Lighthouse

Being with the Dark Being

A Review of Lighthouse

by Edmond Meinfelder

src=/wv/gamezone/images/screens/s-lhse05.jpg>Myst. The mere mention of the name brings instant recognition. As this

is a game review of Sierra’s latest adventure, Lighthouse, you

might think you know where we are headed. However, rather than walk

through the tired hall of also-rans, Sierra manages to create an evocative

world holding an interesting adventure within.

It is curious. Lighthouse has the same quality of art as Myst. In fact,

Lighthouse goes one step farther with animations on many screens, but I

never felt I was anywhere but behind my keyboard. I blame the interface

for dragging me down to a tedious reality. Perhaps I am old and set in

my small ways, but I firmly believe none of the puzzles in an adventure

should exist with in the adventure game interface. Sadly, Lighthouse

tritely attempts to hide puzzles behind the games interface.

src=/wv/gamezone/images/screens/s-lhse01.jpg>Stretch your wrists and clean your mouse, we are in for a pixel hunt.

How does one locate all the interactive objects in Lighthouse? Why, by

moving and clicking the mouse over the entire screen. You see, by

having contextual hotspots lighting up as done in Legends Mission

Critical or Lucas Arts Day of the tentacle, players can not experience

the true challenge (tedium, really) of an exhaustive pixel hunt. By

having the items not explicitly denoted by the game, players get to solve

the “find the interactive item” puzzle repeatedly. This is what I mean by

having the puzzle in the game interface. User interfaces should never be

puzzles. Game designers resorting to interface puzzles are either lazy,

uninspired or sadistic. I suspect all three.

Adventure games, dating back to the 1977 original eponymously titled

“Advent” (the DEC PDP-10 had 6-letter filenames), have a sense of

location. Because of the impact Will Crothers Advent exerted on a

generation of gamers, for years we went north, south, east, west and

sometimes up and down (often referred to as NEWS directions). Rooms

were easily mappable and simply arranged and navigated. Usually,

though, some credit was due to the reduced memory limitations of the

day. Years ago, games could not afford to have empty rooms hogging

precious memory space.

src=/wv/gamezone/images/screens/s-lhse02.jpg>As adventure games became more graphic, this simple NEWS system

often conflicted with the graphic effects game designers wished to

include in their games. In what direction does the player travel if he/she

crawls in a hole sloping down and to the right and does it matter? With

all the visual cues, many gamers decided exact directions did not matter.

What did matter, however, was easy navigation. Sadly, Lighthouse lacks

an easy navigation interface.

In the small picture, Lighthouse is easily navigable. Again, you slide the

cursor about invisible regions of the screen and the cursor changes into a

directional cursor, indication a possible direction for the player to travel.

This system fails in the grand scheme of things. Some directions players

travel are irregular and unintuitive. For example, in Dr. Kricks

Lighthouse, players can walk out of the study and to the left or out of the

study and to the right, never just out of the study.

src=/wv/gamezone/images/screens/s-lhse03.jpg>Skipping empty areas where no gameplay exists makes sense, but this

is not what Lighthouse does. In several parts of the game, players make

tedious step-like movements through empty areas. Combine the high

number of empty areas with irregular connections and you have an

annoying navigation interface. This is, I admit, a minor nit to pick. An

almost unworthy nit, but I found getting about Lighthouse tedious.

When I play adventure games, I wish to take part in story, doing

impressive acts requiring great leaps of intuition. Sadly, these days,

solving adventure games become more a crawling into the mind of the

game designer rather than taking part in the story. Lighthouse is an

exception. Many puzzles make sense: use keys on the car to travel to the

Lighthouse, search about the doorstep for a key to the locked house.

Unfortunately, when I saw the Chinese sliding puzzle in the puzzle box,

I took ill.

src=/wv/gamezone/images/screens/s-lhse04.jpg>Sliding puzzles and mazes stink of filler. I do not wish to solve Chinese

puzzles, mazes, or the classic N-queens problem. I do not want to solve

any of the long list of tired old mental teasers. I can solve them whenever

I wish. I do not want to pay $50 simply to solve canned puzzles on my

computer. However, if you can manage the trying 4×5 Chinese sliding

puzzle in Lighthouse, the worst is past.

Lighthouse uses quality digital music and 3d-rendered art to set the

mood. Sadly, the mood is shallow and hardly immersive. Myst often had

a single looping sound, like crashing waves or wind. This simple use of

sound in Myst heightened the experience, creating a sense of isolation

supported by the games plot.

src=/wv/gamezone/images/screens/s-lhse06.jpg>Technically, Lighthouse’s effort is better, but artistically the entire

package lacks the creative presentation found in Myst. Why? Myst was

seamless. The story starts with a found book. You, the player, stumble

across the book and find yourself in a world of adventure. Myst’s

interface was utterly transparent. The world of Myst is lonely yet

strangely beautiful in an alien but familiar sense. Lighthouse tries to

recapture Mysts’ different but similar look with its exotic technology in

the parallel world. While the art is often thrills in many areas, it bores.

The empty areas with beach or Dr. Crick’s house can be only so

stunning; this is say, not very exciting at all.

Lighthouse, with one awful exception, possesses good puzzles, but its

presentation of the story and use of music and sound pale when

compared to the game Lighthouse aspires to be. Ironically, I felt Myst

had consistently tedious puzzles. If you can get by the tedium of the

Lighthouse’s Chinese puzzle, you will find Lighthouse a grand

adventure, despite a complete lack of innovation. True, Lighthouse fails

to exceed Myst’s multimedia highwater mark in telling a story with

mood, but as adventure games go, this effort is good, but hardly epic.

486 DX2-66, Windows 3.1 or ’95,
8 megabytes of memory, 2x CD ROM,
soundcard