Lost: Via Domus – PC Review

Being a huge fan of the Lost TV Series, I welcomed Ubisoft’s decision to create the game that was going to finally allow me to live the experience Jack & Co. is living. Or, in other words, I was extremely happy to find out that one of my biggest dreams was going to become reality, without any completely unwanted plane crashes and strange, spooky islands. And there was just one more thing for Ubisoft to do: building a good game and not a failure as most of the “based on the movie” video games. Let’s find out what the company did with ABC’s franchise!

Lost’s story unfolds as you play it, bringing in a mixed experience resulted from the combination of the first two television series. Basically, everything in the game follows the timeline of events as seen on TV, but adds a completely new character to the story: you. You are Elliot, a photographer who lost his memory when the plane crashed and your main quest is getting it back. However, it appears that you had something really important with you since there was another passenger following you and not as a fan. But I won’t spoil the fun, especially because you’ll have to enjoy it at the maximum as long as it lasts – and just like all the good things in life, it doesn’t last for too long…

However, there is one thing that lasts way too long – something that, unfortunately, shouldn’t. I’m talking about the loading screens which will bore you to death from the second you start playing, since they tend to get back every five-ten minutes of gameplay or so. Very disturbing!

Unfortunately, the loading screens won’t be your only problems: cutscenes will sometimes drive you crazy, since you can’t skip them. And the problem doesn’t come from the fact that they’re poorly done (on the contrary, these are some great pieces of work!) but because you have to see them over and over again if your character, Elliot, dies or you just want to start over. Probably this is one of the tricks used by other games, not only Ubisoft and Lost: Via Domus, to create an overall impression of a longer playing time. But it is boring and unethical.

However, Lost is not only about things done bad, it has quite a few really neat features. For example, the storytelling is awesome. Just like in the series, there are two pieces in which the story is told: Elliot’s life on the island and what happened before the crash. This latter part takes care of all the regaining memory and it is swiftly done via really nicely presented flashbacks in which you have to take an exact same photo in order to remember. However, you will surely have to take the shot at least 5 times in each flashback (just because you won’t figure it out from start) and just combine that piece of info with the unskippable cutscenes to get a brand new definition for “frustration”.

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