Double Switch (Sega CD) - Positives - Rerez

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I have to say that I really wasn't looking forward to playing another Sega CD game that involved full motion video because after I played that wonderful little experience that is Tomcat Alley I wanted to stay back off the Sega CD for a bit. But I decided to pick up this game: Double Switch. A game that's all about trapping people and saving tenants in some apartment complex. Let's find the positives.

Double Switch is a game where you control these traps in a whole bunch of different rooms. You move around from room to room and you can set off the traps whenever it's appropriate. However this kind of gameplay has a big problem. Now I assume you have played a game, watched a movie, read a book, whatever. So you would know most of these will exist with the beginning of a story and then an ending sometime at the end of the line. Sometimes a video game has branching paths that change here and there. But Double Switch was very, very different. Imagine if you will that you're watching television. You've got a remote control and you keep switching the channels every so often. Whenever you go back to an older channel that you weren't watching anymore time had progressed so whatever was going on kept moving forward. That's Double Switch. Every single event in every single room keeps moving forward regardless of you viewing it or not. Essentially what happens is the story progresses when you're not paying attention and because of that it's almost impossible to get a full scope of what's going on in the game. And because this is a full motion video game its focus is really on the story. Another problem with the game is the way that you set off traps. While most people would think setting off a trap is as easy as clicking one button it isn't. At the bottom of the screen you can arm a trap and to arm a trap you have to push one of the buttons on the controller three times. Then to engage the trap you have to press the button a fourth time. That's stupid. Just really think about that. In order to make this game easier all they really had to do was just have a one button trap option but they didn't and it makes the game needlessly difficult.

As you can tell there are a bunch of problems with this game but one of the things that they did really well was that they added different elements into the game to give you more of a reason to be paying attention to certain rooms. For instance if you're watching a room at a certain time you'll actually unlock a new trap. And there's some instances when an enemy appears that you actually have to disarm traps on them that way they can't capture other people. If you do this properly it extends the gameplay further and allows you to actually complete it. But by doing that they added additional elements to the game that kind of made it more interesting to play. This game could have easily been just you sitting down watching a bunch of TV screens but by switching up the gameplay halfway through and adding those tiny little elements it makes the gameplay a little bit more interesting. So the first positive is that it changes up the gameplay. Most of these FMV games have really, really, really, really bad acting. Double Switch really doesn't change that but it does have a good cast. Unlike many other FMV games Double Switch has a bunch of people you may actually know like Corey Haim, R. Lee Ermey and Debbie Harry, you know Blondie from the band Blondie? Yeah she's in this game. Actually has quite a prominent role. And although some of their acting is questionable it's fun to watch. And they're pretty good actors most of the time so if you enjoy them as actors a big positive for this game is it's got a really good cast.

FMV games are all about the video so if the video doesn't look good what's the point of playing the game? And I have to say Double Switch has a lot of good looking video. While the quality is a little bit questionable on the Sega CD version it does actually show some pretty cool sets, some pretty cool designs, miniature work, there's a lot of really cool things that went into the design of this game. Even the traps are really fun to watch and that's a really big positive because at least it's not tiring to look at. So the third positive for this game is it's got great video production. It's kind of impossible to see the full story because there's always some event happening that you need to pay attention to. If you don't prevent somebody from pulling the power from your camera gear you'll actually lose. And there are videos that are happening that you should be paying attention to while other events are going on so there's very few instances where you'll actually be able to watch a video from beginning to end without interruption. But when I played this game when I was younger I purposely lose at points just so I could see the full version of a video. Once I did that I actually got to experience the whole story. There's a lot of really cool mystery elements going on and there's a lot of different storylines playing out. It's interesting it's actually kind of rewarding if you pay attention to it all. And while the ending is kind of stupid it was fun getting there. I enjoyed the story so the last positive for this game is it's actually got a pretty decent and at least interesting story.

At the end of the day Double Switch just isn't a good game but there's a good reason for that. Digital Pictures the people that made this game weren't really game designers. They were filmmakers and although they were doing a lot of really interesting things with the technology that existed at the time they just didn't know how to make a good game to save their lives. Maybe someday some company will resurrect this game genre and bring it back and do it properly. And maybe this time they won't hire Debbie Harry as an actress. Seriously dudes Blondie? You couldn't have gone with Cher?

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