A Cheapskate Game Review
NiBiRu: Age of Secrets ($10) is a nice looking game. I’ll give it that. However, ‘nice looking’ is about all it has going for it. Looking at the box, and reading the description of the game, I imagined a Myst-esque game; a variety of interesting or strange button-based puzzles set like gemstones into a weak plot and sequence of pretty graphics. What I got was a ‘pick-up and use the right item’ puzzle game á la Gabriel Knight.
If you don’t recall Gabriel Knight, it was a franchise of ‘Adventure’ games in which the primary mode of advancing the story line was making sure that you picked up every item on every screen, and trying them in different combinations on different other items until they finally did something (sometimes non sequitur) that would move you on to the next step. Like a Creole Space Quest, except not funny.
NiBiRu is like that, but really bad (I actually enjoyed Gabriel Knight until I, inevitably, got stuck). First, the ‘plot’ is very obtuse, and is under-explained to the player; artistically mysterious in a Roger Zelazny novel, but annoying in a story driven video game. Not only does the player get a feeling of not knowing where to go, it is combined with the feeling that there is only one way to go. You can’t create this kind of experience on purpose.
The worst part about the path of the game is that it tries to make you think that you do have options. Here’s an example: In the first building the character visits, his internal narration let me know that I needed to get to the fifth floor. Okay, I can handle that. I notice that both the stairs and the elevator were clickable, so I stop to think: This might be a dangerous situation. If it is, I’d rather be on the stairs.
So, I clicked on the stairs. “The elevator would be faster,” says the voice of the character. He does not move toward the stairs. I try to click on the stairs again, but it is no longer a clickable item. The only option was now the elevator. It made me wonder why I was offered the choice in the first place, unless it was there only to trick me into thinking that I had more options than I really did. When I got into the elevator, it only went to the fifth floor and then back to the lobby. It made me feel sorry for the people who lived on the other floors.
False options like the stairs were a continuing theme in the game. It became a sort-of side game for me to try to catch all of the ‘painted-on stairwells’, as I started referring to such false options internally.
The ‘puzzles’ are no better. The plot turns into an ongoing sequence of things that no real or sane person (not even a person in a movie) would ever do. The game expects the player to think of things like pouring boxed wine into an empty bottle you find on the street, in order to give a bottle of wine to a person who wants to help you. It also expects you to return to the same locations and items over and over again, since you cannot do or pick up anything until after you need it (very frustrating at first, but becomes merely very annoying after you get used to it). That’s not the worst, however. The puzzle of the secret door is a good example of the insane things this game expects you to do:
The character is in an underground abandoned Nazi base looking for a secret door. It looked to me like it was probably behind this cabinet that I found in one of the storerooms, but the character refuses to try to move the cabinet. Finally, after replacing a light bulb in a nearby lamp, so that the character can see the scuff-marks on the floor (of course!) he is willing to move the cabinet, revealing an outlined section of concrete wall. There was a small crack in the wall, so I looked through my inventory to find the stick of dynamite. Now, a real historian (which is what the character is supposed to be) would never use dynamite to open a door, but I was starting to get used to doing stupid things to advance the plot, by now.
I put in the dynamite, and tried to light it. “The fuse is too short,” the character told me. Okay. I tried to use my string. No go. I left to look for more fuse, thinking it might be back where I found the dynamite. When I clicked on the dynamite, the character took another stick (even though when I tried to take a second stick earlier, the character said, “I would never need more than one stick of dynamite,” or something like that). I was able to take the fuse out, and tie it to the fuse sticking out of the wall. I lit the fuse, and the character casually walked from the room (no wonder the wick was too short, the guy has only one speed: slow meander).
When I returned, the hole was bigger, but not big enough. It wouldn’t let me use more dynamite, and after an hour or so of looking around for a solution, I gave in and consulted the walkthrough I found online. The solution was to use a box, ruler, and can of beans to trap a rat out in the hallway (how you are supposed to know the rat is there is beyond me), then take the rat out of the box. Use the string to tie the dynamite to the rat, and then light the fuse, and put the rat through the hole in the wall.
Let me repeat that incase you think you misread that last line:
Use the string to tie the dynamite to the rat, and then light the fuse, and put the rat through the hole in the wall.
In case you’re keeping score, that’s Visitors: 1, Peaceful Underground Nazi Rats: 0
What kind of person would do such a thing?! Not only is it unnecessarily cruel to the rat, but it’s potentially very damaging to one’s self, and to all of the historically important artifacts in the room. After that puzzle, I could barely bring myself to continue playing the game for even just another few minutes.
Rundown
Pursuit
Linear game with annoying ‘painted-on stairwells’. Puzzles are at best obtuse, and at worst cruel and unusual.
Visuals
The visuals are the best part of the game. The scenes are well designed and beautifully rendered. I can’t say the same for the people in the scenes, who were wooden and badly animated.
Sound
The voice-acting is not bad, but not good either. The main character’s lines are all read with almost no inflection at all. The sound effects are all appropriate, and the music is subtle enough.
Controls
The mouse-based adventuring is a bit counter-intuitive. Sometimes just left-clicking an item or person is enough, but sometimes you have to use a right-click to activate things. This is not used consistently throughout the adventure, so leads to some confusion.
Swag
About par for this price range; the box comes only with two disks in paper sleeves, and a sparse manual containing installation instructions, registration info, and a walkthrough of the first five minutes of the game.
Encoding
I was pleased to find that I didn’t need the disk in the drive to run the game. I was disappointed to find that I could not task-switch away from the program.
Marks
NiBiRu gets 1½ out of 5 Spudz
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