Lost in Time

The Good
After making three Gobliiins games, French game company Coktel Vision decided to venture into the world of interactive movies. They already did Inca and its sequel, featuring digitized actors and other game mechanics. Lost in Time would be their next one, and it created quite a stir among male game reviewers at the time as it was one of the first games to feature a female lead, and a sexy one at that. So sexy, in fact, that she actually appeared nude in Fascination, Coktel's adult-oriented adventure game.

Inside the box, you get a brochure advertising Sierra's own Imagination network, and something called “Confidential Report”, quite possibly the game manual as well as some interesting information before hand. In Europe, the game was split into two parts and called Lost in Time: Parts 1 & 2. I suppose there was a 'To be continued...' message after you witness a climatic situation in Part 1.

Unlike other Coktel games, there is no opening introduction, either in the CD-ROM or disk version of the game; and it is assumed that players would get as far into the game so that the story would be revealed to them. You play an attractive woman named Doralice, who must free the inhabitants of the ship she I held captive on. One of the inhabitants, a clumsy Brit named Melkior, informs her that he is employed by the Space Time Patrol to stamp out any illegal activity within time. Doralice is asked to track down a man named Jarlath Equs, who traveled back in time from the 22nd century to hide a vital element known as Americium 1492, among other treasures on the island of St. Cristobald. That is if Equs doesn't destroy Doralice and her ancestors first.

Lost in Time uses a modified version of the Gobliiins engine, previously seen in Inca II. The icon interface and similar pop-up windows are still present. However, the game is viewed from a first-person perspective, and the graphics contain a mixture of hand-painted and digitized backgrounds. What I found neat is the way a cut-out is shown when you are interacting with something on screen. Sometimes, a video clip plays showing the actress playing Doralice do different stuff. Cut-scenes displayed from time to time add depth to the story.

The developers at Coktel must have watched too many episodes of “MacGyver”. In the aforementioned video clips, you see Doralice doing difficult tasks that only MacGyver would know about. Take this situation, for example. You come across a gate leading up to the mansion that you somewhat inherited. The gate is locked and you have no key to open it. What do you do? You pour battery acid over the lock to rust it. Now I know how I can break into my neighbor's house while they are not home.

The puzzles in the game can be difficult and may take some time to complete, as most of them require you to do MacGyverish things such as the above battery acid-in-lock trick. That being said, you can use “jokers” if you find them too difficult. Jokers are huge paragraphs of text telling you what you must do and how to do it. There is also a nice animation above of Melkior miming something at you. You only have a limited amount of jokers, so use them wisely.

The music is brilliantly composed, and the sound helps create the atmosphere, such as the rocking of the ship Doralice is held captive on, and her movements from one end of the ship to the other. Choices of sound cards to use in the game include Adlib, SoundBlaster, and Pro Audio Spectrum. I don't know of anyone who used a Pro Audio as their primary sound card. My sister wanted to get one, though.

The CD-ROM version of Lost in Time not only features full speech and CD audio tracks, which, in my opinion is much better than the SB music. Users are also treated with proper cinematic sequences rather than text-based dialogue and static pictures. The only time you see Doralice in the cinematics is when you see a close-up view of her eyes.

You can die in the game, but these deaths occur much later in the game when Doralice doesn't do something necessary to finish the game. What I like about Lost in Time is that the game is aimed at players of all ages, much like Gobliiins; there are no gory deaths that can be confronting.

The Bad
The game contains the most interesting storyline I have ever come across.

In the CD-ROM version, the cinematics are rudimentary, just as they were in Inca II. During close-ups, only the actor's lips move, but not the head. Furthermore, some of the scenes suffer from poor lip-synching.

The Bottom Line
Lost in Time is a great adventure game from the developers of the Gobliins series, featuring a mixture of visuals as well as live-action shots. There are a number of cut-scenes that help build up the story, but CD-ROM users are treated to rudimentary cinematic sequences, as well as full speech throughout the game. However, I found that most of the puzzles are difficult to the point where a walkthrough is necessary, and the game's storyline was uninteresting. The game is aimed at everyone as there is no violence or sex, just plain old adventuring.

The Good
Game puts you in a role of Doralice, an unlikely heroine who just happened to inherit a place to have a peace of mind. A fine manor near the coast with great view. But such free stuff rarely come without a danger up the sleeve. Apparently someone is making attempts on your life. Who, what, why... let's just leave this place and forget all about the inherited mansion, is it really worth all this trouble!? Maybe not, but Doralice is a woman who wants to get to the bottom of a problem.

Graphic in this game is absolutely beautiful featuring live footage as well as pre-rendered one in which movement is mostly animated. It's rather cool to see something pre-rendered and good looking from such time. As you arrive at your manor and find a way to get in, your problems will soon stretch to time traveling situation where you'll have to save yourself from an evil plot against you ever being born.

Story is not anything special, but the game's puzzles are so great that you will greet the fact Sierra's name come along with a game that put you in no need to use any sort of walkthrough for it. The game features live-actors which is quite something, but their acting is really funny as well as voice-overs, adding just a one big plus to an overall amount of entertainment. I'm by far one of the last people to praise an adventure game that uses 1st-person perspective, but this game just deserves to be mentioned... I dunno, maybe there's just something nostalgic about it, but it's a cute step through time that delivers no hard puzzles to face.

The Bad
Hmm...

The Bottom Line
From the great cover art to in-game ambiance and setting, this game is a true marvel that feels more like a parody of some sort. It's probably not meant to be that way, but using the technology of the year that spawned it made it that way. This is probably the earliest 1st-person adventure game that I can think of as calling it a good one.