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Great idea -- ! but with a fatal flaw

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 40 / 42
Date: July 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

A smart and gripping story, inventive, well written, and well acted. A total delight! except it does seem to require you to be online almost the whole time you're playing. This has two serious shortcomings:
-- If you have dial-up, you'll be online for hours.
-- If the website dies, you're dead in the water.

That last problem is a fatal one, I'm afraid. The game is not playable past the introduction without the websites and emails maintained by the publisher, who seems to be, um, not bothering anymore. Very shortsighted of them -- but I guess they thought they'd be around forever.

A Real Nail-biter

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 23 / 23
Date: July 03, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you like mysteries and you like puzzles, Missing is the game for you. It spins a really creepy tale of a journalist and his girlfriend gone missing whilst investigating a potential serial killer.

There are a lot of puzzles that must be solved. Some are quite hard. You are rewarded with a little more info, usually in the form of a video, when you solve a puzzle.

The designers made this as real as possible, with authentic-looking web sites that you are directed to, as well as realistic looking e-mails that you receive. You really become immersed in this game.

Plus - it's only $19.99 and will run on older systems (if you have one).

The DaVinci Code meets Myst

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: July 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you like games where you have to solve puzzles, and you are proficient at surfing the web for information, you should like this game.

The premise is as follows (don't worry, no spoilers): A journalist stumbled upon an old video recording of a murder in 1970's Europe. The video also showed the camera man being murdered for having witnessed the crime. He began investigating, and tracked down the daughter of the camera man. Together, they became embroiled in an investigation of a set of serial murders that took them across the continent - one which eventually ended in January with their disappearance. The company the jounalist worked for later recieved a CD-Rom claiming to be from the mysterious "Phoenix" who claims to have captured the couple as part of his "Great Work". Apparently the CD need only be "decoded" in order to reveal the location where the pair are being held. The company has decided to go public with the CD (giving in to a demand by the Phoenix). They have put on the shelves in hopes someone will be able decode it and lead them to the missing jounalist and his female companion.

That's where you come in. The "decoding" of the black CD involves solving 36 puzzles. Once you install the program and pop in the black CD from the Phoenix, you set up an account at the company's website, including your email address so they can contact you. You are assigned (fictional) team members, from whom you receive emails updating you on their progress in their investigations.

The puzzles are of generally two styles. First, there is the good old Myst style puzzles. Second, there are the puzzles which involve searching the web for information. The Phoenix references a lot of old arcane religious figures which I found VERY interesting. If you like Dan Brown novels (The DaVinci Code) then you will love this part of the game. That was my favorite thing about the game. I much preferred the puzzles that made you research to the mouse-games. You really get the feeling like you are hunting this criminal yourself. During the three days we played it, my wife and I found ourselves scouring over web pages about medieval and reniassance esoteric symbolism together, developing our own theories about what the Phoenix was up to. It was very, very cool.

I have a few recommendations. First, create an email address dedicated to this game. You will often have to go back through emails to look for information, and this just makes it easier. Check your email often while playing the game; I'd recommend checking it every time you start a new puzzle. Some puzzles cannot be solved without clues provided by your team members. If for whatever reason you plan to use a laptop, make sure you have a regular mouse. Some of the games involving the mouse were extremely difficult on my laptop touch pad. My next recommendation for playing the game is simple: research research research. Every time you get a new reference to a person, event, or a phrase that seems meaningful, whether it is from the Phoenix, from the videos, or from your email, do a search on Google. Every time. If you do this, the puzzles will in many cases be easy to solve since you will have recognized the name or place from your prior research. One other recommendation is if you get stuck on a puzzle, go to another one. Very often in this game the clue you get after solving one puzzle will give you the breakthrough you need to solve the one you were stuck on. Finally - take notes. Lots of notes. You don't really need to take notes during the video clues - you can replay those at any time. However, take notes during your research and SAVE all the links you find helpful. You will often have to return to the same websites for different puzzles. Make sure you take notes of the text messages that appear from the Phoenix. You can't get those back once they are off your screen, and some are very important.

Some of the puzzles (especially those involving moving things around with your mouse just so) can be very, very annoying. That's why I took my rating down a notch. More than once I found myself cursing about how silly it was that a serial killer would hinge his devious plans on whether or not I was very adept with a mousepad. I was also a little disappointed in the ending. Yes, they left room for a sequal, but even so, the end still left you sitting there looking at your screen like "Oh. Well, I guess the game's over then". You do get some follow up emails, but that's about it. I wish the end had been better. My final complaint was that often when doing web searches for clues in the game, my results included several "walkthrough" sites that give you all the answers. If you don't want to risk accidentally clicking on one of these and spoiling the game, or you'd just like to eliminate the temptation, I'd recommend tacking on a "-walkthrough" to the end of all your searches.

Overall I'd rate this game as follows: Premise: A+, Plot: A+, Acting: A, Gameplay: A+ for the mystery puzzles, D for the mouse games, Ending: C-. If you happen to be a fan of both Myst and The DaVinci code, however, this game was made for you.

I'll play the sequel

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: August 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Missing: Since January is a cleverly conceived game. The designer, Lexis Numerique, has figured out a way to immerse players with story, in a way that other adventure games simply do not. The conceit is that the abducted couple's employer, SKL Network, has widely dispersed a CD-ROM from the abductor in an effort to hasten their return. Gameplay begins, then, when you insert the CD into your drive. It's up to you, of course, whether you will submit to this narrative device-but for its part, the game makes it very easy to do so. The CD itself is nested inside the story. Missing nests its full motion video within the story as well. Using video in an adventure game is a dicey matter. But here, the video is itself being provided to you, the player, by the killer himself. The video of Jack and Karen is multiply coded: it starts out as their documentary record of an investigation, the audience of which they think will be ordinary viewers back home. The video then passes to the hands of the killer who then presents it to you as a way of teasing you. Because of the killer's presence, the video takes on an eerie quality that would simply be lost without this multiple embedding. At the same time, Jack and Karen's documentary presentation, as they intended it to be, is oddly comforting.

About a month or so before Missing was released, The Adventure Company sent out an email (to folks signed up to receive them) that was in truth a promotion for the game, but presented itself as an announcement of the couple's abduction. The Adventure Company was attempting, in other words, to begin the immersion early, as a way of drumming up excitement and interest in the game. The subject line was "Missing," and the text of the email described Jack Lorski and Karen Gijman's capture, as well as asking for people's help. I don't know if the email garnered interest-I myself was vaguely impressed-but I do know that about 3 days later I got another email from The Adventure Company apologizing for the confusion and explaining clearly that the previous email was merely a promotion for the new game. Interest or not, more than just a few people apparently believed the email was real. This unfortunate incident is a testament to the game's immersive quality.

As many adventure gamers know, acting can absolutely make or break a game. In most adventure games, voice acting is the only component, but in Missing acting is especially critical, because you both see and hear the abducted couple. I suppose I have played enough games where even the voice acting was virtually intolerable; consequently, I imagine I have low expectations. But I am suitably impressed with the acting in Missing, whereas many reviewers have remarked that the acting is mostly just adequate if at moments hokey. What few reviewers have failed to mention is the back story of Jack and Karen's evolving love affair. What may appear hokey is in fact an attempt to develop the emotionality of this storyline. I for one liked it, and I did not feel that it was overdone. And the actors do a fine job of playing to the camera. After all, at any given time, the camera is looking at the person for whom the camera operator is growing to care. This camera work, with one notable exception (Karen and Jack appear together in one scene, so who is shooting the film?), is expertly conceived and directed. Actress Caroline Charléty establishes her relationship to the camera (which is in effect Jack's eye, always looking at her) very well. Actor Olivier Chenevat is a serious, focused Jack Lorski, and while he smiles only once through the whole game, I found his Jack to be remarkably sympathetic. When Karen (the camera) looks at him, he is quietly self-conscious. I enjoyed the romantic development; it gave depth to the embedded terror inherent in the killer's presentation of the video and consequently raised the tension a notch. If you like complicated stories in your games, Missing will work for you.

However, if you like consistently meaningful and well conceived puzzles, you may be a little disappointed. Other reviewers have rightly and adequately pointed to the problems with the puzzles in this game. The game pays homage to Pac Man and Space Invaders, and while I was alive and old enough to play both those games to death when they first came out, I didn't think much of their presentation here. The Space Invaders game is so annoying and meaninglessly difficult that I had a notion to send somebody an ugly email at The Adventure Company. The idea, it seems, with these puzzles is that they are generated by the mind of a psychotic, sinister, sadistic killer, and so the more tedious and meaningless they can at times be the better. This device just doesn't work. If you're a purist-you don't do walkthroughs-you will, even if you are an adroit puzzle solver, pixel hunter, and mouse maneuverer, be incredibly aggravated. I for one am not too proud to seek answers in such a cowardly way, and consequently I saved myself an enormous amount of frustration.

I just finished the game a short while ago, and as I write I am still receiving emails about the story development. No doubt, Missing invites a sequel, and I am fine with that. In spite of the astonishingly annoying puzzles and the admittedly anemic ending, I am completely occupied with the multiple storylines in this game. Very little narrative tension is resolved here, but that in itself is interesting and engaging. What works so amazingly well are the lessons learned from the reality and documentary genres. If the interactive element at times fails, and it does, the story nonetheless retains its integrity. I give Missing 4 stars for its creative concept, film/video production values, and its remarkable narrative. I can give it no more than 4 stars for its at times silly puzzles and unnecessary and ill-placed frustrations.

Great Concept - Decent Execution - Lousy ending

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 13 / 13
Date: September 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Other reviewers have described the premise, so I won't repeat it. The game is a multi-stage puzzle - a series of little shockwave games - some verbal, some visual, some involving a certain amount of dexterity (not a lot, fortunately). The games are infuriating at times, but given that their author is supposed to be a serial killer, one must make allowances.
The idea of searching the web for clues, and receiving emails from other 'participants' is quite innovative, and adds to the immersion. Since the game has been published in Europe for some time, though, the searches also uncover walkthroughs. Bit of a temptation, that.
The production values are excellent - the video sections are slick, with lots of very photogenic European locations, the acting is good, and the overall design is spot on. the story is compelling and the characters are sympathetic.
For the most part, I enjoyed this game.
So why the 2-star rating? Some annoying technical issues and a lousy ending.
First, the technical issues:
- When you first play the game, you have to log on, using a user name you created yourself plus a password assigned by the game. Better write this on a piece of paper because you'll need it every time you play. Don't these people know about cookies?
- You can't save the game - it decides on the restart point. It isn't always where you would like to restart.
- The game is supposed to integrate with your email client. Mine didn't - I use Eudora, and it fixated on Outlook Express(which then tried to take over, the way it does). I had to work around this by loading my email client before running the game. This is important because emails often contain clues.
- The game was a CPU hog. When it was running, other applications didn't get a look in. Since the whole point of the game is that it coexists with a web browser and email client, this isn't good. A workaround is to use the XP task manager to drop the priority of the task 'missing.exe'. Maybe it's part of the game:).

And as for the ending......(No spoilers, don't worry). Imagine that you've spent several hours working towards the denouement. At the very last minute, the screen goes blank and your only way of finding out what is going on is to wait for emails from the eye witnesses. These come in over a period of time. It's either designed to heighten suspense or the developers ran out of money.
It's a shame how this game turned out: at the beginning, I really liked it.
Oh well.
Next!

I'll say it again: Good concept, terrible game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: February 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this just from reading the description and thinking it would be innovative and engaging. I was very much dissapointed.

The puzzles jump from offendingly simple to impossibly difficult to just plain innane.

The reliance on the internet is an interesting concept if there were some way for them to make it work consistenly. Many times I became stuck because the clue I needed was only a specific webpage, presumably made by the designers, that just did not show up in my searches. Even after talking to others or looking at walkthroughs of what people specifically searched for the pages would not turn up. With no help at all I could only imagine the hours people wasted on things like this. They needed to either ensure that the needed result would be found easily through a search OR make the clues that you need to find something that you could find on sites besides just their own.

Some of the puzzles had nothing to do with thought, cunning or "solving" anything, but were just annoyingly difficult shockwave arcade-ish games or even on one particularly infuriating occasion a pixel-hunt. To have to waste so much time on something so innane to proceed is extremely frustrating.

I had a lot of trouble with getting the emails. In fact I got quite a small fraction and most of them late. A lot of them are just story and aren't necessary, but some of them have hints or applications that make it difficult to do without, occasionally impossible. I particularly enjoyed receiving in my mail hints on how to do a puzzle five minutes after I had already finished.

So imagine going through all these frustrations, and then coming to an extremely anti-climatic ending where you basically do nothing to bring it to that point. It makes it feel as though your efforts were futile. And in conjuction with my last paragraph I have not received any emails on news of how it ended. For all I know Jack and Karen were found dead and the phoenix killed my "team members" who went to find them. It's been a half an hour.

I'm not expecting anything.

I will say that the videos and storyline were interesting, as was the information given about alchemy, astronomy, renessaince etc. That alone wasn't worth it for me though. It seems like all the energy was put into those and the gameplay was coincedental.

Awful, horrible, 1 of the worst games I ever wanted to play.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: January 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I was in this game. When I first heard of it I thought this was going to be an amazing game; The idea is that you hold in your hand the cd that a serial killer turned kidnapper sent to the police. The cd is full of clues and its up to you to solve the case and bring the victims home. I expected something like the CSI game, but with a twist because in missing you have to go online to various websites to help you along in the game. It was nothing like CSI, it was nothing like any crime game, in fact I almost forgot that the game was supposed to be about catching the bad guy.

The game is just a series of mini games and all the mini games are annoying. Each game comes in a couple parts; part one is to do something that makes you roll your eyes because its either too simple or just dumb, once you do the eye rolling part you are given a clue that you need to take online and search for whatever it is that the game wants this time (part 2). Usually at this point you will find a website set up by the game that may or may not be in english, many times I skipped the correct site because silly me I expected the clues to be in the language the game is in. Most of the sites you can change into english by clicking the right flag, but a couple of them I couldn't find flags to translate for me. Part 3: start checking your email because the game sends you dozens of boring pointless emails along with 3 or 4 emails that you must have to continue with the game. Part 4: if by some stroke of luck you managed to find the information needed go back into the game and type it in to move on to the next annoying game, otherwise there is a good chance you need to turn the game off and wait a day or so until the game decides to email to you the thing that you need to solve the minigame that your in. You see there are a couple minigames that require you to download a program that will be emailed to you, but for some reason even if you have beaten every other minigame available to you and you can't move on until you get the email, you shouldn't expect to get it for a while. In fact there were a few different points in the game where I had to completely stop playing for a couple days because the game would not send me the program I needed.

This game was awful and it should have been great. Don't waste your money and your time, you really will regret it.

New and Exciting

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: July 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

After reading a description of this game I decided I had to try it, and I must say it's a very intersting approach to a mystery game. It can be an immersive experience if you play it in a dark room with a good set of headphones or with good speakers. You will need an internet connection, preferably high speed, and be able to run flash and shockwave. The puzzles are challenging, but not impossible. I'm just at the beginning of the game, so I don't know how hard they get. If you enjoy adventure games, and you're looking for something different, this is worth trying.

Interactive, realistic and fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: September 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game was different than any other game I've played before and I loved it. You kind of have to buy into the idea that you are looking at a disk that this serial killer (the Phoenix) left behind to toy with you and to give you clues as to where two kidnapped people may be. The things that rocked included: 1. How you use the internet to research clues, using places and events that actually happened in the 1300 - 1500's 2. The game is "realistic" in that you receive emails to your actual email account with clues and such about the whereabouts of the kidnapped people. 3. You learn a lot about alchemy and medieval philosophers--very interesting. 4. Creepy graphics and challenging puzzles. In fact, lots and lots of puzzles that were mostly great. What I didn't like: 1. The ending really was bad, but the play was so much fun that it's forgivable. 2. Some of the games were not thought-provoking games, just annoying games of mouse-clicking skill.

Don't Miss "Missing"--A Different And Innovative Breed Of Adventure Gaming

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I don't typically review video games, but the other overall reviewer scores did not do justice to this innovative game. I do love adventure gaming--particularly if it's a dark and disturbing journey. The more wicked, the more macabre--the better. I have enjoyed the traditional point-and-click type of game ("The Beast Within" was my first foray into computer games and will always hold a special place in my heart as one of the absolute best!) They can be a bit corny, they can be a bit repetitive and most of them follow the same formula--but I lean toward this convention because they are the most "movie-like" of games. "Missing" uses some of the same storytelling devices, but provides a new twist (which is rare in this day).

This unique game sets you up as an investigator looking into the disappearance of two reporters and tracking a serial killer. Unlike a point-and-click adventure, however, you are not navigating a character through the action. You and your computer are the action. You receive messages, clues, and puzzles that you must decipher to get the story to unfold and follow the murderer's trail. The video segments used are jaggedly cut and reminiscent of the film "Seven" in motif. You actually communicate with the killer, he taunts you. You receive email from him and other interested parties--it is a fully immersive environment. But it is a smart game, too. You use the Internet to research clues, you need to be logical, you need to think--"Missing" is not a kid's game (rated 17+).

The game also challenges your manual dexterity. Some of the puzzles require you to play rather arbitrary games--some of which are very difficult. While not my favorite part of the game, I always got a huge sense of accomplishment when I finished a particularly nasty challenge. Every time you solve something (physically or mentally), you are treated to more video images. These are exceedingly well done, well acted, and increasingly scary.

This game won many awards for good cause. It's innovative, different and without question one of the most intriguing games in recent years. Challenge you intellect, for once, and stop a madman in the process. KGHarris, 12/06.

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