Innovation in adventure games is not easy to come by these days.
Too many games I play are stuck in a rut, flogging formulas that
have been stale for some time.

I get all perky and excited when I find a game that actually tries
to do and be something new and different. A few months ago Broken
Sword: The Sleeping Dragon got my attention by its beautiful success
at creating a pure adventure in a dynamic 3D setting.

And now I’m delighted
to tell you about a wildly innovative new adventure called In
Memoriam.

I love hybrid games. Frequently
when I discuss hybrids I’m
talking about games that through together different game genres.
That’s not what I’m referring to in the case of In
Memoriam.
It’s a true-blue pure adventure game. But the best way I can
describe this game is to ask you to imagine a happy collision between
Jewels of the Oracle, the Griffin & Sabine books, Electronic
Arts ambitious but failed online adventure game Majestic, and The
Blair Witch Project.

No, I’m not kidding.
Let me explain.

The premise of In
Memoriam is that the game CD was smuggled to you by a network of concerned
individuals who are trying to discover
the whereabouts of two missing investigators. This CD was somehow
procured from the bad guy and needs to be “decoded” by
you, the player.

As in Majestic, the entertaining
premise of the game is that everything related to the game is actually
real. You have to set up a login
ID and password to get into the investigating “network,” and,
again like Majestic, you get actual emails from players in the game.
These emails are from various characters (including, every now and
then, the bad guy!) and usually contains hints on how to proceed.

The CD contains a video transfer of an old Super 8 home movie taken
by a Greek family thirty years ago. In the movie you see an attractive
couple and their young daughter on a holiday. Starting off as a family
romp on an island, it eventually reveals a shocking execution-style
murder. You later learn that the father, who was shooting the film,
was killed by the same men committing the crime he witnessed.

As soon as the game begins,
the anonymous evil culprit initiates a cat-and-mouse game with
you. This game consists of a series of
puzzles that look reminiscent of the Griffin & Sabine books and
play a lot like Jewels of the Oracle. There’s almost every
kind of abstract puzzle imaginable, and there’s a whole lot
of them. Everything from cryptography to miniature golf. These little
puzzles and games are fun and visually imaginative.

In addition, a certain amount of internet research is necessary
to find passwords and other clues. This is very interesting because
the subjects of these scavenger hunt puzzles delve in to very exotic
areas of mystical esoterica. Arcane names for the planets and evidence
of ancient cult rituals begin surfacing as you investigate.

As you complete each set of puzzles, the bad guy rewards you with
an additional video clip. The clips follow the investigation of two
researchers, Jack Lorski and Karen Gijman, into the mystery. One
of them is a woman, who it turns out is the little girl in the 30
year old home movie.

As you get more and more puzzles solved, the researchers feel they
are getting closer and closer to the killer. Eventually the two find
a very creepy house into which they disappear a la Blair Witch. Will
you be in time to save them?

To be fair, I have to
say that, like the last game I reviewed, Jack the Ripper, the denoument
in In Memoriam is pretty disappointing.
Not because there IS no ending, like in Jack, but because the player
is pretty much taken out of it. But it still doesn’t ruin the
entertaining journey getting to the conclusion.

As you work on solving
the game’s mysteries, you get a series
of emails from various characters in the game. These emails flesh
out the story a bit and give you important hints and information
regarding the game’s various puzzles. A few of the emails come
from the killer himself!

This is a very curious,
intelligent and ambitious game. In these chilly latter days of
adventure games, it’s a very encouraging
game to come across. I think its format should be used as the basis
for a series of adventures. Go buy the game, and together maybe we
can make that happen!

Final Grade: A

System Requirements:

Hey, dig those retro requirements, huh?

PC

• Operating System 95-98-2000-ME-XP
• Processor 333 Mhz
• Memory 64 Mb RAM
• Graphics Card 32-bit
• DVD-CD Rom Drive 8x
• Sound Card 16-bit (SoundBlaster™ compatible)
• Hard Disk 700 Mb
• Internet connection 56.6
  Kb modem

MAC

• Operating System OS/8.6 (OS X, Classic Mode only)
• Hard Disk 700Mb
• Memory 64 Mb RAM
• Minimum display resolution
  800*600
• DVD-CD Rom Drive 8x
• Internet connection 56.6
  Kb modem

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.