Shiver 3D

Do you fancy seeing some gruesome monsters and battle your way through a maze of corridors and eerie rooms with whatever you can get your hands on? If you answered yes, read on… If not, try not to have nightmares that this game could bring!

As the name would suggest, Shiver 3D is certainly not for the faint-hearted. Reminiscent of Doom and identical to Wolfenstein 3D (apart from rather than shooting at soldiers, you’re hacking your way through demon zombies). The graphics are simplistic and in places quite low resolution – particularly if you let the monsters get too close! If the ghastly low resolution creatures don’t scare you enough, their nasty habit of jumping out at you from all angles when you least expect it certainly will!

This game is certainly quite masterful in its delivery of shock and excitement in equal measures. Armed with a blood spattered crow bar to start with, the scene is set from the very first frame. You are tasked with the dubious pleasure of exploring this seemingly endless maze and hacking and blasting your enemy away without any second thought. These monsters range in ability, some take a few more hits, others are more powerful with their attacks, some can only attack at close quarters and others can get cheap shots in at range which will certainly drain your life away if you are slow to stop them.

As you would be probably expecting, the more you roam these lairs the more beasts you will come up against but fortunately you will stumble upon better advanced and more powerful weapons, ammunition and power ups to improve the chances of reaching the end rather than being on the wrong end of a crow-bar!

If you’re not too careful you will be certainly somewhat lost and rather prone to attacks at first. Also don’t be too sure that the enemy won’t follow you from room to room, from my experience they would chase you around if you didn’t kill them when you first came across them. These monsters seldom fight fairly, indeed they usually will try ganging up on you, it will serve you well to not be an easy target and keep moving around as much as possible to avoid their evil clutches and receiving blows whilst delivering some swift hits to despatch the enemy – one by one.

Ultimately you will either love or loathe this game. I say this because not only does the artwork rather leave you wondering why so little attention was paid to it when such focus was given to making your hair stand on end. However, the budget graphics are not a huge distraction. The speed these foul creatures move and fearlessly keep hunting you is certainly going to keep your mind occupied in more important things – like staying alive! The range of weapons gives you quite a bit of flexibility and help even up the score. If roaming around rather oppressive and claustrophobic scenes is not your thing, be sure to keep the light on when playing this!

Rating 87%

Positives

Very atmospheric

Graphic and brutal violence (not ideal for younger kids)

Different difficulty levels

Addictive

Negatives

Rather low end graphics which are surpassed by modern standards

The sleepless nights, both due to addiction and nightmares!