You are experiencing SENSORY OVERLOAD
Sensory Overload is a 1994 First-Person Shooter developed by Reality Bytes for the Apple Macintosh.
1998 - You're an unnamed CIA agent sent undercover to investigate Biotex Labs, a high-tech facility researching the "Alphachannel" Project being developed by one Dr. Craven, which involves neural manipulations and cryogenics. Posing as a test subject, you're unexpectedly knocked into a coma during one of the lab tests.
And then, you regain consciousness, you realize everybody in the lab around you are dead. Dr. Craven is nowhere to be seen. And assassins are after your life. But luckily, you managed to find your gun.
What is even going on in Biotex Labs?
- Attack Drone: The last few levels have tank-treaded security robots that announce their presence with "Warning!" and "Intruder!".
- Boss-Only Level: The final stage is dedicated solely to fighting the Mastermind.
- Cutscene Boss: Dr. Craven is automatically killed by the Player Character after breaking free from his Mind Control.
- Cut and Paste Environments: Because of the Macintosh's graphic limitations, the game tends to recycle graphics for backgrounds a lot. Expect to see rows and rows of turquoise-green walls, corridors with green patterns, the same grey ceiling, brown panel walls, over and over again. The in-game justification is that you're in a high-tech research lab, and floors of real-life laboratories often looks the same anyways.
- Dead-End Room: In several areas, mooks can open doors that you can't, annoyingly often from rooms that have no other entrances. Entering one of these rooms leaves you up the Unintentionally Unwinnable creek once the door closes.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The basement level, for some reason, have it's background walls and floors entirely in greyscale. Control panel indicators, mooks, breakable crates and your hand onscreen are still in colour though.
- Direct Continuous Levels: The game uses elevators, stairways, or airlocks (inexplicably) for transitions between levels.
- Disconnected Side Area: The thirteenth floor of the main building has neither elevator nor stair access, and is only enterable via air vent passageways from the fourteenth floor. In turn, it contains an express elevator to the hidden sub-basement.
- Double Unlock: On the thirteenth floor, and a triple unlock at that; finding the vent control switch to access an otherwise blocked vent, using said vent to access the temperature control so you don't get burned in the heat ducts, and finding the black passcard for the door at the end of the level.
- The Dragon: The Mastermind, a female Cyborg who you fight shortly after offing Big Bad Dr. Craven. However she only has slightly more HP than the higher Elite Mooks and the same attack as the cyborg mooks, albeit a bit faster.
- Elite Mooks: In the later levels, there's elite guards who look like Nazi officers and wield machine guns, and cyborg soldiers who talk like Darth Vader and throw plasma balls (the same projectile as the Electrogun). The unnamed female Dragon and Final Boss is a slightly enhanced (faster, and with a melee attack) Palette Swap of the cyborgs, i.e. a type of King Mook (or queen mook, if you will).
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: The hidden Radar Display Chip, along with the Proximity Detector which beeps when enemies are nearby, and the Trap Detector which shows trap triggers on the radar. One of the McNinja enemies has an Invisibility Cloak that also prevents radar detection.
- Gateless Ghetto: The building where the game starts has only one entrance, and the terrorists have welded it shut.
- Insecurity Camera: The security cameras are hemispherical and either shoot at you or sound an alarm to summon enemies from nearby rooms. Either way, they can be stealthily shot out with the Hollywood Silencer equipped.
- The Maze: The Biochemical Storage Area is an homogeneous and nondeterministic maze where "your ability to remember where you are is impaired" due to a chemical leak. Required to get the optional Silencer item, and any secret items you missed earlier.
- Mind Control: What Dr. Craven's tech, the "Alphachannel" Project, is about. Unfortunately premature activation will lead to memory loss, as demonstrated on your character.
- Notice This: In the form of a text window that would announce nearby objects as you walked past, punctuated with an audible "Wow!"
- Teleporting Keycard Squad: Some levels have security cameras that trigger enemies to come out of locked rooms or compartments in the walls. The door leading to The Dragon's lair at the end of the game is equipped with a silent alarm that causes a dozen tankbots to come out of the walls.
- Waking Up Elsewhere: Right in the first stage, you're NOT supposed to go through entirely with Dr. Craven's project. But you're dragged into the Alphachannel test and lose consciousness in the process, and now must find out what is going on.
- A Winner Is You: Complete the game and the ending FMV you get is... a two-screenshot newspaper report announcing your victory,CIA Stops Terrorist Threat
Rabid Goats on Rampage
Congratulations!
