As a gamer with a love of the English language and incredibly strong
opinions I have a great white whale of a dream, to professionally write
for a game review site or magazine. But unfortunately I have not
acquired a high enough education (still in college) or the proper
geographical location (California) to do this...yet. Anyway I often
find in my time working at GameStop that people just love to buy really
horrible video games. I, of course, guide them away from these puss
ridden boils like a shepherd guiding his flock. But some still refuse
to listen and end up walking out the door with the latest digital
blasphemy. So, I am now turning to this vast and mighty internet to
possibly hone my skill at analytical review.
First up...LOST: Via Domus. Now the reason why I picked this game as
the first is because I, as a LOST fan could not write this game off as
bad before I played it. Now that is not to say that I did not want to.
But simply, as a LOST fan, I had to play through the game for the story
and ignore the obviously bad game from the git-go.
Visuals: This is not a very pretty game. Which, of course, is quite a
shame seeing that LOST is arguably the most beautiful show on
television. The folliage itself is the highlight of the game's visual
department. But the textures are a mess, with all of the colors coming
off rather bland. The character models fare even worse. Mouths don't
match up very well with their vocal emphasis, and the characters,
including your own, have a very "boxy" sort if movement. Also, the
black smoke monster from the series, which I thought would be the one
thing that would have been done right, just does not move with the
snake like elegance of show's beloved "Smokey"
Sound: Oh sweet baby Jesus...the sound. The sound is atrocious. Now I
admit that I am being a bit harsh here in that I am basing said
atrocity of the sound on just one thing, the voice acting. In a show
that is driven by its magnificent cast, it is expected that at least a
fair majority of the actors would loan their voices to the title. But
alas, very few actors reprise their roles, including the title figures.
The few characters that do have their proper voices (Ben, Claire,
Desmond, Tom, Juliet, Sun, and maybe one other) fair quite well. That
is with the exception for Sun, who only has two dialog trees in the
whole game and one of them is in Korean. This of course has its reason,
but if she was going to have such a small part I can barley even
appriciate her inclusion. As for the so called "voice-a-likes", they
can hardly be called as such.
The Voice-A-Likes: Yeah, they are so bad I'm giving them their own
section. I don't know who these criminals of dialog are, but that might
be for the better. Jack, Kate, and Sayid all have mildly competent
stand-ins, but others do not fair so well. Hurley sounds like he has a
runny nose while eating a sandwich. Charlie is done with just a really
bad falceto English accent. Sawyer has a painfully bad Southern twang.
Lastly, and worst of them all, Locke is done with what can only be
called the voice of an ol' timey prospector. "There's gold in them
there hatches!"
Gameplay: Having a category for gameplay invokes the idea that there is
any to judge. You essentially run from lame puzzle to flash back to
lamer puzzle. Every aforementioned puzzle in the game is a bad rip-off
of Bioshock's hacking program. You need to redirect the flow of power
from the main circuit to gauges that can only hold so much of said
power. After you distribute the power to the gauges the door unlocks.
Dialog trees are present, but never so engaging as those in Mass
Effect. You are encouraged to pick up various items to trade for other
items. This is way overblown, seeing that you only need two candy bars
and five bottle of waters to buy the only gun in the game, and a few
more bottles of water to buy a few torches.
The Gun: Yeah, the gun gets its own section too. This gun is a sham.
The developers of the game said they took creative license with the
property (ie LOST) and added more action to make the game more
interesting. I fired my gun four times throughout the entire duration
of the game. That is right...four times. I shot two people and two
bundles of dynamite. Wow...they added a whole heap of action to this
game...yep.
The Ending: Now I won't spoil it for any of you still wanting to play
the game after reading this, or any of the other negative reviews, but
the ending is either awesome...or completely horrendous. I still have
not made up my mind on this one, I still think it was awful, but it
might...just might be pretty cool. It all depends on if the creators
include the dynamic of ending as part of the rules of the island. You
can find the ending on Youtube if you'd just like to see it, and not
suffer through the game as I did.
Conclusion: As a game LOST: Via Domus is pretty much a total failure.
Anyone who is not a dedicated LOST fan will be totally confused, in
that the game offers no plot synopsis. As a piece of LOST mythology, it
also ultimately fails. The ending is not very clear and the rest of the
plot is skipable at best. Your character is about as interesting as
Niki and Paulo, and his story is not very interesting as a stand alone
or as part of the over arching Hanso/Dharma/Others plot. In the end,
don't buy this game, just talk to me or someone else who has beat the
game to get the oh-so-interesting storyline.
