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Saturday, October 11, 2008 |
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Sinking Island
By DeuS @ 2:55 PM :: 1282 Views ::  :: PC
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When I decided to take the time to sit down and try out Sinking Island,
the first thing that I was rather intrigued about was the Bioshock
esque architecture that was portrayed on the cover artwork of the box
that the game arrived in. Sure enough as you install the game and start
it up, the menu screen that shows up is very derivative of the
steam-punk interface that you would be used to if you have played
Bioshock for any length of time. Still, in spite of having an aesthetic
relation to one of the most popular games in the First Person Shooter
game market of today, Sinking Island manages to fall short on enough
levels that I do not believe it will ever come close to being the
Bioshock of the Point-and-Click adventure game genre.
In Sinking
Island you play Jack Norm, an inspector who’s flown off to a remote
island somewhere in the Indian Ocean to investigate the murder of one
Mr.Walter Jones, millionaire and owner of the island and the massive
architectural wonder constructed on it. The plot of the game is a
stereotype murder mystery. An old rich guy is killed the night before
his will is to be declared to a mouldy crew of people who would do very
fine as characters of cheesy mystery novels of similar nature. The cast
include the responsible and independent granddaughter, the favourite
grandson, the gambler/drinker black sheep of the family grandson, the
lawyer/banker/Tom Hagen sorts who is common to such plots, the
architect of the tower and so forth. The entire game consists of
investigating and finding clues to figure out the identity of the
murderer from among the dozen people who are present on the island at
that particular time.
After spending about 20 minutes into the
game I realized that I was being subjected to what I would call one of
the most lacklustre and unintuitive game play systems I’d ever
experienced in an adventure game. When you play a usual off-the-shelf
adventure game, you progress by exploration, puzzle solving, gathering
items are exploring possibilities and putting two-and-two together and
getting somewhere so that you can continue further in the game. I
believe this is what tends to be the draw of the adventure game genre.
Sinking Island few of those ideas but takes out the best parts of what
makes an adventure game a worthwhile investment of time and money.
There
is no puzzle solving for one. Progress is completely based upon doing
things like taking photographs, comparing fingerprints and finding and
investigating material evidence such as torn pieces of cloth. You
complete ‘Mandates’ by answering the mandate's question which will be
something like “Who was present at the crime scene ?” For that you
would have to go around looking for a set number of declarations,
pictures, and material evidence and organizing them into the PDA your
provided with. The PDA also does a lot of the analysis work for you
such as comparing finger prints or matching photos of footprints or
figuring out whether a torn piece of cloth belongs to a shirt (Like you
really needed a PDA to tell you that. As if you cannot see the hole in
the shirt with your own eyes) All of this could have been presented as
a bunch of mini-games. Instead it is completely handled by the PDA
which leaves you to experience just the exploration and conversation
aspects of the game.
The actual approach to game play is
nothing short of tedious. The tasks are very much like Fed Ex runs
where you will spend more time running to a place such as the beach or
the cafe to take a photograph or talk to an individual who is there at
that time. You don’t have a map or any mechanism of quick travel. You
will thus spend a tiring 10 minutes getting to the native hut on the
island from the 22nd floor of the tower just to get an opinion from the
native on something. Following that you will spend another 7 minutes
getting to the lobby to talk about that to someone else, and so forth.
Since
conversation is one of the prime elements of this game, you also have
to go through a lot of uninteresting dialogue with the residents of the
island to progress for the most part. The conversations cannot be
skipped and are very repetitive to the point of boredom and annoyance.
For example, upon learning that the daughter of the native living on
the island was at the crime scene, you will have to go around asking
everyone on the island about their opinion on the matter. You will hear
you character repeat the same question about a dozen times with the
same speech audio playing in the back. More over you can go around and
ask everyone’s opinions on everyone. In fact, for a major portion of
the game all you are going to do is go to every person and exhaust the
palette of questions of have ready to ask them, which is going to be
the same for every character in any case. One of the characters will
blurt out something suspicious and that will be registered in the
declaration section of your PDA as something said by that person. Then
you work upon that and go ask all the other guys about what they think
of this new development of which you have just learnt from that person.
This will continue throughout the game. I assure you that while your
playing this game, you will be feel more in tune with the gossip aunt
within you than any other moment in your life. A lot of what you will
do involves instigating people by telling them about how someone else
called them a fool, after which they will reveal some shady secret
about the first guy.
Overall, nothing in Sinking Island manages
to save it from being one of the most uninteresting adventure game’s I
have ever played. The game does not manage to impress the hardcore
adventure gamer in me and neither do I feel it will impress the mystery
buff due to its rather tasteless plot. The minus points are plenty.
They include not being able to skip dialogue, the Fed Ex run nature of
the game, the tedious conversations that you constantly need to have
with everyone in order to progress and so on. Add to that a really
uninteresting storyline and your better off just buying a mystery book
and saving some money to buy a decent adventure game, or maybe visiting
some of the genre’s golden games from the yonder years.
4 out of 10
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| Comments |
 By
KILLAHBEEZ @
Sunday, October 12, 2008 2:19 AM
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great review, keep up the good work
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By
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Monday, November 23, 2009 2:59 AM
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