Deep Mystery Offers Trouble In Paradise
Benoit Sokal may not be a household name like Sid Meier, but among adventure gamers he really does have a great reputation, pushed forward by titles like Syberia that really advanced the genre in new directions.
Sinking Island may not be as groundbreaking at Syberia, but you can tell that Sokal was trying to go a new direction, perhaps redefining the interactive detective story game. There are a lot of innovative aspects to Sinking Island, but also a few notable flaws that will keep it from getting a perfect score. Still, I can’t see anyone who enjoys the classic point and click adventure type game not having a great time here. I have seen some pretty poor games in this genre (one of the reasons I rarely play them anymore) but Sinking Island is not one of them. All of its flaws are minor and in return for these minor annoyances you get a really solid mystery adventure game located in one of the most beautiful settings imaginable.
The forward chapter in the instruction booklet contains a little note from Sokal about how much he enjoys a good police story where the detective slowly unravels a crime and confronts suspects with questionable and hidden motives. I think Sokal might have watched a lot of Columbo growing up because this game seems just like one of those shows. And the main character, Inspector Jack Norm, looks a lot like Peter Falk as well.
The game is set on a lush tropical island that was taken over by an eccentric billionaire (the game says millionaire but the stuff he owns is really above that level) to use as his personal retreat and playground. Walter Smith then built a gigantic tower that rivals most skyscrapers in New York City to use as a private hotel and living quarters. I’m not sure how you can build a tower that big on a sandy atoll, but I guess they did. Anyway the place is huge. The plot begins when Smith invites his family, friends and business associates to the island, presumably to talk about his last will and testament. His body is found at the bottom of a cliff by the sea, dead apparently from a fall out of his wheelchair.
Columbo, er I mean Norm, is vacationing nearby and is asked to fly to the island to investigate the death by a friend who actually works that part of the world, but is ill. The island is in the Indian Ocean so I am not sure who has jurisdiction there. I kind of get the impression it’s the French, though Norm seems very American.
Anyway, the game is very cleverly laid out into chapters where you have objectives that need to be met before you can move on, which helps to keep you focused on the huge island with ten suspects. Had the game not been setup this way, players would likely end up doing a lot of running around and not getting anywhere. You have a crime computer PDA device that helps you put it all together.
Objectives start out very simple and get much, much more difficult. The first chapter is simply answering the question "Was Walter Smith Murdered?" I don’t think I am giving much away here by saying that you have to prove that the death was suspicious. I mean if it weren’t then it would be game over as soon as you started. To prove this, you need to collect two key pieces of evidence, which is done by adding the data (everything goes into an inventory block) to the right slots on the computer screen. A little icon tells you what kind of data the computer needs. To start out with, you need one declaration, basically a statement from a witness, and a photo. The first person you meet tells you that Smith did not have any health problems that would have caused him to fall out of his chair, so you can drag that statement into the declaration slot. You will then see you are halfway done the chapter. Then you can take a photo of his body and this is your second clue, since he looks like he was attacked prior to the fall. With both pieces of evidence in place, you can move on to the next chapter which occurs after a cut scene plays.
Most chapters need much more data than that to advance. You might need five declarations (and the correct ones from a pool of many), two photos, and one piece of physical evidence or a document for example. These can all be obtained by talking to people on the island and clicking on clues, just like a standard adventure game. The main difference here is that the crime computer helps you keep things organized and can even run analysis routines for you, like comparing two fingerprints to see if they match.
Graphically, the game is really striking. God bless Smith, because he was quite eccentric in his tastes, which makes things very cool to see around his home. The tower itself looks like something out of the 1920s, though with many modern twists. In fact, when I first started looking around I thought I was walking back into the Bioshock game for a minute. I don’t think I have ever seen a better looking adventure game, and in a genre that celebrates this, that is saying a lot. (Syberia might be a tie, though with a very different style.)
Here you will run into a really odd flaw however, and that is that people’s mouths don’t move. When you are talking to them they just kind of bob their heads in an odd way and don’t speak. For a game with such breathtaking visuals, you would think they would have done a little lip syncing. Each time you talk to someone you are brought back out of the mood of the game watching the goofy animations as the people give long-winded rants without moving their lips.
The other odd aspect of the game is the insistence on asking a bunch of lame questions to suspects that don’t advance the plot. You don’t get to pick from a bunch of possible questions. Instead you have a series of pictures that are supposed to represent the questions. You click on the picture and ask the question. But the questions you ask sometimes are totally stupid, like asking a suspect without any medical training for some forensic tips. Of course they are going to say they have no idea, but you still need to ask them the question because you don’t know exactly what the question is by the picture, and you never know if they are going to offer one of the needed declarations to advance the chapter. So you just run through every picture for every suspect as quickly as you can, which is hardly the work of a master detective.
Thankfully, the voice acting is really good. Besides having Norm sound just like he should, so do all the suspects. I don’t think there is a weak link in the bunch. This is a little maddening because with a little work they could have been given lips, but anyway, it should not distract from the story.
In terms of difficulty, the game is hard and at the same time not so difficult. Finding the exact match of clues to advance to the next chapter is challenging, especially since some clues are going to be put in places like safes that you can’t get into without solving other puzzles first. As for the mystery, I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I had a pretty good idea what happened and who the guilty were about halfway though the adventure. Still, proving it was another matter, which I suppose is like a detective in real life. Even if they "know" who is guilty, they still have to prove it, and so will you.
One other innovative aspect about Sinking Island is that you can play in normal mode which is how this game was reviewed, or timed mode. Normal mode is just like any other adventure game in that you have all the time in the world to wander around and figure things out. In timed mode you have a limited amount of time to do things and advance the chapter. If you fail to make your deadline, you are pulled off the case and lose the game. This makes some of the annoying cut scenes like having to talk to your annoying wife on the phone or head to the cafeteria to eat a huge sandwich really maddening because you are doing all that stuff on the clock. But if you are a natural Agatha Christie, then tying out this mode will offer much more of a challenge. When timed, the moderate difficulty ratchets up to hard.
Sinking Island is a very professionally done adventure game that should stand out from the current mediocre pack that is plaguing the industry. In fact, we may have a nominee for Best Adventure Game of the Year, a title which would be a shoe-in for it if it eliminated a few flaws. But make no mistake, this is a great adventure game and earns 4 GiN Gems.