Where do I start? The way they butchered the ”Lost” story and characters or the stupid tendency of these series-licensed games not to let you play as one of the characters from the series?!
First of all.. I said it myself. This is a game based on a great TV series, but even so, it still falls under the ”series/movie licensed crap” category.
GAMEPLAY:
The game features a third person perspective, and you get to control your character via the basic controls for such a game. The only downside here is that you can't jump, which is stupid. In a third person adventure game, jumping is a must-have. (OK, you can jump, but only in two chase sequences and only to avoid obstacles. Plus, you jump by pressing ENTER! What kind of a brainless monkey thought that was a good ideea?!). You play as some guy called Elliott, whose past you need to uncover during the game, as he has an amnesia after surviving the crash of Oceanic 815. As an adventure game, it doesn't bring anything new or spectacular. All you have to do is move around the island, talk to the characters (I'll come back to this later) and, at some point, hide in some trees to avoid the Black Smoke (Lost fans know what that's all about). There are two short sequnces like this and they're boring as shit. You can run as fast as you want, but once you get near the next trees you can hide into, you'd better not go any further because you'll hear different music and the Smoke will show up. If you don't hide as fast as you can, you're dead.Gameplay... well, the gameplay is not this game's forte, that's for sure. I liked the idea of taking pictures in order to remember stuff, but otherwise.. nothing new, nothing interesting.
One more thing. The game is divided in episodes. Every time an episode ends, you have to see a "previously" cutscene, like you didn't play the fucking game before and you don't know what happened. These cutscenes are annoying mostly because you can't skip them. Every game which doesn't have the option to skip cutscenes has a huge minus and the guys who came up with this are a bunch of assholes. Plus, sometimes, the cutscene comes right before a chase scene. If you fail the chase scene, you have to watch the cutscene again too! This is bullshit! I'm ready to beat the chase scene and then I see the cutscene and I get angry and lose my concentration!
STORY:
Well, I can't really criticise this game story or mark this game based on the story, as it's based on Lost and it combines the story from "Lost" with Elliott's story. The only big plus this game gets from me is the ending. It was one of those "wtf" moments. Seriously, I was expecting a lame ending, like either he lives or he gets killed or something. But no! This game left me staring in my monitor like an idiot with my mouth wide open, shocked. I won't get into detail, because this is the only thing about this game that shouldn't be spoiled. And spoiling the ending will ruin any gameplay experience for anyone.
To sum the story up, the game follows the first and second seasons of Lost. You get to meet both the survivors and the Others and witness the course of events while doing your own work in order to remember who you are and to escape the island.
CHARACTERS:
As you could probably notice from what I said until now, Elliott is not a memorable character. He is just a journalist who lost his memory. Also, in the end, I ended up hating the guy because of a memory you'll see in the final chapter. The other characters are not developed at all. For someone who hasn't seen the show, it will be quite difficult to understand everything. A major complaint I have here is the dialogue. Apart from the cutscenes, where people actually talk, there is actually no dialogue. You choose to talk to the characters. You say a line, they say a line back, and that's all. I guess the voice actors gave them a discount if they didn't have too much to say. Plus, the voice acting sucks. It's like a fucking joke. They try too hard to imitate them and that's why they end up giving laughable performances.
REPLAY VALUE:
For me, the replay value is zero. Under no circumstances am I going to play this game again. Not since it managed to bore me to death (except for the final two levels - I guess those chase scenes were there to remind you that you're playing a game) and it didn't bring anything new or special.
SOUNDTRACK:
The soundtrack reminds me of the show's soundtrack, which is good. I don't like the fact that they're not using the original song for the beginning of the episodes (God damn it, if you wanted to split the story in episodes, you should have done it properly!). But the song from the main menu is awesome.
OVERALL:
-Gameplay: 5/10 (the chases and the camera parts save it from a lower score)
-Story: 8/10 (original "Lost" story + Elliott is OK, the ending is fucking A, but not being able to play as one of the characters from the series is a huge minus)
-Characters: 3/10 (not because I don't like the "Lost" characters, but because they're so poorly portrayed here)
-Replay value: 0/10 (nope, won't play again)
-Soundtrack: 8/10 (ok soundtrack, except for the things I mentioned above).
FINAL SCORE: 4.8/10
