Lost: Via Domus Est Iens Domus
June 3, 2008 2:43 am Games for Points, Gaming
After 1000pting (I just made up a new word, Google that shit!) from my latest Gamefly rental, “Lost: Via Domus (L:VD),” I’m actually pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. It’s like when you go to the doctor for a physical and you’re not completely sure if you’re going to have to turn your head and cough or possibly get a finger in your ass. Playing L:VD was more like the doctor finding a mole inside your thigh which you might have to get removed at a later date. Kinda sucky, but at least you took got it taken care of.
L:VD wasn’t an awesome experience by any stretch of the imagination (well, the 1000pts in about five hours was awesome), and I come from the unique perspective of playing a game based on a TV show which I’ve only seen half an episode of. To me, L:VD actually had a decent story as far as games go. I’m not sure if that’s good for the game, or bad for the games industry in general. I suppose basing your game on a fairly popular television show has some benefits.
I don’t want to spoil the story since it’s really the only thing that keeps you not wanting to succumb to narcolepsy while playing. The gameplay and interactive portions of the game felt like an old point and click adventure style game, except set in a 3-d world and crappy. You basically run around, talk to characters who give you “quests” to go on, which are mainly just linear story events. Talking to guy A opens up talking to guy B, and so on. Eventually, you’ll have a “flashback” where you need to take a picture during some event from your past, at just the right moment. Once you’ve done so, you remember something about yourself (oh yeah, you have amnesia) which you can use to advance the story. Optionally, you can run around during the flashback and find three “memory items” which help fill in the story and unlock more ‘cheeves.
There’s also a rudimentary trading and inventory system, which allows your character to trade papayas and beer cans for torches and pistols. Great idea, mixing alcohol and firearms on a stranded island with a bunch of people you hate and smoke monsters.
Speaking of smoke monsters, there’s smoke monsters-a-plenty in L:VD. There’s a particularly annoying gameplay segment where you have to travel through a cave with your torch lit or the the SMOKE MONSTAR will eat your soul. Good thing bats also attack you and for some odd reason deplete the life of your torch! And watch out for waterfalls in the dark cave which will put your torch out! Well, at least the developers decided to put some indication of when Sir Smokesalot is about to attack by ramping up the controller vibration and heart beat sounds in the game. That part was actually pretty cool. There’s also various smoke monster sections of the game where you’re basically running around in the jungle and ol’ Smokey is roving around, hunting for you. To avoid facing the smoke, you can hide in some trees and watch a cut-scene of the thing get pissed at you, shriek and growl, and menacingly drift away. The “Hidin’ Out” cut-scene is always the same, so don’t try to get sassy and hide in the trees all the time or else boredom will kill you instead of the smoke monster.
Oh, there’s a terrible mini-game that I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. I ended up looking up all the solutions online because after five minutes of trying to plug in and rotate virtual fuses in a virtual circuit board to shut off a virtual fuel leak on a virtual airplane that no one else seems to care about even though it was about to explode (I should the know, the music was intense) I thought I was playing a Silent Hill puzzle for a second and almost killed myself. Also, the hints for the fuse puzzle made about as much sense as seven-legged tranny hooker serving soup to the homeless at my wedding.
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There’s also a four parts (that I found anyway) in L:VD where you get to use the gun you trade for. Three super important story related sequences (one where you shoot a dude, and two another where you shoot some dynamite to set if off) and in one other part where a guy is up in a tree platform shooting at you. For some reason, no one on the island thought to deal with the homicidal maniac up in a tree until you came along. They probably figured that some guy with amnesia might trade bottles of Dasani for a handgun and take care of business. They were right.
As far as ‘cheeves go, this game rates fairly high on my non-existent scale. I recommend using a guide to get through most of L:VD, since you’ll miss many precious points if you don’t. There’s a lot of photo taking opportunities that you wouldn’t think of doing unless someone told you, like an abandoned VW bus in smoke monster territory, or a skeleton in a old pirate ship. There’s also a couple of hidden places to explore and a few pseudo-side quests that I doubt many gamers would find without a guide of some sort.
In any case, playing L:VD will net you a decent amount of points in about 5-6 hours of play time. Really, it’s pretty good considering the story isn’t half-bad. Just endure the crappy gameplay segments and focus on seeing that gamer score go up 1000 points and you’ll do fine.