4 Seconds by Jason "Trig" Reigstad
                    On this issue's disk

                  Reviewed by Nick Edmunds

In 4 Seconds we play Blake, a police investigator called to the
scene of an incident in an underground laboratory.  Exploring the
ravaged lab one soon gets the impression that this isn't your
average crime scene.  As it transpires we're not even an average
copper, but rather some kind of psychic investigator.  Using
government telepathy technology we are to probe the mind of one of
the deceased scientists to figure out what happened in the
complex.

Once inside the memories of the scientist formerly known as Grey,
we discover that the lab complex suffered a virus containment leak
that forced the scientists into a self imposed quarantine.  Issues
are further complicated when the virus mutates and espionage is
suspected within in the group.

On the surface 4 Seconds implies little more than a
straightforward 'whodunit', but beneath lies a hidden agenda.
Much like an episode of Quantum Leap, our man is really there to
put something right.  When we first enter the mind of the deceased
we are accidentally taken to an earlier incident in Grey's life
involving the death of his wife.  As Mrs. Grey lay dying in his
arms there was a promise made to her and this is the real goal -
to make good this promise.  The outcome of this task gives the
true ending of the game where the spirit of the deceased either
spends the ever-after with his wife or in some mondo purgatory
nightmare.

This method of telling the story sets 4 Seconds a complex
challenge.  Putting our character in the mind of another character
at a previous time in order to determine the events leading to a
known outcome may sound simple enough, but it smells rather like
one of those space/time continuum paradox jobbies to me. When the
sadistic Dr.  Caligari straps us into what sounds uncannily like
an EST machine he tells us not to influence the character's
actions while we are in their mind. How can we change events that
have already happened and that we have been sent to investigate?
And how can we not influence their actions when the characters
only do what we tell them?  There's a reason the universe doesn't
tolerate this kind of scenario and it's because it makes my head
hurt.

Throughout the story it's difficult to remember that you're not
seeing things through the investigator's eyes, but rather through
someone who's already dead.  In real terms the investigator served
little purpose in the story, other than giving the introduction
its hook.  However, it does mean that we aren't sad when our
character dies at the end, (because of course it's not our
character, but another who was already dead and merely being
observed by our character).  Otherwise the mind-reading device
appears to just be a gimmick without any real plot relevance and
certainly didn't warrant the indicator at the top of the screen to
illustrate which character we are currently playing.

Most actions flow quite naturally, and I particularly enjoyed the
increasing pace of the game as the plot unfolds, although there
are a few obscure puzzles and the whole could be improved with a
few hints.  In particular the timed events generally require
several things to be attempted in order to restart and then
carryout the task within the required time period.

The 'info' section apologises for the games bugginess of which
there is much. I appreciate that this is only release 1 of the
game and that the testers were all struck down by a mysterious
illness, but I don't understand why the game was released when it
was known to be so flawed. I mean this thing has more bugs than a
scabby dog and the majority of these are not only fairly obvious,
but also pretty straightforward to fix, e.g. objects that aren't
mentioned in room descriptions, or that are mentioned by a
different name or aren't even present.  The game also suffers from
a few guess-the-verb problems, where the verbs haven't been
cross-implemented. Similarly while the writing has good style and
technique there are a number of mechanical errors, misspellings,
and awkward phrasings which tend to mar the effect.


While 4 Seconds is an intriguing idea worthy of 50's science
fiction, the story is rather tenuously held together around this
mind reading vehicle and would probably have worked better without
the psychic sleuth altogether.  Trig has sold himself a bit short
on this one as the whole thing is let down by poor implementation
and testing.













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