Lost: The Video Game – Xbox 360 review

3 March 2008 14:52 GMT / By Chris Pickering

Even those who have refused to watch the show will know doubt be well aware of the basic setup for the ever popular Lost TV show. Its tale of survivors of a plane crash somewhere in the Pacific Ocean has proved to be astonishingly popular, despite some plot twists that have prompted some to claim that the show has already, “jumped the shark”.

A gaming realisation was always sure to land at some point. TV execs are never ones to miss a fresh chance to extrat a few more quid over a popular IP after all. The plot from the show runs along at the same time as the game, and combining that with appearances from all the major characters, and you’ve a game that fans are bound to absolutely adore.

Instead of dumping you directly in control of one of the show's major characters, you’re instead handed control of a brand new survivor. As a photojournalist suffering from amnesia, you’re forced to slowly regain your memory with the show's trademark flashbacks a key feature, with each giving clues to your identity.

Despite its looks, Lost: The Video Game isn’t your typical third-person adventure title. Tomb Raider and Uncharted this certainly isn’t. There’s no jumping between monuments, shooting tigers, or any real hardcore exploration whatsoever.

Instead it’s all about the interaction with your fellow survivors. You’ll spend a large proportion of your time simply wandering from character to character, obtaining the information that hints towards your next major task.

Puzzle-based tasks make frequent appearances, and surmount to the major game playing portion of Lost. Unlike most adventure-based gaming puzzles of yore, each and every one is entirely realistic, attempting to draw you into a world that is entirely believable and mature. There’s no rubber chickens with pulleys in the middle here.

Safe to say that Lost isn’t exactly action packed. Slow wandering, listening to speech, and simply puzzling things out in your head amounts to the entire length of the game's roughly 7 hours of gaming time. The big problem is that as this is a game geared towards fans of the TV series, things have certainly been dumbed down from traditional gaming fare.

Puzzles will leave you stumped for minutes at best, with only one tricky example from the latter section of the game proving any real difficulty of note. That’s not to say that they aren’t indeed intriguing. Just don’t go expecting your brain power to be pushed to its absolute limits.

The island is a fantastic looking place in itself, with ogling the distance via your zoom enabled camera a frequent must in order to treat the old eyes. However, sadly it seems the budget didn’t include quite enough cash to obtain the actual actors, and hence all your loved characters are voiced by other actors, a real minus point for hardcore fans of the series.

The characters themselves seem remarkably lifeless, with faces in particular refusing to be branded with any kind of emotion. Not quite what you’d expect from today’s astonishingly powerful consoles.

Verdict

Go into Lost as a simple fan of the show and you’ll no doubt obtain a weekend’s joyous gaming from Lost: The Video Game. No it might not have the right voice actors, nor any real gaming innovation to speak of, but for fans of the series, this will see you through a treat.

One the other hand, if you’ve neglected to get caught up with the hysteria surrounding the show, then you’ll tire of this linear, dull, tedious trudge long before the closing credits roll.