Lost: Via Domus – A good “meh”

By Shadow Wave

©2008 Ben Cadwallader

WARNING: Review contains spoilers about Seasons 1 and 2 of the Television Series LOST.

Whenever you buy a movie or television based on game, you stop and pause before handing your cash over. You think will it be worth it? Am I wasting my money? Well Lost: Via Domus is the latest game to raise these questions. And it manages to pull it off just enough to make it worth a purchase and thanks to its lowered price point of RRP $79.95 the decision to buy or not might be made easier.

Lost: Via Domus is a game that involves a minimal amount of button mashing. The developers, Ubisoft have focused the driving aspect of the game more towards cut scenes and building the story. The actual gameplay involves a lot of little mini games, some fun and some very frustrating, talking to fellow cast aways and walking through the jungle.

The game spans over Seasons 1 and 2 of the show, and while trying to keep the story similar, there are a lot of cliches and gaps in the story and missing characters which may confuse a serious LOST fan. For people new to the LOST series, give this game a miss until you decide to watch the television series through on DVD first.

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Lost starts out, in a very similar way to how the very first episode of the series starts. Your character wakes up in the middle of the jungle, proceeds to wander towards the beach who then walks out into the wreckage and then proceeds to get sucked into the LOST story that unfolds. Your character awakens with amnesia, even forgetting his own name. His main goal is find his lost memories where he regains some through flashbacks.

Ubisoft has managed to incorporate flashbacks into the game. While the idea of flashbacks could have been made much better and just played like a good level of a game, they have tried to put a way to simulate memory gain. This is done by taking a photo. Before the flashback begins, you get a glimpse of a broken, messed up photo; your job is to try and match that photo with the black and white scene that plays.

Each scene lasts for about 10 seconds, and will keep repeating over and over until you manage to get the right photo. Once the photo has been taken the scene will play in colour, and will be treated to a much longer scene that are quite enjoyable to watch. Taking photographs is not the most fun thing to do, trying to fiddle with the focus, zoom and getting in the right position in a small amount of time is not that easy, at least the developers don’t place you back at the starting position each time the memory repeats, giving you a bit more time to prepare.

The majority of the game will take place on the island, this game takes place over seasons 1 and 2. The game is split up into Episodes. Each episode will end with “LOST” flashing up on the screen just the like show, and each episode will begin with a “previously on lost” small cut scene. Surprisingly these cut scenes are enjoyable and fun to watch. Unfortunately I don’t know why but the developers made it so you cant skip the previously on lost cut scene. This will drive you crazy later on when you start the episode with a timed sequence where if you make one mistake, you have to start over, and watch the scene again as well..

Players just starting would expect to see most of the characters from LOST and a lot of major parts in the story shown in the show. But this is not the case. The show barely mentions any of the major things that happen in the show. One of the only ones mentioned is when Locke blows up the Hatch. All we see is a bit of explosion over the trees from the beach and that is only shown because a part of the game spent is in the Swan Station (the Hatch).

There are a few other references such as in a conversation you will hear something like “oh by the way Claire got attacked by someone”, and thats almost all you hear about it. A lot of the story is skipped – eg: when Sayid found Danielle, the death of the polar bear, the group moving to the caves, Locke being a hunter, the launch of the raft, the tail section survivors arriving, Boone’s death and I could go on. A lot of characters are missing too, Walt, Boone, Shannon, all the tail section survivors. So many are missing.

Gameplay is taken pretty lightly in this game with most of the game sucking you in via cut scenes. But for what its worth, most of your time will be spent talking to survivors, doing small puzzles and exploring small areas of the jungle and caves. This is not Crysis and it is definitely not a free roaming game. When you travel to a new area you have to make your own way there and this is not as fun as it looks as its not just a trek through the jungle. Thankfully, once you make it to the other side you can just “quick travel” back.

Each time you will have a mix up of different things that will stop you making your way there. Sometimes the Black Smoke will get in your way and when it gets close you have to hide in some trees. Avoiding the black smoke is very annoying especially when you have to walk, later in the game. Some other times you will have to follow compass directions, if you go the wrong way you will have to restart. Or you have to follow some flag markers while being shot at by The Others. (Hold on, I thought The Others were ultra stealthy and used the electric zapper darts?)

The main puzzles you will be completing will be routing electrical circuits and finding the right person to talk to (here you’ll have to use your LOST knowledge). About halfway through the game you can acquire a gun and for the most part, you’ll only need to fire the gun about 3 or 4 times in the entire game, but its other use is to shoot the Others out of tree’s on your jungle treks.

Characters in the game are supposed to develop and change over the course of the game, like Sun will only speak Korean at the beginning of the game, but later will go to English and some characters wear different clothing which is pretty cool. Discussions between characters don’t work quite well. For starters your character will only speak in cut scenes and occasionally in some conversations. But generally, conversations are done similarly to Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion where you will get a list of questions to pick and when you pick one the other character will respond straight away without you asking the question.

While it works okay, the fact that your character is not a mute and can speak, sometimes is a lot less believable. You can also trade goods with a few people on the island, such as Sawyer and Locke. You can collect things such as Fuel, fruit and water bottles which are just a few things that are used as currency on the island.

Graphically speaking this game is pretty beautiful. The environments look very believable and real and in my opinion they have gotten the jungle effect down better than Crysis. Some Characters in the game look great – your character, Locke, Sayid and a few others look very nice in the game, but a few others like Claire look a lot more bland and don’t have as much detail in their faces.

My main gripe with the game is that it has really really bad screen tearing, this is even more noticeable in the jungle scenes because there are lot more things for it to distort. It happens very frequently. On the brighter side the frame rate holds up quite well. Some of the places you visit do really look almost the same as the real sets, such as the computer room in the Hatch and the Black Rock.

Audio is pretty great, 5.1 sounds fantastic with the Black Smoke flying around you, and the smart developers have used surround sound for a few puzzles! Such as following Vincent through the jungle, also the whispers are heard around you occaisnally. From Explosions to beach sounds, most of the sound effects sound pretty great.

Characters on the other hand are a bit different, half of the characters in the game are voiced by the official actors and half are not. And while they did a decent job of getting similar voices, its still very easy to tell, and it does take a bit away from the authenticity of the experience. The music track is just as good and unique that the show has, which is really appreciated.

Single player can last sadly from anywhere from 4 – 8 hours depending on how you play and a bit towards how stuck you may get at a puzzle.

In conclusion, the game offers the uniqueness that LOST has, but loses out on ditching a lot of important story moments and leaving characters out. Some puzzles can be quite frustrating and repeated a bit too often. Usually the cut scenes you cant skip turn out to be the ones that you will have to watch a lot.

Your journey to learn your characters past makes a lot more sense as you travel forward and in the end it turns out to be quite compelling. Also be prepared to be hit with a extremely weird ending. For the lower price point of $79.95 and cheaper with store sales I recommend picking this up, only if you are a LOST fan.

6.9/10