This exciting adventure game gets your brain working!
The game starts out with a mysterious and thrilling movie scene that sets the mood for the whole game. There are several more very nicely designed movie cut-scenes in the course of the game and I found them to be an elegant and at the same time exciting way to cut to the next scene. With them, the game feels more like an exciting movie you can interact with.
You start out as Nina, a young German woman, who was supposed to meet her father, a scientist, in his office. However, he's nowhere to be found - the mystery begins.
Nina sets out to find clues concerning her father's disappearance and soon meets Max, a scientist working at her father's office. During the game, you will have to switch between these two characters several times to solve tricky situations. If this is the case, a little icon with the character's face appears on the upper right corner.
Nina's search takes her to various places including Cuba, Ireland, and of course, Tunguska, a region of Siberia.
The background graphics are amazing - I loved the simple realistic every-day sceneries and everything was perfectly visible. The characters themselves are not as nicely done during the game, but the character art (fixed images for dialogues for example) is neat.
The background sounds always suit the scenes and are very realistic, which, combined with the realistic graphics, makes it easy to immerse yourself in the game.
The best part: In the course of the game and right from the start, you continuously have to master riddles and improvise McGiver-style with whatever junk you find at different places (combine different things with each other to create tools or gadgets, build seemingly complex but actually extremely simple mechanisms to get at stuff, use the laws of physics to solve riddles, etc.).
This really gets your brain working and is an immensely fun way to interact intelligently with the game and its items and characters.
However, the game sometimes asks too much of the player in my opinion. Sometimes the things you have to do are a bit far-fetched and I applaud anyone who got through this game without consulting a walkthrough even once, because I had to several times when I just couldn't figure out how to continue.
The items are really easy to use and combine though, and the navigation is clearly arranged, which is important in a game like this where you have to interact with items on the background screen.
I played the German version and found the text to be very upbeat, modern and entertaining, sometimes even funny. Nina is an intelligent, often sarcastic lady, and I liked her attitude. Max doesn't really seem to have a lot of personality apart from his puppy-eyed Nina-yearning softie attitude, but he's not just a pretty face either.
The other characters in the game are realistically designed and, contrary to what I read in a different review about bad voice-acting in the American version, the German voice-acting is great.
All in all, this was a great gaming experience I'd recommend to anyone who enjoys using their brain a bit of improvising in a game.