Review Sinking Island Developer: White Birds Productions Publisher: Encore (N. America only) Genre: Adventure Release Date: September 2008 (North America) October 2007 (Europe) Platform: Review by Al, Mike & Christine Giovetti September 29. 2008		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

As this was my first exposure to Benoît Sokal, JA Editor Randy Sluganski wrote me that, “B. Sokal is the most respected adventure game developer of this era and his Syberia series is considered by many to be among the best adventure games ever made.” Well, such high praise invited some investigation.

Benoît Sokal was born in Brussels in 1954. He, along with other contemporary Belgian comic artists, studied under Claude Renard at the Ecole Superieure des Art Saint Luc in Brussels.

In 1981, Benoît created the popular Inspector Canardo series for the comic publishing house A Suivre (English translation – To Be Continued). Canardo featured a depressed anthropomorphic duck detective who smoked, drank alcohol, and spent his time with scantily clad female seducers (sort of a French Howard the Duck?). Sokal went on to create two more popular realistic comic series for A Suivre and then in 1990, Sokol and renowned comic artist François Rivière created the popular police fiction 'Silence, on Tue!' at the publishing house Nathan.

In 1999, Benoît turned his attention to computer adventure games and released his first title Amerzone, which was partially based upon the Canardo stories, especially the fifth series. Since that time he has developed the highly regarded Syberia (2002) & Syberia II (2004), Paradise (2006), Sinking Island (2007) & Nikopol (2008). The intriguing Aquarica (both a film and video game) and the Last King of Africa (an updated Nintendo DS version of Paradise) are scheduled to be released in the upcoming months.

Sokal’s comics and games have won numerous awards and he has a slavishly devoted audience who look forward with anticipation to the release of new games and comics. In August of 2003, Benoît Sokal, Olivier Fontenay, Jean-Philippe Messian and Michel Bams – all who had previously worked together at Microïds – formed the White Birds Production company. More in-depth information can be found at the official French language site for Benoît Sokal and a biography on Lambiek Comiclopedia.

Sinking Island was originally released in France by Micro Application on October 4, 2007. Almost a year later, the game has been released in North America by Microïds and distributed by Encore Software.

The plot: billionaire Walter Jones has fallen to his death from a cliff near his art deco tower on a mysterious, storm-cursed island. Jack Norm, a police detective, is called in to investigate the mysterious death. There are ten people on the island at the time of Walter’s death any one of who could have a motive to kill him. In classic detective story fiction fashion, you play as Jack Norm who takes pictures, collects finger prints, sorts through clues and evidence and eventually finds the truth and brings the killer to justice.

The game is fashioned around the immense and beautiful hotel tower, a series of violent tropical storms which never seem to stop during the three days of the investigation into the murder, and the family life of Walter Jones and his three grandchildren. Walter has invited the grandchildren to his tower on the pretense of re-inheriting them after disinheriting them over some family intrigue.

In point of fact, the older Walter was courting a 20-year-old island girl who is now implicated in the murder. Walter possibly never intended to reinstate his grandchildren into the will. As time goes on the people on the island grow tenser as the tower itself is disintegrating due to the constant pounding from the tropical storms.

The game is built around an inventory system and a PPA (personal police assistant) found in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The PPA contains four game devices that helps Jack Norm solve the crime: a character or suspect database, clue database, a comparison device, and the progression screens. The PPA is essential to the investigation and makes it virtually impossible to find anyone else but the real killer.

The suspect database compiles information about the suspects as you find more and more about them. One of the most useful but illogical features of the suspect database is the current location of the suspect. The area of the game is very large and it takes a while to get to know the lay of the land since there is no map in the game.

The clue database is where Jack compiles physical evidence – called material clues in the game – pictures Jack takes of evidence, documents located and confiscated, and testimony from the suspects and witnesses, which the game calls declarations.

Within the clue database is an area where mandates are solved. Mandates are questions that come up during the game. Examples of the thirteen mandates in the game are “Was Walter’s death accidental?’ and “What was the cause of Walter’s death?” Mandates are selected from the jigsaw puzzle progression screen of the PPA and they then appear in the clues database to be solved with the appropriate clues.

Each jigsaw puzzle piece in the progression screen represents a different mandate to solve. Selecting the appropriate mandate puzzle piece in the progression screen causes the selected mandate to appear in the clues database mandate solution screen. It would have been easier and less confusing to allow the game players to select mandates from within the clues database.

In the lower right hand corner of the clue database there is a compare icon. Clicking on the compare icon allows Jack to compare fingerprints, footprints, and other evidence to pictures taken from suspects or evidence to determine if they are the same. For example, a fingerprint on a murder weapon might mean that the person used that weapon to kill the victim Walter Jones. A part of a piece of broken jewelry or a ripped piece of fabric can place a suspect at the location of a crime when compared to the other piece of the item found at the suspect’s office, hotel room, or home.

Using the compare feature of the clues database section of the PPA is essential to solving the crime. Once compared a separate piece of evidence showing the matched evidence (that the two pieces of evidence match) is required in the mandate solution area of the clues database. Is that confusing enough? I guess you have to play the game to get the idea.

The whole PPA experience is very satisfying and enjoyable. Getting a match with two pieces of evidence and solving mandates can be most enjoyable to someone like me who has an obsessive compulsive nature and likes to solve mysteries and organize evidence. Please watch the television series Monk for more information on this subject.

The artwork, which we can assume Benoît Sokal had a hand in, is very beautiful. It is extremely enjoyable to see all the beautiful screens that make up the game. Some adventure games are rather limited in the number of screens, but Sinking Island has a lot of area to explore in only three short days.

The game can be played in traditional adventure mode or against the clock in the ‘race against time’ mode. In the ‘race against time mode’ time passes quickly and the suspects get annoyed and tension is rising as time progresses. I was not able to see any perceptible differences between the two modes.

The plot seems open-ended but in many ways it is linear. Certain evidence can only be taken on certain days during the three day period of investigation. If you miss the evidence there is no way to solve the crime.

The discussions with suspects can go on for a very long time if you ask them all the questions that you can ask them. Questions are divided into asking the suspects to comment on a piece of evidence you have found, on a mandate that is currently being solved, or upon another suspect or the victim. Stories about the evidence and people change over time, since many of the suspects are lying or hiding something.

Like most adventure games, Jack must go everywhere, pick up everything that is not nailed down, solve a few physical puzzles, and talk to all the suspects multiple times about everything new that pops up. People are scattered all over the island at first but as the story progresses they tend to be easier to get to since access to parts of the game become more and more limited with time. Making people and items easier to get to by limiting the far ranging areas in the game is actually a good thing since it saves Jack a lot of walking.

There is no map in the game, and very little has been done to make getting around any easier. Many adventure games have a map that makes it easy to get around the game. Walking all the way across the island and up and down a 22-story tower which requires an elevator change, and later in the game requires that Jack use the stairs since an elevator goes out, becomes an annoying nuisance that could have been avoided with a map which would have allowed Jack to select a location. After walking someplace once or twice, I find walking there again unnecessary in a computer game and a map could have spared the game player the time-wasting, annoying and boring task of walking everywhere

The game is loaded with moody landscapes, beautiful and heavily detailed architecture, well-drawn and animated characters that have expressions, at least frown and smile. The game also has whistling winds, crashing lightning bolts and flashes of light, and the building creaks and seems to move under Jack’s feet. The mood of the game is set by these effects and was sufficient enough to make me feel cold and a little uneasy.

The game installed and played clean and fast on Vista without any glitches or bugs. There was no escape out of introductory animations which after you have seen them one time, can be just as annoying as walking everywhere. You can run, as in most other adventure games, and save some time by double clicking on your destination within each adventure screen.

When interrogating suspects, the suspects are rather animated with certain hand movements and expressions that can, over time, begin to be repetitious. The characters have full voice acting with optional subtitles for those who are hearing impaired or simply find it helpful to see the text as well as hear the voice actors for clarity.

The voice acting in the English localized version was superb in my view. The diction and enunciation made the actors easy to understand. The tonal quality of the voices made them pleasant to listen to which is a huge plus as most of the story is told through the comments of the ten suspects interrogated by Jack.

The voice actor who portrayed Jack and the dialog written for him gives Jack a very easygoing manner. In many mysteries and detective stories, I find the detectives annoying and overbearing, but I really liked Jack and enjoyed his even-handed search for the truth without adding too much melodrama to the investigation. I got the impression that Jack was thorough and meticulous without any hint of preconception in his investigation. The words fair and likeable come to mind when I think of Jack.

Police work can be really boring. Jack has to say the same things over and over again and in the same way to ten different people. Luckily the answers from those ten people are vastly different and entertaining.

From time-to-time in the middle of the investigation Jack becomes hungry or tired or gets a phone call from his girlfriend, and he drops everything and ends up in his room talking to his girlfriend or going to bed, or we find Jack munching on a loaf of bread in the dining room. After Jack is abducted without the consent of the game player, he must then find his way back to the suspect to continue the interrogation.

These interruptions seem to be scripted into the plot, and do not seem to serve any purpose other than to annoy the game player. Thankfully Jack is not annoyed. Why is it necessary to interject artificial reality into a game, when this reality is a distraction and an annoyance rather than furthering the plot of the game? On one level, these distractions work to increase the mounting tension as the game progresses to a conclusion.

In summary, I found Sinking Island to be excellent and enjoyed it immensely. It has a few flaws – the lack of a map or Jack wandering off to eat - but what in life does not have flaws? I look forward to playing White Bird’s next release, Nikopol, and would like to sincerely thank Benoît Sokal, for a wonderful adventure game experience. I highly recommend Sinking Island to those who enjoy adventure games.

System Requirements:

• Windows XP/Vista
• 1.5 GHz Pentium processor
• 512 MB RAM
• DirectX 9.0c compatible 64 MB video card
• 3 GB free hard disk space
• 16x DVD-ROM