Introduction
Your friends become your enemies and your enemies become your friends. It’ll be up to you to deceive the humans or find the robots. First Class Trouble tests your perception, awareness, and trust, one bottle of champagne at a time.
Review
First Class Trouble is the newest game in the whodunnit genre and will take you into the world of mystery and deception, all while donning some classic 50s outerwear. You’ll be put into a group with 5 other players in each match. 4 of you will be Residents, or human players, and 2 of you will be Personoids, or robots. The Residents will need to complete each level’s designated task, whether it be collecting keycards or repairing electronic devices, all while keeping an eye out for those pesky Personoids. The Personoids can help with the tasks if they want, but they can also be the devious machines they were created to be and sabotage everything. If the Residents make it to the end with no Personoids alive, they win. If the Personoids get rid of all of the Residents before the end (or if both are still alive during the final task), they’ll win. Throughout the game, the Residents will also need to keep the ship’s oxygen levels full while working on their tasks. If the oxygen runs out, the Residents will suffocate and the Personoids will win. While this all probably sounds awfully familiar and similar to another classically deceptive and delightful game, it does have its own spin that can make you love or hate it, depending of course on what side you’re playing on.
One of the main features that I personally thoroughly enjoyed was that any player can deal a killing blow. It’s not just the Personoids that you need to look out for. If another player finds you to be on the suspicious side, they and another player can actually kill you with a good old fashioned choke hold. Because of this, you really need to make sure you’re watching as many players as you can to ensure that they’re completing the tasks and not trying to deceive you. Personoids, of course, will have many more tools at their disposal, most notably a Syringe shot that will kill any player, including the other Personoid. On top of being able to sabotage everything, Personoids are also equipped with a scanner that will give them the location of all weapons, oxygen vents, and players in the current level. This is very beneficial to the Personoid who would rather sneak around and hide in the shadows instead of actively helping the Residents survive. Outside of the main objectives, there are also a variety of items that you can pick up and throw at other players, which doesn’t really serve too much of a purpose, but let’s be real, it’s quite fun to chuck a bottle of champagne at someone’s face and see them take a tumble because of it. If you’re feeling extra cruel, you can even push other players into pools, electrified hallways, and fire, which will of course kill them if they’re not rescued in time.
At the start of stages 2 and 3, the players will gather together for an “emergency meeting” where they’ll have the option to debate and potentially vote another player out. If the other players start thinking you’re a Personoid, you’ll need to convince them otherwise. If you don’t, you run the risk of being shoved into the airlock and sent off into space. Unless you have the magnetic boots, of course, which will prevent you from flying out and offer the players a rather humorous character animation to witness. If no players stand out as being suspicious, all of the players can pass and continue on with the game. If the Residents feel they have removed all of the Personoids, they can choose to end the game right then and there. But as always, be careful when making these decisions because it can easily cost your team the game should you be tricked by the sneakiest of Personoids.
First Class Trouble is a cross-platform multiplayer game which allows you to connect to far more people which ensures you’ll always have a full group to play with, if the servers allow you to connect, that is. While at the time of creating this review the servers have improved quite a bit since day one, they still have their moments of temperamentality that can sometimes be a time consuming issue to fix. Being plagued with Network Errors in a game that is based solely online is not a fun problem to have, but it can usually be fixed by just restarting the game or waiting a few minutes before you try again. This isn’t too bad if you’re playing solo, but if you’re playing with a group of friends, it runs the risk of putting a damper on an otherwise rather enjoyable multiplayer experience. Creating a party comes with its own issues since you have to invite players through the in-game friend system versus inviting them through your console. This isn’t a new concept in games, but the problem comes when you’ve added each other and send invites, then nothing happens. With no other way to join each other or create a party, it doesn’t take long for frustration to kick in when all you want to do is play the game. Out of all of the issues the game could possibly have, the servers being the worst one is less than favorable, but with each patch they release, you can see a clear difference in their functionality, so it’s nice to see how aware the Developers are of the issue and how quick they are working to resolve it. You can probably expect these problems to be non-existent in the near future.
In the land of trophies and achievements, you hunters will be up for quite a run. There are achievements in the game that will be near impossible to get solo, so if you’re looking to get them all, you’ll need to get a group together. On top of those, you will also be welcomed into the lair of the RNG God himself and find yourself crossing fingers, making deals, and begging for certain scenarios and levels to appear. There are achievements that you can only earn as a Personoid and ones that you can only earn as a Resident, which alone can take a few rounds to get the proper setup for since the character assignments will always be random. The level-specific achievements will require a lot of patience as it feels like the ones that have no achievement tied to them appear far more often than those that do. While you can technically get all of the achievements done in about 20-25 matches, you’ll need to be incredibly lucky to do so, so you can expect to play far more purely because of how random the match generation is. While this is great for the game overall, from a trophy and achievement hunter point of view, it can get quite tedious. As always, make the RNG odds be ever in your favor.
Rating
Pros:
- Great playing with friends
- Easy to learn and get the hang of
- The matches are short, allowing you to get quite a few in within a small time
- The RNG of the game generation allows for a good variety of gameplay experiences for each player
Cons:
- The servers have their issues as right now
- Playing in a lobby full of strangers can often lead to a very quiet match which goes against the main point of the game, but we can tie that to player shyness versus a fault of the game itself
- The in game friend list and invite system can take a bit to figure and doesn’t always work properly, making it impossible to play with friends since you can’t create a party due to server issues
Summary
Overall, First Class Trouble gives you pretty much what you’d expect from it. You’ll have a better time playing with familiar people versus complete strangers, but even with the latter, you can still expect to have your fair share of laughs here and there. While the server issues are a problem right now, 95% of the time you’ll be able to play without any problems so while they do need to be mentioned, it’s not something that should deter you from checking out the game. At the time of writing this, the game is free on all platforms so there’s no reason you shouldn’t at least give it a try.
If you enjoyed this Review, why not check out some more we have on site.
You can also chat to our writers and friends by joining us on Discord with this link – Discord Invite
Game & Developer Information
Developer Website: Invisible Walls
Developer Socials: Twitter
Publisher Website: Versus Evil
Publisher Socials: Twitter
PSN Store Links: £15.99/€19.99 Europe / $19.99 North America
Trophy Information: 18. 
1 / 
8 / 
8 / 
1
Images – Screenshots from actual gameplay
NODE Gamers 