Review: The Forgotten: It Begins...

By: Kirk Hiner

Genre: Adventure

Format: CD

Developer: Ransom Interactive

Publisher: DreamCatcher Interactive

Minimum Requirements: 133 MHz PowerPC, 32MB RAM, 130MB hard disk space, 24X CD-ROM, QuickTime 3.0 (included)

Network Feature: No

3Dfx Support: No

Retail Price: $19.99

Availability: Out Now

I'm going to give this game a 3 out of 5.

I probably shouldn't say that up front. I should make you either read the review to get to the rating, or at least scroll down the page. But there it is...a 3 out of 5.

From me, a 3 is certainly a respectable enough rating. That generally means that the game is worth the money, and although you probably won't be blown away, you at least won't finish the game wishing you'd spent the money on something more worthwhile...like lug nuts.

After all, I enjoyed playing The Forgotten: It Begins... Although they're not exactly popular at the moment, I have a soft spot for graphical adventures. I'm not sure why that is, except that I like being able to play a game right of the box without having to learn 137 keystrokes, and I like a good story. I can remember staying up until 4:00am on a work night playing Myst with my friend Shannon back when I was in New York, and staying up until 4:00am on a work night exploding the Riven CDs in the microwave. Odd thing, that. Even with the pyrotechnics, Riven was still bloated and boring, and has long since been...well...forgotten.

It Begins is the first installment in what DreamCatcher Interactive states will be an ongoing series. In it, the player is introduced to the basic gameplay and to a few of the characters. The whole point, after all, is to set up the later installments.

So who's introduced? Well, there's this Richard Halliburton guy you're supposed to find, and the manual states that this guy was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. This upset me a bit, because I was always under the impression that I was the inspiration for Indiana Jones. The player also learns of ties with Amelia Earhart and that Anastasia chick that they made a cartoon about a few years ago with Meg Ryan. Meg Ryan's not in this game, though, and at least I was never under the impression that I was the inspiration for her. And then there's Thibedeaux, who I'm not told was not a character in Les Mis.

The player learns about these people mainly by snooping around their hotel rooms and other such abandoned locations. You know, like in Timelapse, Nightfall, AMBER, etc. While searching for the missing Kirk Hiner...I mean Indiana Jones...I mean Richard Haliburton, the player learns of "The Collectors" and the power of the cards that they collected. They would be somewhat like those Pokeyman: the Gathering cards, I guess, except that these cards are responsible for giving rise to and destroying entire races throughout history, as well as for the disappearance of many historical figures. Pokeyman is only responsible for the disappearance of real toys.

The interface for finding these cards and clues is fairly traditional. The cursor changes between arrows for movement, a magnifying glass for examining, and a hand for manipulating. To keep an item, simply drag it to the inventory. To use an item, drag it onto the object with which it is to be used. Where The Forgotten: It Begins really gets impressive is in movement. Unlike most adventure games of the past, turning is not a matter of simply flipping 90 degrees to the left or right. By clicking the mouse on the screen and dragging left or right (and, to a lesser extent, up and down), the player scrolls the screen in that direction. This method has been used in other games such as Redjack: Revenge of the Brethren, but then it was somewhat pixilated and clunky. Not so here. The graphics remain impressive even while scrolling, and the animation is very smooth. Many of the screens are still static, but getting to them is a lot of fun.

I was also quite impressed with the graphics as a whole. The locations are very well designed, almost to the point that I wished I really could have been exploring them. The visuals were at one moment stunning, and the next creepy. I should point out, though, that the creepiness was very much attributable to the music and sound effects. More than once, the not quite discernible whispering gave me shivers. Good stuff.

So with all this praise, why only a 3 out of 5? Well, like in figure skating, the The Forgotten: It Begins was penalized for lack of difficulty. Tieraney and I played this game together, and we finished it in about three hours. That's unheard of these days. DreamCatcher explained in the press release that the game is marketed towards novice gamers, but even novice gamers will get through this in a shorter amount of time than it would take to download a walkthrough.

Yet at only $19.99, The Forgotten: It Begins is being sold at a shareware price. This is quite a deal, considering that $20.00 will get you three movies, and three movies is about five hours, and chances are that none of them will have swordfighting skeletons. The skeletons in The Forgotten: It Begins may not be swordfighting, but they are there nonetheless.

DreamCatcher Interactive has big plans for this series. They've stated that future chapters--which are already under development--will be bigger, more difficult, and will even start to come on DVD. The integration between the chapters seems tight; indeed, some of the items the player finds in It Begins will not even be used until later chapters. That's pretty cool. I can only imagine that playing this is what it must have been like to go see the Flash Gordon or Superman serials in the 1930s.

So yeah, if you've got an extra $20.00 lying around, you might want to hop onto this series now. The Forgotten: It Begins may be a quick, easy play, but the series has tremendous potential.

And speaking of potential, from where did this DreamCatcher Interactive company come? I'd never heard of them before a month ago, and now they suddenly have two Mac adventures out with three more due this spring...including one designed specifically for women. Ends up they've been around since 1996, and are just now positioning themselves to become the company that will save the computer adventure game. Here's hoping they succeed.

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March 17, 2010