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What makes this second FMV adventure from the Russian developer after Metron stand out from a number of other Korenivsky “thrillers”, is the presence of a perfectly sane and coherent plot, without special references and explanations borrowed from A. Kudryashov’s short fantastic story “The Tale of Temptation”. Six teenagers - the nameless protagonist, three more boys and two girls - find themselves on a small, wooded and deserted island, and no one remembers how he ended up there. On the very first day, sitting by the fire, the guys notice the crumpled note coming from where with one phrase (quote): "Kill three and you will be saved." As you might guess, from now on friendship and simply mutually beneficial cooperation in an attempt to survive in the wild is sharply replaced by general mistrust and painful suspiciousness, and even a series of mysterious deaths and murders - if not intentional,“The Dig” , but which allows, in principle, to deploy a good psychological drama on this material. Of course, for the full implementation of such a plan, the abilities of amateur teenagers are by no means enough. Let the unprofessionalism of young actors here is less noticeable than in the deliberately grotesque "Metron", - there are few close-ups now, just like the actors, and the performers of their roles are rather underestimating than replaying, although it is still difficult for them to resist inappropriate smiles, - the overall picture still does not seem very convincing. And technically, the appearance of the DVD adventure has somewhat worsened: instead of the full-screen mode, the video is now displayed in a window with dimensions of approximately 550 × 335 - the solution is very strange (which can only be explained by difficulties with coding the material). The rest of the screen is styled as a frame and given an interface: the name of the game is displayed on the left (probably so as not to be forgotten), and at the top there is a counter of days (there will be three in total here, and time moves strictly as the player performs the necessary actions) and percentage progress in passing (not always reliable, because the vast majority of "passing" videos are duplicated - in such cases, the exact number is replaced by an approximate one, with a "more" sign). The lower edge is reserved for a similar inventory: alas, a separate screen for displaying the contents of our bag is no longer provided, but the simple belongings of the protagonist - four items maximum - do not require more. This hero, whom we will constantly see on our screen, is an unremarkable boy. Management is traditionally carried out by selecting one of the direction icons by alternately reviewing all the possibilities in terms of further moving or even using objects - using the arrow keys on the keyboard or on the remote control, followed by pressing “Enter” / “OK”. After that, a video that is not available for skipping is shown to us - and the hero arrives in a new location (or, in much more rare cases, performs some action or briefly talks with a fellow accident). Unfortunately, there are very few locations here - the island is tiny, you can’t walk around very much - and they don’t differ in variety: a clearing with a bonfire, a forest, another clearing, still a forest, again a forest, again a forest and a river bank, where you can at least catch fish. In general, Ostrov, released on two DVDs , is two times shorter than the three-disc Metron: stay in the game for more than an hour is unlikely to succeed. Not only are there special difficulties in passing, but there are practically no plot dead ends here, as well as “alternative” endings with cases of the death of the protagonist not planned by the plot. Saves are not provided: after the second day is over, the game will simply offer to insert a second disc, which has no way to check whether you have completed the first one. There are no seas of ketchup here - but there is no humor either: for some time the authors managed to create on the screen at least some semblance of despair and hopelessness. |
