Me vs. Lost: Via Domus (Part 2)

If readers of Part 1 recall, my experience with the Lost video game, Via Domus, ended rather abruptly when the game kept crashing after the introductory cut scene. There were some doubts about whether I'd be back for Part 2, but here I am, baby!

My workaround from the crashing glitch: crank everything down to the lowest technical levels possible. Lowest resolution? Check. No texture detail? Check. Lo and behold, it worked! I finally got to actually play the game! So how did it go?

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

Really badly.

I will say that the fault is not necessarily the game design but my computer - it's a dual-core with 2GBs of RAM, which isn't bad, but I don't actually have a legitimate video card. So everything was often horrendously slow, with the audio occasionally going too fast for the video - you'd hear a character say something and then watch them for an extra five seconds as their lips moved noiselessly. Oh, plus, characters randomly turned bright red, yellow, or green:

Still, even without the tech difficulties, the controls are way too clunky. Set mouse sensitivity too high, and it's impossible to turn your character around fast enough. Set it too low, and it's impossible to center it on something to take a snapshot (using a camera is a frequent mechanic of the game).

The game begins with your character, Elliott, waking up in the jungle, and in terms of actual game play, the most exciting thing you get to do in the first five minutes is follow Vincent to the plane crash site. Exhilarating. Too bad the camera moves independently of your character, so you're constantly trying to sync both of them up so you can see what's in front of you.

Once you get to the crash site, you see Locke, but don't talk to him or else you'll hear the atrocious voice acting of whatever poor soul got a job trying to imitate Terry O'Quinn. (To be fair, the voices for Hurley and Claire sound better, and according to IMDb, Desmond, Mikael, and Sun actually have their real actors' voice.)

Some garden-variety options seem to have been left out; for example, in a menu, you can use your mouse to choose an option, but there's no "exit" button - you have to press either backspace or escape, depending on what type of menu it is. Worst of all, there's no save option - the game saves on its own at certain unidentified checkpoints.

I couldn't tell if my game was ever saved before I stopped playing, but that doesn't matter because I doubt I'll ever be playing it again. I might've been able to look past the flaws, but as slow as it runs on my system, I just can't take it. I had heard the ending of the game is actually a real shocker, plot-wise, and I had wanted to actually play the game instead of finding out the plot online. But screw that. Hear I come, Lostpedia!

TAGS: Lost Via Domus
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