Lost: Via Domus Review

Let's get this out of the way up front: I am a big fan of the Lost TV series. I even enjoyed season two with all its hatch-based nonsense-mongering. I like a good bit of adventure and mystery, and the show's use of flashbacks really appeals to me. However, my interest hits its limits with watching the episodes and a jot of casual discussion about it on occasion. And yet when they announced plans to do a Lost video game I was intrigued. I like games and I like Lost, couldn't a glorious union of the two therefore be enjoyable?

Naturally I dismissed the idea to begin with, after all movie/TV tie-ins haven't exactly been proven to be the basis for good games yet. None the less, I was still a little intrigued and somewhat curious as to how they'd do it. What sort of game would it be? Who would you play as? What would your goal be? What little bits of information about the world of Lost might it reveal?

After I heard some reasonably positive buzz about the game I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a go. What? Don't look at me like that, season four had just started on telly and I was jonesing for my next Lost hit. And so I popped to the shops and grabbed me a copy of Lost: Via Domus — or the pointlessly renamed Lost: The Video Game as it is in Europe, because, you know, there's no way we'd understand Latin in Europe, no no.

Fasten your seatbelt

Anyways, as it turns out, and somewhat fitting for the nature of the show, Ubisoft decided to make the game a good old-fashioned adventure. And in this adventure you play generic gaming archetype number four: the amnesiac.

As you might expect, we begin our adventure onboard doomed flight Oceanic 815. Quick camera pans around give glimpses of some of our favourite characters from the show enjoying a nice quiet flight, but the focus is on our (currently) nameless protagonist. Of course it's not long before things go wrong, the plane splits... well, you know the drill. Cue a close up of an eye opening (see what they did there, they used a motif from the show) and our guy regaining consciousness. And he's in a jungle!

However, this isn't your ordinary jungle. It's not even TV-land Lost jungle, though it sure looks like it. No, this is game-land Lost: Via Domus jungle: which means there's a very obvious path to follow and some very solid and thick trees in all other directions. So off you go pressing 'A' to examine random items along the way if you so wish, which more or less equates to the game having blokey-whatshisface say out loud a rather obvious description of what you're looking at: "Hmm, this dead guy in an Oceanic passenger-plane seat must have been on the flight!" Oh really, no shit Sherlock.

Welcome to the jungle

After seeing some lass who promptly disappears when you walk up to her ("Hey, she disappeared!"), for added mystery points, you finally hit upon the first recognisable character: the lovely Kate. Though when you discover Kate she looks decidedly calm and a little bored as she stands on the spot waiting for you to walk over and initiate conversation. Mmm, immersive.

I'm going to take this opportunity to touch on a couple of features of the game: graphics and sound. For the most part Ubisoft have done a great job of recreating the look of the island. Specific locations are immediately recognisable and virtual versions of the main cast are good likenesses to their fleshy inspirations — even if the virtual acting falls more on the 'cardboard cutout' end of the scale (insert your own derisive joke about some actor/actress here). So it's not like anyone would be fooled into think they're the real deal, but they're good enough.

On the sound front, again Ubisoft have done a good job of emulating the show and the role it has in setting the mood, no doubt cribbing stuff direct. There's some nice little audio touches, such as using the Lost intro sweep, whatever you'd call it, when introducing each 'episode' of the game (complete with a "Previously on Lost" bit).

It's good to talk

So when you meet the bored, virtual Kate, you know you're about to talk to Kate. But then virtual Kate opens her mouth and the voice that comes out is not Kate, it's some generic American lady voice. What the hell? This is true for most of the voices in the game, except Desmond and his one line ("Alright brother"), which was apparently voiced by the real Desmond. According to the Internet a couple of others leant their voices to the game, but none of them are people who say more than the odd line.

The people you spend most time talking — Jack, Sawyer, Locke, Kate — don't sound like their real-life counterparts at all, with Locke being one of the worst. I'd actually give that award to Charlie who has a vaguely British sounding accent, though nothing like Dominic Monaghan. Perhaps in America it works because no doubt they think we all sound the same over here, but honestly I wanted to punch my telly whenever I had to talk to him. There's no excuse for the shitty voices either, this is an official game, so someone's been either incredibly lazy, or incredibly cheap, possibly a bit of both.

And that's just one facet of the poor character interaction, for when you speak to people it brings up a menu of input options for you to pick from to drive the conversation (read: provide the illusion of control). Not that it matters what you pick because there's no consequence to it, and you just keep going until you find the right person-option combination required to move the game's plot forward. The options provided also include things that, at first, imply you might be able to eek out a little bit of information relevant to the show, but don't be fooled, they don't. The first 10 times I spoke to people I went through every possible option and ended up listening to a lot of stock responses and general nonsense of no use to man nor beast.

Wait, there's more. Talking to people also, on occasion, provides access to a trading system, which — provided you collect enough coconuts and bottles of water (apparently Oceanic 815 was carrying a mass supply of Evian given how many of these are found lying about the place) — allows access to items such as sticks, a lamp or a gun. The last of which, the only vaguely exciting item, is completely pointless as you never have need of it. Trading is a pretty pointless act on the whole, only required if you've not got sufficient torch-sticks for getting through the dark cave sections.

Meanwhile...

Where was I? Oh yes, talking to the Kate who sounds funny. You want Kate to help you, she doesn't want to, but what's this, you suddenly remember something. Could it be something that will let you blackmail Kate into giving you the desired aid?

Using another technique from the show, each of the game's 'episodes' features a flashback, most of which serve to reveal the back story behind your character's past and the events leading up to his arrival on the island. This is a neat idea, but completely cheapened by their execution. Essentially you start off seeing fragments of a photo (our man is a photojournalist it transpires) and so you need to recreate the photo before you get to see the full flashback memory. Once this is achieved — and it's not hard — you have the massively complex task of walking up to the other person present, pressing 'A' and then watching the cut-scene that follows.

So you watch a scene that shows Kate the convict being put on the plane (our man likes to get his seat early it seems) and thus you persuade Kate to help you. Then it's onto the crash site where you find a small handful of other cast favourites standing around looking decidedly un-panicked and once you trigger the right conversation topic you're introduced to the reoccurring mini-game: the fuse game. In a nutshell: you have a circuit, some fuses and you have to wire it up so the output levels are correct. It's not overly challenging and used far more often than is necessary or, indeed, welcome.

Where'd I put that map?

The game carries on in this vein throughout, as you move from location to location (covering all the major locales from seasons one and two) and engage in conversations with random cast members, examine random items and solve the occasional fuse puzzle. The only exceptions are the odd trek through sections of jungle or a cave. The former requires you to walk to a flag or sign which then points you in the exact direction you need to go to find the next flag or sign. Rinse and repeat until destination found.

But wait, it's not that easy, you also have to avoid that pesky black smoke. If you do ever see the smoke you have to run to the nearest thicket of trees to hide. Once it's all clear you exit and the game lovingly moves the camera in a random fashion so you have no idea where you were or where you were heading previously. So the game's camera is the only thing that makes these sections remotely difficult.

Oh yes, there's also random guys in trees with rifles who decide you are bad and must be shot at. Thankfully for you they clearly attended the Stormtrooper School of Shooting because they're pretty terrible shots and you only risk dying if you stand right in front of one for a while. However, if you really want to use that gun you traded five Apollo Bars and three gallons of bottled water for, this is your chance. I wouldn't bother though, using the gun is rubbish.

The caves are pretty much point A to point B affairs, the only issue being you need a light to see anything and water and bats will put your torch, or lamp, out. Worry not, you have a lighter with you, so you can keep re-lighting your fire-y light source until it is depleted. These only become remotely tough (if that's the right term) if you've run out of sticks, or oil if you have the lamp.

It's how you tell 'em

As should be apparent by now, this game is in no way difficult and is very clearly pitched at the ever-lucrative casual gaming market, hoping to draw in all those Lost fans who like the idea of being able to explore the island for themselves. Oh, if only that were the case. The nature of the show causes a fundamental problem: you can't mess with the established canon of the series, because fans wouldn't like that. So you're left having to create a new character who must skirt around the main show plot points, because they can't be in them, and go off on their own adventure that just happens to be on the same island.

To be fair, the story isn't bad, it keeps the mystery up and provides just enough motivation to keep you going. But really the only reason you're playing this game is because it's a Lost game, and when all is said and done you don't really learn anything that ties it into the show; certainly not anything a fan wouldn't already be aware of. Worse is that some of the characters, whilst sounding annoyingly unlike the real deal, end up acting in ways that go against their on-screen personas.

And the ending. Oh boy, the ending. The game ends in such a "What the fuck just happened?!" manner that left me wondering if this is even supposed to tie into the show at all, because if it is then it potentially throws some massive questions out there. If it doesn't tie into the show then WHY THE HELL DID I JUST SPEND MY TIME PLAYING THIS GAME?!

Quality, not quantity

Not that you'll spend much time playing it. Even with a bit of dicking about at various points, my total gaming time clocked in at around the mighty four hours mark. Yes, you read that right, four hours. And that is it. There's some token artwork to view once you've completed the game, but that is everything. There's zero replay value to be had too, because the only reason to play through was to find out what happened next, or to see if you'd finally got a little bit of juicy Lost info. Once you're done you know those, so you are properly done with it.

I think Ubisoft had an impossible task with this game, trying to fit in a whole new character without cocking up the known story and events from the TV show, but at the same time giving people their own Lost experience. To their credit I think they did a reasonable job on that front, but the lack of any real interaction with the Lost world means there's actually very little to appeal to fans of the show. And the desire to keep the thing accessible for Mr and Mrs Average Joe means that there's nothing here to appeal to gamers either. There's certainly nothing that ever justified this being a full-price release, a very cheeky move on whoever's part that decision was.

It's not so objectionable as to make me hate it, but it all feels a bit pointless and disappointing. I certainly couldn't in any good conscience recommend this to anyone, even the most avid fans of the show. If you're desperate to see what they did with it, or are chasing gamer points (turns out it's an easy 1000), then rent it, just don't expect anything other than yet another rubbish movie/TV tie-in.

Jam it back in, in the dark.