Lost: Via Domus was released back in 2008, I'm aware that this game has no relevance today. I'm also aware that it barely had any relevance when it was initially released. But the fact is, I just bought this game a few weeks back and played it this week for the first time. So whenever I play and beat a game, whether it be a million years old, I'll review it. So earlier this week I finally popped in my copy of Lost: Via Domus...and had it beat in two evenings. I probably could have beat it in one night, but I have a very short attention span when it comes to playing games. It probably gave me a good 3-4 hours worth of game play.
"Lost" is one of my all-time favorite shows, no question. It's probably the main reason why I wanted to play the game, even though I obviously knew the game would not come close to the greatness of the show. And I was right. The games main story does not follow any of the well known characters from the ABC show like Jack, Kate, Locke, etc. They are just very minor supporting characters to the newly added character to the Lost world, Elliot Maslow. When the plane crashes he wakes up with no memory as to who he is, why he was on the place, etc. The other survivors don't trust him and think he might be an "other". So there are two story arch's in the game to which you play. The first one is on the island where you do various tasks that co-incide with the shows main story points over the first few seasons, but told in a different light as you are playing this new character. The main focus though of the game, is the flashbacks of Elliot. You slowly relive his past and in order to fully recover his memory, you have to take a photo of a specific moment. Then you have to find three clues in that memory, then live the memory. On the island this story comes into play as Elliot tries on his own to figure out what the island is, and why he is there and he needs to build the trust of Jack.
The storyline of the game doesn't hold a candle to a flame when compared to the show. Playing the game it seemed as if they just threw this story together in matter of a day or two. It was really weak. I don't know what I was expecting though. This new character was completely uninteresting and his back story of being a reporter trying to get the big story over his colleague was boring. And like I said earlier, the story on the island wasn't exactly following the shows story all that well. It's as if it took a major back burner to this Elliot storyline. The other characters from the show had very small roles. For instance, Sawyer had no relevance to the game other than to be a character to trade with. Same goes for Charlie. You had the options to interact with Jin and Sun at times but they only spoke Korean and had no role in anything. Hurley just sat on the beach and offered advice. Jack was in maybe two or three parts of the game. Kate didn't do much of anything. Locke was really the only one to play any pivotal role, but again...he was there there to point you a long. And all the voice over work was clearly not the real actors. Just lame attempts to mimic their voices.
The game play itself was extremely linear. You can really only follow one right path to your next destination. Except during the parts where you have to out run/hide from the infamous smoke monster. Then the jungle suddenly becomes the most annoying thing in the world. It all looks exactly the same the same, but it becomes more open and you have to find the right path before smokey gets you or before you hide in a banyan tree. The path is marked with convenient flags that will show you your next checkpoint. Well...it's supposed to, but it usually just shows the direction you should go but the next flag is blocked by trees and bushes, and what not. These scenes became annoying. Especially the one where you had to carry dynamite and you weren't really allowed to run or it would explode. Also, at times there were guys in the trees shooting at you (I presume they were "others" but was never mentioned) which were easy to avoid. I didn't understand who they were or why they were up there because nothing like that was ever part of the show.
The rest of the game play didn't have you doing much. You have to navigate caves and you had to make sure you had enough light sources to get through them or else good old smokey would get ya if you were caught in the darkness for to long (like 2 seconds). You had to trade with other survivors to get torches, which wasn't hard because you can collect coconuts and water bottles all over the place to trade. The caves were easy to get through. There were also fuse box puzzles that you had to solve throughout the game. Some had time limits. They got really damn annoying and pissed me off to no end. I knew how they should have logically been solved. But it didn't matter what pieces you thought should go in a certain place. To me, I just ended up putting the fuses in random spots until the thing I needed to activate turned on.
The environment of "Lost" is vast and open, but the game was short and restricted. You weren't able to do anything outside the linear path and story. A game like this could have benefited greatly from a sandbox type environment. The game creators could have taken more time to craft a story on more grand scale. There could have been cool side missions to do and the characters from the show could have been way more involved. I would have loved a Lost game where I could freely explore the whole island and discover locations no shown on the show. There was an opportunity to create something much bigger and better here, but they didn't take advantage of that. It wasn't the worst game I've ever played, but it was one I really enjoyed playing all that much.
I miss the show.
No comments:
Post a Comment