Brain Dead 13

Plot

Lance, a young computer expert, is called to fix a computer at a scary, dilapidated castle. After repairing a large super-computer, Lance learns that his client, the disembodied brain of Dr. Nero Neurosis, has a diabolical plan to take over the world. He quickly finds himself in trouble, being chased around the castle by Dr. Nero Neurosis's psychotic servant Fritz.

The player must guide Lance through the castle in order to defeat Dr. Neurosis and escape with his life.

Gameplay

The game consists entirely of quick time events. During gameplay exploration is freer than in most previous interactive games, with most rooms linked to crossroads. This leaves the route for finding the Brain Chamber up to the player.

Even crossroads are done as quick time events. Failure to choose a path as soon as he reaches a crossroads and to use the other actions as well as choosing the dangerous path results in the game displaying the failure scenes, in which Lance becomes killed by Fritz or by his other enemies or obstacles or he falls to his doom. The death scenes are often rather violent, but over-the-top in their cartoony approach. However, the player has infinite lives, and after the death sequence, there is a revival sequence, where Lance revives in ways that depend on which scene he was killed in.

Characters

Lance also comes across many other creatures out to kill him in the various dungeons, hallways, rooms, gardens and labyrinths in the castle.

Version differences

The PC, Saturn, and Jaguar CD versions were compressed onto a single CD, and as a result have considerably lower video quality than the CD-i, 3DO, and PlayStation versions, which each include two CDs. The iOS port (which does not require any CDs) has higher video resolution than any of the six earlier versions.

The first disc of the 3DO version comes in two different releases: the original, which is labeled simply "Disc 1", and a version labeled "Disc 1 (v1.1)". The v1.1 disc fixes a bug which sometimes causes the game to crash during Vivi's funeral salon in the original release. The iOS port also upgraded from Version 1.0 to Version 1.1, which fixed various bugs, on December 1, 2010.

European and Japanese releases of the game were given a highly selective dubbing which retains all non-verbal voice acting from the original actors, even when it appears in the same clip with verbal voice acting. For instance, in the original intro sequence Lance says "Wah ha ha! I'm game!" In the Japanese version "I'm game!" is dubbed over with a Japanese translation, but the original voice actor's laughter is retained.

In the iOS port the screen turns black for a split second after making a move in certain scenes when Lance looks around, or after failing to make a choice. Also, button icons appear on the corners of the touch screen in an L-shape, with the "Menu" icon on the top left corner, the directional arrow icon on the bottom left, and the circular action button icon on the bottom right; the player can change or toggle the button icons any which way or size via "Settings", as well as turning the audio or visual move guide (which allows the player to quickly press an appropriate button as soon as it lights up in certain areas, making things easier) on or off. However, the icons vanish during death scenes and resurrection scenes, depriving the player of the ability to pause the game during death scenes or to skip resurrection scenes like in the MS-DOS original or all other game console versions.

Reception

The video game was met with some average to mixed to unfavorable reviews. GameRankings gave the game a score of 68.12% for the 3DO version, a 50.25% for the Sega Saturn version, and a 35% for the PC version, with the latter based on a sole review from GameSpot's Jeffery Adam Young, who gave the game a 3.5 out of 10 and said that it was "a skillfully animated cartoon that is almost entirely unplayable and fails completely as an interactive experience." The Sega Saturn version did not fare much better for Hugh Sterbakov of the same gaming website, who gave it a 3.8 out of 10 and said it "makes no improvement in a decade-old genre that never managed to bring its interactive excitement up to the level of its visuals." The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly lauded the game as one of the best of the FMV quick-time event games, thanks to its non-linear gameplay and forgiving difficulty (in that it does not require split-second timing and gives the player unlimited continues). They particularly praised the 3DO version's high quality video and quick loading times, and said the game's one flaw is that it has no replay value. A review in GamePro, in contrast, said the game "is nowhere near as good as Dragon's Lair or Space Ace" and that the 3DO version feels like an unfinished game due to its glitches and control, though they concurred on the high quality of the video.