So you just bought a Sega Saturn, and you want a kick ass zombie game. Corpse Killer? That's GOT to be awesome! Yeah, no. The cover does say that it's "One of the top 20 games of the year," though. I shudder to think what the "bad" Saturn games of 1995 were...
Corpse Killer - also released for Sega CD and Sega CD32x, 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Windows, and Macintosh - is a rail shooter that displays the early and mid 90's obsession with Full Motion Video (FMV). Impossible before the dawn of CD based gaming, FMV was all the crazy for the early disc based systems. Some games went to extreme of being advertised as "interactive movies" instead of actual video games. Now, Corpse Killer didn't go that far, but it does have a LOT of FMV clips that display acting that would make Sylverster Stalone look like a good actor.
The backstory is that a "necrobiologist" named Dr. Hellman has gone to some Caribbean island to raise an army of the undead. You're part of a five man Navy SEAL team sent in to shut down Hellman's operation, but everyone except you gets captured. You meet up with a hyper-stereotypical Jamaican named Winston and an American reporter named Julie, and you end up running errands for them; Winston wants to go treasure hunting so he can buy a Hummer (he obsesses over Hummers throughout the entire game), and Julie wants to get photos proving that Hellman had funding from the Pentagon.
I'll provide examples of how ridiculous the FMV acting is. It starts with the opening scene and some screwing around on the menu (I didn't make this video), but the truly ridiculous part starts at about 1:50, and at about 2:45, you can see some actual gameplay from the first actual part of the game.
As you can see, my less-than-positive opinion of the acting quality is not hyperbole. It's an interesting game, though, and it's worth playing through once. It's an important part of the development of video games. I wouldn't spent too much time on this game, though; there are more fun things to do like splitting hairs or watching paint dry.
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