes place in is full of traps that are simply impossible to avoid on your first play-through, which turns this into an annoying memory game kind of marathon - and if that wasn't enough, get ready for some of the cheapest deaths imaginable, like how simply walking on an ordinary spot a zombie will appear out of nowhere, or how at the very first two-three milliseconds of a stage, an enemy runs towards you and kills you…