In Memoriam

Join Richard in mourning this poor, misguided, title.

I can just imagine how this game was originally pitched. They'd seen the Blair Witch Project become a massive success thanks to the clever use of the internet (and one uber geek Harry Knowles). With In Memoriam they were going to take it to the next level. The player/audience would receive the CD-Rom and then witness a short film of a damsel in distress. From that moment on they would be fully involved in helping to track down and rescue the two unfortunate protagonists, Jack and Karen. The player would have to use the internet to search for clues, and there would be emails so that it might almost seem real. And it would be astounding. And it would be ground breaking. And video games would never be the same again. Invariably though it rarely turns out that way and for whatever its ambitions, In Memoriam is an experiment gone badly awry.

Taken to its barest elements In Memoriam consists of a bunch of film clips with some shockwave flash games in between. The big problem then being that neither of these elements is particularly captivating. Taking the first part of this equation, namely the films, what should be the driving force of the piece is a painfully pedestrian set of travel logs. Most of the story is told via a voiceover recorded by Jack and the lack of any real character interaction means that you don't really get to know the characters or empathise with their plight. The filming itself is made to look deliberately amateurish, as a travel log might, and the style is appropriate. After the genuinely intriguing premise though the narrative soon grinds to a halt and stays pretty much stationary right on through to the end. The myriad of historical details and ancient mumbo jumbo that evidently they must have felt was important is in no way compelling. Add to that all the little puzzles that must be completed between these video segments and any sense of pacing, drama, and tension are destroyed.

Not that there is much tension, heck a game of Tetris is more tense than this. Here is a quick lesson in filmmaking. A simple rule to help create a good horror or thriller is (answers on the back of a postcard to...), isolation. Alien, Jaws and Psycho are good examples in films. The same rule can be also be applied to games, for example the mansion in Resident Evil and the Von Braun space ship in System Shock 2. Not so with In Memoriam. You watch as Jack and Karen go globetrotting to Greece, Rome, Istanbul, London, Paris and Venice. Only the opening movie makes much of an impression featuring as it does a creepy night vision shot of Karen trapped in some dark dank space. After that the rest seem more appropriate to 'wish you were here'.

This then leaves the interactive portion of the game to hold your interest. It consists of searching on the internet for clues, reading random emails and playing the odd flash game. What happens is that you click on these little circles that fly around the screen, that after a little preamble from the Phoenix you are introduced into a puzzle. For some of these puzzles you'll have to search for a keyword on the internet, this in turn will lead you to a website that holds the answer. The websites are easy enough to find with Google though they do specify that they partnered with Freeserve.co.uk. The websites have appropriate styles to their content. You have a mix of slick corporate web pages to more rudimentary amateur sites. This kind of pseudo detective work is the better aspect of the game but unfortunately it is linked to a bizarre set of flash games. Some of the flash games do at least have the courtesy of being quick. Others however are frankly tedious in the extreme. In some of the games you have to analyse photos and video to look for clues. These types of games as you can imagine are quite appropriate and they are slickly produced as is the staccato imagery that intersperses them. What doesn't seem appropriate though is when you have to play a version of breakout, space invaders or pac-man to open up the next part of the game. Its not even a good version of space invaders. And there is a pile of these stupid things to get through. The temerity of including these types of games in what is meant to be some elaborate tangled web stretches credibility far beyond breaking point. And as for the emails, all I'll say is that in the era of spam, less would have most certainly been more.

The ending of the game, which might have redeemed it slightly in my eyes, turns out to be its greatest insult. I'd like to assure you that I'm not going to spoil it but in truth there is nothing really to spoil. Despite all the videos you watch in playing through the game they saw fit not to include a final show reel. There is no proper show down with the villain. There is no real closure to the events. There is no celebration to your success. All you get is a few paltry emails. Cheating the audience in this way is unforgivable. It's like the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail but without any of the preceding entertainment. For those of you who are perhaps thinking of following the journey of Jack and Karen trust me when I say it is a journey not worth taking.

It is commendable that Ubisoft decided to publish a title that is at least attempting to be original with its use of technological mediums like the internet. Unfortunately though all the different facets of the game in no way compliment each other and furthermore they lack sufficient quality to stand on their own. The tagline for In Memoriam is 'will you enter his game?' Sadly the answer from most gamers should be no, but thank you.

"One of the gambles with In Memoriam was to make the player feel he's involved in a movie." - Eric Viennot (author/director)

"The house always wins Eric. The house always wins." - Richard Clifford

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By Richard Clifford