Comments: 0 (Go to Comments)
Categories: Review
Tags: adventure, pc
Following 2004′s Missing: Since January, Evidence: The Last Ritual (Adventure Company) finds occult serial killer The Phoenix continuing his quest for the ancient manuscript known as Codex 14. This Codex, possibly written by Jesus himself, may hold the key to immortality–but only one versed in Templar legend, Egyptian magic, and Gnostic mysticism can unlock it. Unfortunately The Phoenix is a master in all three areas (as well as various facets of art, history, literature, and game design).
Once again, The Phoenix has released a CD-ROM documenting his crimes and intentions. Like previous CD-ROMs, this one is encrypted and the ICPA urgently asks for your help to decipher it (plus a $29.99 payment to your local software retailer). Unlocking the CD-ROM may reveal The Phoenix’s whereabouts and prevent him from killing again, if you can solve a series of difficult puzzles and conduct Internet research. In fact, decrypting this disk will require constant access to the Internet and an e-mail provider.
Hope you loves the e-mail.Like Missing, Evidence is an interesting experiment combining puzzles confined to the disk with web sites (preexisting ones and ones created for the game) and e-mails generated by a server, but written in the voice of the game’s characters (at least eight including the helpful Kristen, Theo Makarios and his history lessons, David Marcus with his updates to the Phoenix’s profile, and the ICPA’s Steeve Webbing asking you to continue playing should you take a break from the game–like I need virtual guilt).
Evidence adds the ability to read reports about the case and write them for real players via the ICPA website, while making sure you stay with players at your level. Combined together, Evidence presents the illusion of a team of international researchers working alongside you, sharing information regarding the game’s puzzles and needed background into the game’s subject matter.
Gotta keep that M Rating.Evidence follows two storylines: in America’s New England region, Jessica Moses and her friend Sharon search for Jessica’s missing brother, who may have fallen in with a radical Christian cult while in Spain, journalist Jack Lorski discovers a string of ritually mutilated corpses when filming a documentary on European police forces. The storyline is doled out in a series of film clips, released by The Phoenix when certain puzzles are completed. These film clips are hand-held, documentary style films, shot on location in at least four continents. Fans of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition should flash on the footage aspect of this game.
So this is something … I think.Speaking of Flash, there is some derision of Evidence‘s puzzles on the Internet because of the game’s reliance on Flash. Like the cerebral and surreal Samorosts or Bad Milk, I found the puzzles to be so wholly original that the intellectual activity of solving them overrode the physical activity of interacting with them (clicking, dragging, etc). In other words, I cared more about the puzzles than how they were created.
So here’s how Evidence works: I start a game session, minimize the game and open my e-mail, then I log on to the ICPA site. Back to the game, I have a video clip to watch. Jessica and Sharon meet someone connected to the missing brother. Afterwards, I’m led to this puzzle.
Nice kitty.Yes, that’s a puzzle. Like most of Evidence‘s puzzles, I need to figure out how it works. I can click on the question mark for a cryptic hint from the Phoenix or I can click around the screen to see what happens. If I dally for too long, I’ll receive an e-mail from a “fellow” decrypter with another hint. I’ve figured out what to do before that, though–rewatching the clip I spot a strange word. I search the web for this word, which takes me to a blog where I find the answer I need. Almost.
More eyes than a Fulci movie.Most puzzles are this layered, requiring information pieced together from the CD-ROM and the Internet (including travel sites, Google Maps, and copious amounts of e-mail). Tools built into the game let you carefully scan screens seeking out hidden words, concealed number patterns can be run through an in-game decrypter to uncover codes, and eventually images from web sites can be analyzed for encrypted messages. And all of this either sounds incredible fascinating or horribly tedious, and that’s probably Evidence‘s Achilles Heel.
Frankly, the story isn’t strong enough to cover the flaws in gameplay–something Missing was able to do. Unlike Missing‘s race to find the Phoenix’s hostages, Evidence wanders between Jack and Jessica, and we learn too soon that one of them is dead.
Jacques De MolaySince you need to complete puzzles (often so esoteric or obscure that you yearn for the halcyon days where uncovering Templar treasure merely required using cat hair to make a fake moustache) to see the next snippet of story, the realization that the preferred MSN LiveSearch is masking essential web sites (which come up easily through Google) or that your search term is thwarted by an in-game misspelling is especially annoying. Beyond that, at some point you realize that you probably know more about the first king of Portugal, the Spanish calendar, and forgotten Scottish landmarks than one person needs to know–although Jacques De Molay’s connection to the Shroud of Turin was interesting.