German
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The Forgotten - It Begins
(Ransom
interactive/Dreamcatcher interactive)
A Review by Annemarie 13. Juli 2000
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You shouldn't look at this game, published in
english, as a complete adventure, but rather the first game in a planned seven-episode
continuing series. Each new single module of the series will supplementary be built upon
the others, like you find it in literature with Stephen King's „The Green Mile“.
Every new episode will be equipped with the newest software technology available and with every new episode the game will become more challenging and more diversified. The first 3 episodes will be published on CD's (the second part - "The Collection" is in production at the moment) and then Ransom Interactive will continue with DVD's. (Sponsored by DVD-Industry ????) |
The first episode ("It Begins") consists of one CD - and should be considered as appetizer, I presume, if you look at length and style: very short gameplay, leaving many unanswered questions about the story and many unsolvable riddles in this episode. Story: The prologue tells us about an ancient race (aliens?), who, exiled from earth, can nowadays seldom be seen appearing as angels or spirits. This ancient race created magical artifacts that look like cards, to control human development. This cards are also be collected by certain people, called "The Collectors", who use the great power of the artifacts to even change human history. Those people equipped with tremendous power are on the other hand in danger to be "collected" themselves. |
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The story starts with you awaking as our hero who completely lost his memory. You don't know the strange study you find yourself trapped in. Your only lead is a letter of a pretended friend Richard, who started to find a certain Amelia... of course you must help the guy, to find out who you actually are... not a bad beginning for an adventure. With a magic click you are teleported to the streets of New Orleans... and you find your way from the rooms of a voodoo-shop through the sewer into a creepy abandoned hotel, where the rest of the story takes place. Another magic click and you are transported back through time to the 20es of this century... back to the time when the hotel was occupied by strange people. |
Especially the graphics and sound produce a dense atmosphere (music is set in rarely but most suitable). There are a few animated scenes and no dialogues... you don't meet people anywhere here! Those abandoned musty victorian style hotel rooms and endless corridors... pretty weird! The optic pleasure gets a bit narrowed by a somewhat outdated graphic-technology: You are moving through the rooms like a short-sighted without glasses! The near environment looks admirably detailed, but when you want to perceive the more distant parts of the scene (with panoramic views), the whole area seems blurred und you can only guess what's on the other side of the room. If you click to go there, controls react real slow and you will get there using several quick zooms. When you've finally reached the destination point your view slowly clears up and you first have to take your bearings. This makes your search for important objects and orientation much more difficult. You know, most of your tasks are to find certain objects and the right places to apply (mainly you have to find a number of keys that unlock a number of doors). Therefore the game is not very hard to solve. The one and only puzzle found in the game is a very simple one too. A great part of the story remains in darkness and is waiting for enlightenment in the next episodes... there are many endless texts to read (books, letters, notes etc.), that indicate mysterious hints and tell mysterious stories – the language wasn't easy at all and demanded my highest english skills. It was too bad, that you couldn't take the documents with you in your inventory - you could only have a look at it. So you often have to save your game, to come back later to browse through the texts again, because you can't return to some locations. There are 2 different inventory levels: the first is always visible at the bottom of the screen, where you can store 4 objects at a time. The second inventory serves as a reserve, where you can put items that will not be in use at the moment. You have to click an icon to make the reserve inventory visible in an additional menu. About the end of the game I found a bug: I finished a task in the hotel elevator. After that I realized an open hatch in the ceiling. I saved the game at this point and restored it shortly afterwards. The task was done but it was impossible to look at the ceiling with that hatch - I had to restore a former saved game to play it again to this point to complete my task! Shortly after that the game was perplexingly over, though it seemed to me that I'd just started to play (1 CD). But that's the way with appetizers! It's to bad that it was a mouthful only! Conclusion: An appealing but alas much too short appetizer for the next 6 episodes. Despite the simple search-puzzles I enjoyed the game, above all because of the great atmosphere. Especially adventure-beginners will take much pleasure in the game at any rate. One can be anxious to see, how the developers will continue the series! Maybe graphics- and moving-technology (Quicktime in this case) will evolve either ... and I hope the puzzle quality will increase too. Rating: |
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Minimal system requirements:
- Pentium 133 MHz
- 16 MB RAM
- 8x CD-ROM
Suitable for all ages (6 year olds should indeed have achieved perfect reading skills already!)
I played the game on:
- Pentium MMX 600 MHz
64 MB RAM
Copyright © Annemarie for Adventure-Archiv, 13. Juli 2000
Rating system:
- 80% - 100% excellent game, very recommandable
- 70% - 79% good game, recommandable
- 60% - 69% satisfactory, restricted recommendable
- 50% - 59% sufficient (not very recommendable)
- 40% - 49% rather deficient (not to be recommended - for Hardcore-Adventure-Freaks and collectors only)
- 0% - 39% worst (don't put your
fingers on it)
Translated by slydos