Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
Nov 15, 2006 6:21:41 GMT -5
Post by jameseightbitstar on Nov 15, 2006 6:21:41 GMT -5
I just finished playing this excellent computer game. I'm thinking I'll submit an article on this game. The below is a first draft:
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1996. The adventure game genre was on its last leg. Sierra and LucasArts were releasing their last hurrahs. It was in this climate that Titanic: Adventure Out of Time was released. True to its name, it was an adventure game that put you on the Titanic... or, more accurately, it places you in 1942. Your life has become a slum and your shoddy apartment is decorated with relics that remind you of your past as a secret agent, and your last mission... a mission aboard the Titanic. A mission which you failed, miserably. But then, just as a bomb destroys your apartment, you are suddenly whisked back in time to the very night the Titanic had its love affair with an iceberg that left it cold. This Quantum Leap-ish plot gives you a second chance to accomplish your mission and try to change history (both the world's, and your own) for the better.
The makers were some small company called Cyberflix, which probably doesn't instill much confidence, as this was the age when CD-ROM games still had the stigma of being "interactive movies." I certainly had never heard of these people, and in fact I had bought this game entirely at random from a flea market. Years later, in a fit of boredom I decided to finally play it--and I was glad I did. But I can safely say that if Titanic qualifies as an "interactive movie," then it doesn't do so in the usual sense--there's only a couple of full-motion videos and they're all quite short.
Nor can this game be fully considered a "Myst clone" (which was the other negative style of adventure games going around at the time). The ship is not barren--it's populated with characters, many of whom I cared much about, nor is the game chock-full of Myst-esque logic puzzles (there's precisely three of them, as far as I know). The game does have an inventory, but oddly, there are no inventory-based puzzles in the game. Most of what you use items for is to give them to characters or to trade for other items, and the plot itself is mostly advanced by talking to people. This is what I meant by this game not being an interactive movie in the "usual" sense--you're actually playing most of the time, but the real challenge is finding the right people at the right time and following their instructions and hints. Even that isn't very difficult and you can actually complete the game by fumbling through it the first time.
There is some replay value though, because different things happen according to what you do. The first time through, there were things I didn't even realize you could do that would've changed the course of the game. Also, there are several different endings, determined by certain items you have when you evacuate the Titanic. The game is on a timer, but this doesn't really become a pressing issue until the last leg of the game.
All in all, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a fun adventure game that is different from practically every other game of its genre and still manages to be fun and have endearing characters. It's worth a spin if you can find it. But absolutely do not use a walkthru until you've beaten the game at least once.
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Comments?
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1996. The adventure game genre was on its last leg. Sierra and LucasArts were releasing their last hurrahs. It was in this climate that Titanic: Adventure Out of Time was released. True to its name, it was an adventure game that put you on the Titanic... or, more accurately, it places you in 1942. Your life has become a slum and your shoddy apartment is decorated with relics that remind you of your past as a secret agent, and your last mission... a mission aboard the Titanic. A mission which you failed, miserably. But then, just as a bomb destroys your apartment, you are suddenly whisked back in time to the very night the Titanic had its love affair with an iceberg that left it cold. This Quantum Leap-ish plot gives you a second chance to accomplish your mission and try to change history (both the world's, and your own) for the better.
The makers were some small company called Cyberflix, which probably doesn't instill much confidence, as this was the age when CD-ROM games still had the stigma of being "interactive movies." I certainly had never heard of these people, and in fact I had bought this game entirely at random from a flea market. Years later, in a fit of boredom I decided to finally play it--and I was glad I did. But I can safely say that if Titanic qualifies as an "interactive movie," then it doesn't do so in the usual sense--there's only a couple of full-motion videos and they're all quite short.
Nor can this game be fully considered a "Myst clone" (which was the other negative style of adventure games going around at the time). The ship is not barren--it's populated with characters, many of whom I cared much about, nor is the game chock-full of Myst-esque logic puzzles (there's precisely three of them, as far as I know). The game does have an inventory, but oddly, there are no inventory-based puzzles in the game. Most of what you use items for is to give them to characters or to trade for other items, and the plot itself is mostly advanced by talking to people. This is what I meant by this game not being an interactive movie in the "usual" sense--you're actually playing most of the time, but the real challenge is finding the right people at the right time and following their instructions and hints. Even that isn't very difficult and you can actually complete the game by fumbling through it the first time.
There is some replay value though, because different things happen according to what you do. The first time through, there were things I didn't even realize you could do that would've changed the course of the game. Also, there are several different endings, determined by certain items you have when you evacuate the Titanic. The game is on a timer, but this doesn't really become a pressing issue until the last leg of the game.
All in all, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a fun adventure game that is different from practically every other game of its genre and still manages to be fun and have endearing characters. It's worth a spin if you can find it. But absolutely do not use a walkthru until you've beaten the game at least once.
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Comments?