TimeScape: Journey to Pompeii

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: December 21, 2000

Genre: Adventure

Format: 2 CDs

Developer: Arxel Tribe, Cryo Interactive Entertainment Software, Réunion des Musées Nationaux

Publisher: DreamCatcher Interactive

Minimum Requirements: PowerPC 200 MHz, Mac OS 7.5, 32 MB RAM, 8x CD-ROM

Network Feature: No

3D Support: No

Retail Price: $19.99

Availability: Now

Back when I worked on Liberty St. in New York City, there was this deli I frequented that served a sandwich called the Pompeii. This perplexed me, as I can't imagine a restaurant can move sandwiches by naming them after cities covered in ash. Just doesn't sound that appetizing. It'd be like naming an automobile "Hindenburg" or "The Decapitator."

The sandwich, luckily, did not taste so much like ash as it did chicken. This led me to believe the city of Pompeii was actually covered in chickens, not ash from Mt. Vesuvius. Ridiculous, perhaps, but not quite as much so as the premise behind DreamCatcher Interactive's TimeScape: Journey to Pompeii. Get a load of this set-up, taken directly from the manual:

The game begins in the year 1928. The protagonist is Adrian Blake, a British explorer who, on a mission for his King, finds himself surrounded by enemy forces. He finds shelter in a cave and decides to wait it out. Due to the poor conditions, Adrian becomes sick with fever and hovers on the brink of death. The goddess Ishtar (also known as Aphrodite and Isis) appears to him and offers to heal him in exchange for his love. Adrian spurns her advances and soon finds himself on the mend without her intervention. At the first available opportunity, Adrian returns home to England and his fianceée, Sophia.

A year later, on the brink of their wedding, Sophia disappears without a trace. Adrian searches for her in vain, but then he finally recalls a curse spoken by the vindictive goddess Ishtar as he lay in his feverish delirium.

Adrian searches through ancient scrolls for the spell to invoke Ishtar. When she appears before him, she offers him a challenge in exchange for the return of Sophia.

Ishtar sends Adrian back in time to Pompeii in the year of 79 A.D., August 20. There, he must first discover the identity and whereabouts of Sophia who has been reincarnated into a freed slave. Then he must win her love and trust (as she has no memory of their life in the future) and lead her out of Pompeii. Adrian must do this in just four days as Mount Vesuvius, according to history, is destined to erupt on August 24, 79 A.D.

If Adrian is successful, Ishtar will return Sophia and Adrian back to their own time.

Are you ready to meet the challenge?

Uh...sure, if I had any idea what the challenge was. Luckily, the game begins well after this exercise in convolution. After a brief cinematic that summarizes this mess, Adrian wakes up in the middle of a yard in a house in Pompeii. From there, the game takes on the interface similar to most DreamCatcher games; first person point-of-view allowing full 360° panning. Gamers pass the cursor across the screen, and it changes when an object can be manipulated, a person can be spoken to, or another area can be explored. Although the immediate areas can be panned in full, moving between these areas is done in a more traditional HyperCard method.

So through this method of clicking and moving, Adrian begins to search Pompeii for his beloved. As with any investigation, the best way to get results is by talking to people. Of course, few people are willing to offer help without first receiving some (things have changed so little since 79 A.D.). And so, from your very first conversation, you're sent on errands and asked to solve puzzles for the good citizens of Pompeii. Luckily, most of these tasks are fairly simple to figure out and quick to complete.

Those that aren't, however, can become a major pain. Some tasks must be completed in the exact proper order to allow advancement, but no indication is given that things may have been done incorrectly. And whereas most of the puzzles serve to further the plot, some are completely random (hint: throw the javelin towards Mount Vesuvius).

TimeScape offers some assistance in that it doesn't allow you into areas in which you don't yet need to be. Although some gamers may not like this element, I found it drastically reduced unnecessary exploration which can really deaden interest in a game. It was also helpful because the mapping system in the game is pretty much useless. Pulling up the map shows where you are, but doesn't indicate in which direction you're facing. There's not even a compass to help you find your bearings, but the game does have an exploration feature in which you can move freely about all the locations to familiarize yourself with Pompeii. You cannot, however, click on the map to be automatically transported to a specific spot. If the item you need is clear across town, you have to go there block by block to get it.

Sometimes that's okay, though, because you could otherwise miss important encounters. There are numerous people scattered throughout the streets that can either help or hinder your quest, most of whom speak with peculiarly British accents. To interact with them, players simply click on the dialogue topics indicated on screen. I'm not sure why each topic is presented individually because it's rare that speaking of one item wipes away the chance to speak about others. Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud (nice Macbeth reference), and all of it kept the story moving along. The voice acting sometimes seemed a bit forced, especially with the female characters, but it never became annoying.

Although players are given only four days to identify and meet Sophia and convince her to leave Pompeii, there's really no sense of urgency as was used to great affect SafeCracker and Traitors Gate. The days simply end when all activities are finished. If only real life were the same.

The graphics in TimeScape are decent, but not spectacular. Software rendering can only do so much, after all. They did well to add a sense of depth and authenticity to Pompeii, as did the music...when I could hear it.

Enter major problem #1, no compatibility with USB sound devices. Both music and sound effects popped and dropped their way through my Harman/Kardon SoundSticks. To avoid this, I tried running it on my fianceée's rev. D iMac. Major problem #2. Although it sounded fine, her CD-ROM had a terrible time spinning the CD. It would grind painfully while trying to read it, and would only occasionally be successful. She didn't have this problem with any other CDs in her collection, and I didn't have the problem on my G4. This may have been an issue with this particular CD, however, so iMac users shouldn't let this complaint stop them from picking up the game. If they're looking for a reason to not purchase the game, how about the fact that we'd occasionally lose the ability to access the menu, so we couldn't save our game and would even have to reboot the computer in order to exit.

TimeScape builds nicely to a Titanic-like conclusion (a creepy cut-scene of people walking about town, oblivious to their impending doom, soon followed by these same people getting squashed by huge columns). However, I have a feeling that most gamers won't have the desire to stick around for it. The story flows nicely to that climax, but is not all that compelling (even the romantic element seems forced). The historic element is interesting, and is punctuated by an encyclopedic amulet that offers details on various elements of Pompeii's history and culture, but it's not good when one of the best elements of a game is actually outside the game itself.

So journey back in time, save who you can, and find your beloved Sophia; but remember that Pompeii was covered in ash. It would therefore be wise to get out of town, and perhaps this game, sooner rather than later.

.