As this was my first exposure
to Benoît Sokal, JA Editor Randy Sluganski wrote me that, “B.
Sokal is the most respected adventure game developer of this era and
his Syberia series is considered by many
to be among the best adventure games ever made.” Well, such
high praise invited some investigation.

Benoît Sokal was
born in Brussels in 1954. He, along with other contemporary Belgian
comic artists, studied under Claude
Renard at the Ecole
Superieure des Art Saint Luc in Brussels.

In
1981, Benoît created the popular Inspector
Canardo series for the comic publishing house A
Suivre (English translation – To Be Continued). Canardo
featured a depressed anthropomorphic duck detective who smoked, drank
alcohol, and spent his time with scantily clad female seducers (sort
of a French Howard
the Duck?). Sokal went on to create two more popular realistic
comic series for A Suivre and then in 1990, Sokol and renowned comic
artist François
Rivière created the popular police fiction ‘Silence, on
Tue!’ at the publishing house Nathan.

In 1999, Benoît turned
his attention to computer adventure games and released his first title

Amerzone, which was partially based
upon the Canardo stories, especially the fifth series. Since that
time he has developed the highly regarded Syberia
(2002) & Syberia
II (2004), Paradise
(2006), Sinking Island (2007) & Nikopol
(2008). The intriguing Aquarica
(both a film and video game) and the Last
King of Africa (an updated Nintendo DS version of
Paradise) are scheduled to be released
in the upcoming months.

Sokal’s comics and
games have won numerous awards and he has a slavishly devoted audience
who look forward with anticipation to the release of new games and
comics. In August of 2003, Benoît Sokal, Olivier Fontenay, Jean-Philippe
Messian and Michel Bams – all who had previously worked together
at Microïds – formed the White
Birds Production company. More in-depth information can be found
at the official
French language site for Benoît Sokal and a biography on
Lambiek
Comiclopedia.

Sinking Island
was originally released in France by Micro Application on October
4, 2007. Almost a year later, the game has been released in North
America by Microïds and distributed by Encore Software.

The
plot: billionaire Walter Jones has fallen to his death from a cliff
near his art deco tower on a mysterious, storm-cursed island. Jack
Norm, a police detective, is called in to investigate the mysterious
death. There are ten people on the island at the time of Walter’s
death any one of who could have a motive to kill him. In classic detective
story fiction fashion, you play as Jack Norm who takes pictures, collects
finger prints, sorts through clues and evidence and eventually finds
the truth and brings the killer to justice.

The game is fashioned around
the immense and beautiful hotel tower, a series of violent tropical
storms which never seem to stop during the three days of the investigation
into the murder, and the family life of Walter Jones and his three
grandchildren. Walter has invited the grandchildren to his tower on
the pretense of re-inheriting them after disinheriting them over some
family intrigue.

In point of fact, the older
Walter was courting a 20-year-old island girl who is now implicated
in the murder. Walter possibly never intended to reinstate his grandchildren
into the will. As time goes on the people on the island grow tenser
as the tower itself is disintegrating due to the constant pounding
from the tropical storms.

The game is built around
an inventory system and a PPA (personal police assistant) found in
the upper right hand corner of the screen. The PPA contains four game
devices that helps Jack Norm solve the crime: a character or suspect
database, clue database, a comparison device, and the progression
screens. The PPA is essential to the investigation and makes it virtually
impossible to find anyone else but the real killer.

The suspect database compiles
information about the suspects as you find more and more about them.
One of the most useful but illogical features of the suspect database
is the current location of the suspect. The area of the game is very
large and it takes a while to get to know the lay of the land since
there is no map in the game.

The
clue database is where Jack compiles physical evidence – called
material clues in the game – pictures Jack takes of evidence,
documents located and confiscated, and testimony from the suspects
and witnesses, which the game calls declarations.

Within the clue database
is an area where mandates are solved. Mandates are questions that
come up during the game. Examples of the thirteen mandates in the
game are “Was Walter’s death accidental?’ and “What
was the cause of Walter’s death?” Mandates are selected
from the jigsaw puzzle progression screen of the PPA and they then
appear in the clues database to be solved with the appropriate clues.

Each jigsaw puzzle piece
in the progression screen represents a different mandate to solve.
Selecting the appropriate mandate puzzle piece in the progression
screen causes the selected mandate to appear in the clues database
mandate solution screen. It would have been easier and less confusing
to allow the game players to select mandates from within the clues
database.

In the lower right hand
corner of the clue database there is a compare icon. Clicking on the
compare icon allows Jack to compare fingerprints, footprints, and
other evidence to pictures taken from suspects or evidence to determine
if they are the same. For example, a fingerprint on a murder weapon
might mean that the person used that weapon to kill the victim Walter
Jones. A part of a piece of broken jewelry or a ripped piece of fabric
can place a suspect at the location of a crime when compared to the
other piece of the item found at the suspect’s office, hotel
room, or home.

Using the compare feature
of the clues database section of the PPA is essential to solving the
crime. Once compared a separate piece of evidence showing the matched
evidence (that the two pieces of evidence match) is required in the
mandate solution area of the clues database. Is that confusing enough?
I guess you have to play the game to get the idea.

The
whole PPA experience is very satisfying and enjoyable. Getting a match
with two pieces of evidence and solving mandates can be most enjoyable
to someone like me who has an obsessive compulsive nature and likes
to solve mysteries and organize evidence. Please watch the television
series Monk
for more information on this subject.

The artwork, which we can
assume Benoît Sokal had a hand in, is very beautiful. It is extremely
enjoyable to see all the beautiful screens that make up the game.
Some adventure games are rather limited in the number of screens,
but Sinking Island has a lot of area to
explore in only three short days.

The game can be played
in traditional adventure mode or against the clock in the ‘race
against time’ mode. In the ‘race against time mode’
time passes quickly and the suspects get annoyed and tension is rising
as time progresses. I was not able to see any perceptible differences
between the two modes.

The plot seems open-ended
but in many ways it is linear. Certain evidence can only be taken
on certain days during the three day period of investigation. If you
miss the evidence there is no way to solve the crime.

The discussions with suspects
can go on for a very long time if you ask them all the questions that
you can ask them. Questions are divided into asking the suspects to
comment on a piece of evidence you have found, on a mandate that is
currently being solved, or upon another suspect or the victim. Stories
about the evidence and people change over time, since many of the
suspects are lying or hiding something.

Like
most adventure games, Jack must go everywhere, pick up everything
that is not nailed down, solve a few physical puzzles, and talk to
all the suspects multiple times about everything new that pops up.
People are scattered all over the island at first but as the story
progresses they tend to be easier to get to since access to parts
of the game become more and more limited with time. Making people
and items easier to get to by limiting the far ranging areas in the
game is actually a good thing since it saves Jack a lot of walking.

There is no map in the
game, and very little has been done to make getting around any easier.
Many adventure games have a map that makes it easy to get around the
game. Walking all the way across the island and up and down a 22-story
tower which requires an elevator change, and later in the game requires
that Jack use the stairs since an elevator goes out, becomes an annoying
nuisance that could have been avoided with a map which would have
allowed Jack to select a location. After walking someplace once or
twice, I find walking there again unnecessary in a computer game and
a map could have spared the game player the time-wasting, annoying
and boring task of walking everywhere

The game is loaded with
moody landscapes, beautiful and heavily detailed architecture, well-drawn
and animated characters that have expressions, at least frown and
smile. The game also has whistling winds, crashing lightning bolts
and flashes of light, and the building creaks and seems to move under
Jack’s feet. The mood of the game is set by these effects and
was sufficient enough to make me feel cold and a little uneasy.

The game installed and
played clean and fast on Vista without any glitches or bugs. There
was no escape out of introductory animations which after you have
seen them one time, can be just as annoying as walking everywhere.
You can run, as in most other adventure games, and save some time
by double clicking on your destination within each adventure screen.

When
interrogating suspects, the suspects are rather animated with certain
hand movements and expressions that can, over time, begin to be repetitious.
The characters have full voice acting with optional subtitles for
those who are hearing impaired or simply find it helpful to see the
text as well as hear the voice actors for clarity.

The voice acting in the
English localized version was superb in my view. The diction and enunciation
made the actors easy to understand. The tonal quality of the voices
made them pleasant to listen to which is a huge plus as most of the
story is told through the comments of the ten suspects interrogated
by Jack.

The voice actor who portrayed
Jack and the dialog written for him gives Jack a very easygoing manner.
In many mysteries and detective stories, I find the detectives annoying
and overbearing, but I really liked Jack and enjoyed his even-handed
search for the truth without adding too much melodrama to the investigation.
I got the impression that Jack was thorough and meticulous without
any hint of preconception in his investigation. The words fair and
likeable come to mind when I think of Jack.

Police work can be really
boring. Jack has to say the same things over and over again and in
the same way to ten different people. Luckily the answers from those
ten people are vastly different and entertaining.

From
time-to-time in the middle of the investigation Jack becomes hungry
or tired or gets a phone call from his girlfriend, and he drops everything
and ends up in his room talking to his girlfriend or going to bed,
or we find Jack munching on a loaf of bread in the dining room. After
Jack is abducted without the consent of the game player, he must then
find his way back to the suspect to continue the interrogation.

These interruptions seem
to be scripted into the plot, and do not seem to serve any purpose
other than to annoy the game player. Thankfully Jack is not annoyed.
Why is it necessary to interject artificial reality into a game, when
this reality is a distraction and an annoyance rather than furthering
the plot of the game? On one level, these distractions work to increase
the mounting tension as the game progresses to a conclusion.

In summary, I found Sinking
Island to be excellent and enjoyed it immensely. It
has a few flaws – the lack of a map or Jack wandering off to
eat – but what in life does not have flaws? I look forward to playing
White Bird’s next release, Nikopol,
and would like to sincerely thank Benoît Sokal, for a wonderful adventure
game experience. I highly recommend Sinking Island
to those who enjoy adventure games.

System Requirements:

• Windows XP/Vista
• 1.5 GHz Pentium processor
• 512 MB RAM
• DirectX 9.0c compatible
  64 MB video card
• 3 GB free hard disk
  space
• 16x DVD-ROM