Lost In Time - Coktel Vision / Sierra PC CD-ROM - œ24.99
                    (Graphic adventure)

                  Reviewed by Neil Shipman

'Oh my head! Where am I? I must be drunk. Or am I dreaming?  The
ship, the box, the man! I must be dreaming.  This ship is moving -
but it was shipwrecked! What am I doing here? Ooh my head! The
manor, the lighthouse, the chimney!  What happened? Where am I?'

These are the first words of Doralice Prunelier as she wakes to
the accompaniment of creaking timbers and the lapping of waves
against the sides of the ship. Assuming the role of Doralice, and
eager to find out where you are and what is going on, you
immediately get to your feet and explore your surroundings.
Searching among the barrels, buckets and rudimentary furnishings
of the mid-deck you find a number of useful items which soon
enable you to extract a knot of wood from one of the wall panels
revealing a fellow prisoner, Yoruba.

Yoruba tells you that he is the last son of a family of Egyptian
wizards and that he guards the treasure of his ancestors. But he
has been captured and enslaved by the arch baddie, Jarlath, and
transported to the island of St Cristobald along with the
treasure, a golden sarcophagus. Some years later, after Yoruba has
had an affair with Jarlath's wife, Velvet, the ship is now on its
way back to Europe with Yoruba, the treasure and you.

Jarlath is interested in the treasure because with it he has
hidden a sample of Americium 1492, an element which is so
radioactive that it will take 3000 years before it can be handled
safely. To do this he travelled back in time from the 22nd
century. The military applications for an element with the
properties of Americium are revolutionary and it cannot be allowed
to fall into the hands of someone like Jarlath.

You learn more about where you are and why when you meet up with
Melkior, an agent with the Space Time Patrol, who has taken on the
guise of the ship's cook. Time travel is a privilege limited to a
few trusted people and they must only observe the past, not
influence it in any way. You have been chosen to carry out this
particular mission because of your historical- temporal links with
Jarlath. (You are a descendant of the child born to Yoruba and
Velvet). Jarlath must be killed and in order to accomplish this it
has been necessary for the STP to identify a temporal line which
includes Jarlath's death as punishment together with the existence
of Doralice. This is the timeline you are now following.

You can scarcely believe that the year is 1840 but, as your memory
gradually begins to come back, you recall your visit to the Manor
de la Pruneliere.

Flash forward in time to 1992. . .

You find yourself outside the locked gates of the manor which you
inherited from a relative. A horse blocks the entrance and the
gate is locked but the right combination of objects will allow you
to overcome these problems. You eventually find your way into the
grounds, into the manor itself and into a nearby lighthouse and
underground storeroom. After solving some quite intricate puzzles
with innovative solutions - in many cases more by trial and error
than by logical reasoning - you find the sarcophagus and the
hidden Americium.

Flash back in time to 1840. . .

With Melkior and Yoruba you teleport from the ship to the island
of Saint Cristobald, learn of your ancestor's birth and save him
from death. At the very end you finally come face to face with
Jarlath. Do you kill him or does he kill you? And what effect will
his death have on future events? Agent Melkior attempts to explain
about the co-existence of many possible parallel timelines, but I
got lost halfway through his rambling explanation. Anyway, I think
that because you know you are alive in 1992 and much of the
adventure takes place in the past, it's all going to work out all
right in the end, isn't it?  Consequently there is little sense of
discovery and the player can often feel that they are just going
through the motions.


Graphics take up the top two-thirds of the screen with text
appearing in the space below. As the cursor moves over interesting
objects their names appear on the bottom line of the screen.
Clicking on an object then opens a 3" x 4" window showing a video
clip of it zooming into close-up, changing orientation or altering
its state, eg from closed to open. You can select an object from
your inventory by clicking the right mouse button and then operate
this on either the enlarged object in the window or on items in
the main graphics screen.  Sometimes you see your hands
manipulating the object and sometimes you are treated to a view of
yourself carrying out a specific task.

Objects can also be used on other objects in your inventory and,
indeed, there are a number of puzzles which require the
manipulation and combination of three or four things that you are
carrying. For example, in order to pull a lanyard which is out of
reach above your head you need to alter one of the items you are
carrying using a particular tool from your inventory, then combine
this item with three others to make a boathook. The annoying thing
is that you are not given enough clues to indicate the way in
which you should be tackling a problem and, consequently, it is
very easy to end up just trying every object on every other one
until something happens. Lost in Time really does take object
manipulation to the extreme and because of this you don't get the
degree of satisfaction which can be found in many better
structured games.

When you move the cursor to the top of the screen an information
panel drops down showing six icons. Game management allows you to
make an unlimited number of saves; a joker is available on most
screens to provide limited help (but you can only use three
throughout the course of the game); the notepad automatically
keeps a record of the main events of the story as well as a memo
of your dialogue with the various characters; a suitcase icon
allows you to access your inventory without right clicking the
mouse (essential for many of the puzzles); a map of each of the
three main locations lets you move quickly between places you have
already been; and you can toggle music on or off with the options
icon.

For a game that is now three or four years old the graphics are
really quite good. Some of the video clips are a bit grainy and
pixellated but their use does help to increase your sense of
involvement, that sense of 'being there', giving you the feeling
that you are actually doing something other than simply clicking
buttons on your mouse. There is no scrolling between screens and
you progress from one to another by clicking on a door icon which
appears at different points and enables you to access other
locations.

The orchestral score is excellent throughout the adventure and
helps to set the mood in the many different situations in which
you, as Doralice, find yourself.  The mournful sound of an oboe
accompanied by a small string orchestra plays the theme tune as
you watch the title screen, and this theme is repeated at various
stages of the adventure.  Flutes complement the calling of birds
in the gardens of the manor; drums and numerous other percussion
instruments give a sense of urgency to your actions; and stories
that touch the heart are given the backing of the swelling sound
of violins.

Sound effects are very good, though the noise of your footsteps on
the wooden decks of the ship can get frustratingly repetitive.
Perhaps Doralice should have changed into some comfy trainers or a
pair of sandals rather than wearing stilettos throughout! The
sound of waves crashing on the shore, seagulls mewing, a horse's
hooves, the creaking of the ship's timbers, all help to add
realism to your situation. Specific actions like breaking a
window, lighting a match, opening a glass jar, popping a bottle of
champagne and so on are also accompanied by appropriate sound
effects.

Speech, however, is less effective for two reasons. Firstly, the
lip-synching is non-existent and characters appear to open and
close their mouths as if they were imitating goldfish.  Doralice
has a lot of talking to do and the way in which the game's
designers have avoided this problem is by simply showing her eyes
peering at you from a four inch high graphic window running the
width of the screen. Secondly, the acting is wooden and
one-dimensional. The actors seem merely to be reading their parts
and fail dismally in getting any emotion across in their voices.
Doralice is perhaps the least bad but her tone of surprise at
anything and everything she encounters is rather overdone. It may
well be that in the original French version the acting is better
but, in the English translation, it appears as if the designers
have just roped in friends and workmates who just happened to be
around at the time.

Oswald, a two-timing member of the crew has one of the most varied
accents I've ever heard. It changes in every sentence that he
utters, running through Irish, Scots, Scouse and Geordie with a
bit of Welsh Pakistani thrown in for good measure! The captain is
a little more consistent, but every time I heard him speak he
reminded me of Parker, Lady Penelope's chauffeur in
'Thunderbirds'!

If this had been the first adventure that Coktel Vision produced I
doubt whether I would have gone on to look at their other games
like Inca, Fascination and the comical Goblins series.  Lost In
Time is an adventure which involves intensive object manipulation
and requires plain stubbornness and persistence on the part of the
player. With an extremely contrived and unbelievable storyline
coupled with poor acting it fails to involve the player and is
ultimately a dissatisfying experience even for those who hang in
there until the very end.

PC system requirements reflect the age of the game and are:

286DX 16MHz processor or higher
4MB RAM
MS/PC-DOS 5.0 or higher
Super VGA Graphics Card (640 x 480, 256 colours)
MPC compliant sound card
Mouse
Hard Disk with 18MB of free space
CD-ROM drive



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