Gameology 2.0

Review Of

Detalion. Sentinel: Descendants in Time. Chicago, IL: The Adventure Company, 2004.

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Kheops Studio. Return to Mysterious Island. Chicago, IL: DreamCatcher Interactive, 2004.

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A friend and I are putting together a book on graphical adventure games, so I've been checking out some of the newer games and the older ones that managed to skip past me while they were on the shelves. I wanted to know what was hot in the genre right now, so I bought two games from Target. Both of these games were from The Adventure Company, but differed tremendously on several fronts. I thought it might be interesting to review them together, just to highlight some of the possibilities inherent in the design of a graphical adventure.

Both games featured excellent and immersive graphical environments, sound and music were superb, and so on, but I don't want these things to be the focus of the review. Suffice it to say that all such things get a 10/10 or whatever numbers will satisfy. The only major superficial complaint I had about either game was the avatar's HORRID voice acting in The Sentinel. I shuddered everytime he opened his mouth. Fortunately, the game's other virtues make up for his embarrassing performance.

If I were to describe The Sentinel in few words, I'd call it a "puzzle game with a narrative component linking the puzzles together." The game consists of about eight "worlds," which might be better described as "backgrounds," and twenty or so logic puzzles. One of the best puzzles involves a bridge and four banks of eight switches. Only one switch can be activated on any one bank. Flipping a switch on one of the banks lights up a set pattern of nodes on the bridge. Flipping a switch on another bank will cause some of the lights to turn red or yellow depending on whether or not they were lit by the first switch. A third such circuit will cause some to become blue, and if opposing nodes are both blue, a span will appear across them. If the node receives a fourth current, it will short out. Needless to say, it's a fairly complex and time-consuming puzzle, but my wife and I had great fun solving it. Most of the other puzzles in The Sentinel were comparable to this one, though others were "sound puzzles." One of the sound puzzles at the end was so difficult I ended up "cheating" a bit by using my handy voice recorder to record and label each sound (my aural memory is apparently not as great as my visual one).

Unlike Return to Mysterious Island, which I'll describe later, Sentinel is a 3-D world. You can navigate it with the same keys used for most FPS. You do not have an inventory and cannot carry any items; all such things are self-contained in the puzzles you encounter. In some ways, you have much less means of manipulating the environment here than you do in RMI, even though you can move about somewhat like a disembodied eye. Your range of movement in the "worlds" are quite limited, but that's a good thing. Some puzzles take place all over an area, and there is a great deal of meandering back and forth to get things done. This grew quite tedious on one level in particular, which required your avatar's ascending and descending a long spiral staircase over and over again. (Yawn).

Connecting all these puzzles is a somewhat confusing story about a defense program (or is she an "uploaded personality?") and a lost civilization. You are there because some thugs have your sister held ransom and won't give her back until you enter "Tomb 35" and bring back a treasure. The defense program guarding the Tomb is a young woman whose attitude towards your avatar is always somewhat mysterious. Is she your friend or your enemy? Gradually, you learn about her civilization and get some insight into her life by visiting "sketches" of the places she grew up in. The "twist" ending may either seem very clever or very contrived depending on how well you studied the clues she gives you during the game.

*** BEGIN Spoiler ***

At the end, you discover that your avatar is actually Ramirez, who your avatar thought all along was a previous explorer who made it out of the tomb alive. Some quick flashes at the end seem to indicate that your "sister" is actually your daughter, who wasn't held ransom but merely runs up and embraces you at the end. It's not clear how much of your "past" was actually just stuff made up and implanted in your brain by the defense program, who claims she did it to "test" you and make sure you had worthier ambitions than merely looting the tomb. At least, this is my interpretation. There is a good deal of ambiguity here, and I'm not sure I fully grasp the storyline. Apparently, at some point in the distant past, some people were chosen to live life as near-immortals, whereas others died off, but not before building giant "traps" to test guys like Ramirez. I found myself scratching my head a great deal about these matters, and I'm not sure it really makes much sense.

*** End Spoiler ***

Now, on to The Return to Mysterious Island. This game is based on a Jules Verne story of "Mysterious Island," which I haven't read, though playing this game has left me with a strong desire to do so. The gist of the game is that you are a female sailor attempting to circumnavigate the globe who, thanks to a really nasty storm, ends up stranded on a mysterious tropical island. Oh, and your cell phone batteries are dead, so there's no calling home. You have to find some way for your avatar survive and get off the island. Oh, and it IS a mysterious island! It doesn't take long before you are really sucked into the mystery, and I had a damnable hard time going to bed without having solved it. (And spent most of the next day eager to get back to it).

RMI reminds me of older GAGs in that you can't just walk where you want to go. The island is actually composed of a set number of "rooms," in the widest possible sense. Like an old text adventure, you are always presented with one or more exit to another location. When you get there, you can look around, but not zoom or step. The mouse pointer changes when you have it pointing at a possible exit or an object you can pick up or manipulate. This can sometimes be a real pain, because the resolution is fairly high, and it's not always obvious what you should be able to pick up or manipulate (at times it seems rather arbitrary). You are given an unlimited inventory (or at least as unlimited as you'll need).

Solving puzzles may involve simply using an object in your inventory on fixed objects, or combining objects in your inventory to (temporarily or permanently) create a new object which you can THEN use on the fixed objects. For instance, you might use a knife to tear down some vines, or you might attach the knife to a forked stick and then have a spear. Later on, you get a pet monkey (Remember Floyd?) who is smart enough to use objects in your inventory to do various tasks for you (like using the knife to cut down a coconut).

There are some seriously neat features in RMI that I enjoyed. One is the built-in redundancy. It quickly becomes obvious that there is usually more than one way to solve a puzzle. For instance, at one point you know you need to construct a fishing pole to snag a fish. You can build this fishing pole either by using the spear to hack down some barbs, or you can find some straight thorns and use a fire to warp them into hooks. Likewise, you can send your monkey in with a knife to cut down things out of reach, or you can attach the knife to the stick and use it as a spear for the same purpose. The game is loaded with such opportunities. I ended the game with several objects I hadn't used, though I'm certain they weren't merely red herrings.

The object combination system is quite good. Instead of just "leaving you to your own devices," putting together applicable objects presents you with a formula at the bottom that indicates how many objects are missing from your construction (though you don't know what exactly you are building). For instance, combining copper coins and some cloth brings up the formula, so you know a combination is possible, but you don't know what you need to add or what you are making. Thus, there's a sort of "puzzle game within a puzzle game" that makes for some really intriguing gameplay possibilities.

The story unfolds in several ways. At some points you are presented with some comic book-type cut scenes and narrations, though these are entertaining and definitely not distracting or intrusive. Other story elements are better integrated. If you put together a projector, you can see a slideshow the island's previous inhabitants put together of their adventures. You can also find plenty of fragments, wall-handings, inscriptions and so on that tell the story of the island. I'm not sure whether reading the Verne story before playing the game would be good or not; I didn't need it to enjoy myself here.

There are at least four puzzles in RMI that are similar to the ones faced in the Sentinel. One is rather like a slide-puzzle, but the rest are more alpha-numeric. My wife and I were able to solve them with minimal difficulty, though I think we just got lucky a few times (stumbling on the solution by accident). Honestly, I could have done without these stand-alone puzzles; I wanted more puzzles involving the objects in my inventory.

The end of the game reveals the story of the island and shows you some nice cut-scenes of being rescued. What's more intriguing, though, is a message that informs you about future possibilities for playing the game. Apparently, there are "countless" ways to play and complete the game. I'm very tempted to go back now and try some different things just to find out what they do--it really is quite good.

So, which one did I like better? There's no doubt; I preferred RMI. Then again, it feels more like the "traditional" adventure games I've come to love over the years. I also happen to love island survivor stories, Robinson Crusoe in particular. It was a challenging game that managed to avoid being frustrating. There was only puzzle I found that couldn't be solved by the inherent logic of the game; the answer was in the "First Five Minutes of Gameplay" part of the instruction booklet; perhaps this was by design. The Sentinel was more tedious for me, with one puzzle leading to another. If you love abstract logic puzzles like my wife, then you're sure to love this game, but for a more "narrative" type like me, I'd recommend RMI.

Nevertheless, both games are high quality, and I don't regret buying and completing either of them. I have two games currently residing in the queue--"The Longest Journey," which I picked up for only $10 at Target, and the original MYST, which I've ordered from Amazon. The package I bought contains Myst and three sequels. I'll try to review each game we complete here--partly to share my thoughts, but also to archive them for use in our book.