This one slipped out onto the shelves under cover of apathy, and a few of us adventure-loving UK journos are trying to help rectify the situation. Or at least, point it out to the seemingly everybody who has missed it, on the off-chance that at least a few of the people not buying it would have a real ball.
The website’s at http://www.inmemoriam-thegame.com, and gives the basic gist of it. The plot itself is pretty simple - a serial killer has taken two hostages and released a disc full of clues and puzzles as a challenge to the authorities. Unable to solve it, they’re passing copies around the world to see if anybody else can succeed. That sets up the basic structure - solve a range of twisted puzzles to work your way through the disc, unlocking Blair Witch style clips of the victims’ final journey and trying to work out exactly what the killer is up to. It’s not a million miles away from http://www.thestone.com in that respect, although the closest game is the long-defunct Majestic (albeit in one-shot, single-player form).
What makes it more interesting is that it’s been designed for play over the internet. They’ve seeded the web with fake websites, fake blogs and other bits of information that you need to hunt down - and, just as entertainingly, routinely sends you in-character e-mails about the mystery (for instance, shortly after starting, a girl called Julie Massenet gets in touch to point you towards her site about Notre Dame cathedral). It’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but it is a really fun, atmospheric little game. So needless to say, it ended up on the Shelf of Hell at our local Game, sitting next to things like Private Dancer and Robocop. Which is a shame - get into the right mood and it’s extremely atmospheric. Especially when a new e-mail clicks into your inbox juuust as you’re going to bed. Either way, it’s worth a punt. If you don’t find it any fun, well, that’s what refunds are for :twisted:
What’s to distinguish this from Majestic, which tried and failed to do the same thing for their players (and had EA to back them)? Not trying to be snarky here, just trying to figure out the appeal.
For starters, it’s a single-player game, and much more limited than what Majestic originally set out to do. This is a good thing. In Memoriam is pretty much a puzzle game with clues seeded on the web, and that’s all it sets out to be game-wise- no embarassing chatbots or episodic releases or user communitie or anything of that ilk to distract you from the heavily research based lateral puzzle solving. It’s not simply a load of sliding block puzzles and Rubik’s Cube affairs - just the e-mail/web connection really pushing it into Majestic’s territory.
But then, considering that Majestic tanked so damn hard and almost nobody actually got a chance to play it, it doesn’t really matter that much ;-)
Although I never played Majestic, the vast majority of the complaints I saw about it fell into two categories:
It suxxorz to have to wait for EA to release new content to play more of the game. You spend about two hours playing, and then had to wait four weeks before you could play again.
The plot suxxorz and the puzzles aren’t very interesting.
“In Memoriam” wouldn’t have problem #1, presumably, since it’s a complete single-player game. Problem #2 is anybody’s guess. But just because Majestic tanked doesn’t mean this will.
