Before I get into the main event, a few interesting game-related links:
Home of the Underdogs – the best resource out there for old and obscure computer games, ranging from the late 70′s to the late 90′s. The original HOTU went down a year ago, and a bunch of restoration projects are underway. HOTUD.org is the best in my opinion because it actually has all of the downloads from the old site. HomeoftheUnderdogs.net is also worth a look because it is designed to look like the old HOTU and has all the old essays and posts, including the “Scratchware Manifesto“, a curious bit of gaming history.
The Spoony Experiment – Noah Antwiler is the only retro video game reviewer I know of who looks at PC games with any regularity and also happens to be funny. His “FMV Hell” series is a must watch.
Replacementdocs – if you’ve lost the manual to any game you own, chances are this site has it.
D-Fend Reloaded – provides a visual front-end for DOSBox, so you don’t have to use an MS-DOS prompt to play your old games. Just drag the icon into the window and double-click.
Through the Looking Glass – fan site for games by Looking Glass Studios and veterans, chiefly the Thief, System Shock, and Deus Ex series.
This week’s game is an forgotten gem from 1996, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time. The game’s claim to fame was that it features an amazingly accurate virtual recreation of the Titanic, so accurate that its graphics were apparently used in several TV documentaries. To this end, the game provides a Tour mode where you can wander around the Titanic and listen to various tour guides give you information about various aspects of the ship and its history, but there’s an actual game here and it’s not too bad.
You play as a British Secret Service agent who was sacked after blowing an important mission on the Titanic. The story begins in 1942, and you’re living in a grimy London flat, several weeks behind on your rent and your landlady screaming at 
you from the hallway. Suddenly (i.e. after you’ve looked at a set number of items lying around your joint), a Luftwaffe bomber torches your building in a blaze of fire. Instead of being horribly killed, you are propelled thirty years into the past, onto the night you were on the Titanic – giving you a chance to right your mistakes and change history.
Titanic is an point-and-click adventure game in the classic mold in which you wander around talking to people, finding items, and solving puzzles. 
Your first assignment after getting greeted by your unbelievably creepy steward Smethells is finding a copy of the Rubaiyat that a rival German spy has smuggled aboard. From there the plot spirals into an enthralling web of conspiracies and mysteries, ending with an opportunity to change history by preventing both world wars and the Russian Revolution. There are a 
number of different endings you can get based on the items that you end up finishing the game with, each altering the future for better or worse. Imagine a world in which Nazi Germany developed the atom bomb before the U.S., or one in which Stalin and not Hitler started World War II (for those of you who haven’t played Red Alert). Of course, this assumes you can even get off the ship alive, as the third act of Titanic has you trying to complete your objectives and get on a lifeboat before the old girl plunges to the bottom of the sea.
The game is uncharacteristically light on puzzle-solving, as the few it does have are simple enough to solve, and the game gives you explicit instructions on how to beat each as you come across them. In fact, one of the last puzzles has a “Give Up” button that solves the puzzle for you. Most of the game consists of talking to the two-dozen some-odd characters you run across and finding and ferrying items. The game’s voice acting is pretty good, though the puppetry system that was 
supposed to provide photo-realistic characters just makes the folks who jibber-jabber at you look pretty stupid. Despite the ease of the puzzles, Titanic lacks any sort of clue-gathering system – if you want to complete your mission, you’ll have to pay close attention to what you see and hear, and jot down notes if necessary. The fetch quests are kept from getting too repetitive by a fast-transit system that allows you to instantaneously transit between areas of the ship.
If there’s one thing that annoys me about the game, it’s the disc switching. The version of Titanic I have comes on two discs, and you specifically need the first disc in order to start the game and to play the first and third parts. The second part, however, requires the second disc, and the second part comprises three-quarters of the 
game. So if you save, quit, and want to go back to playing later, you need to swap discs TWICE every time you start up the game. You can get around this by using ISO files, but it’s still a pain in the ass.
Titanic isn’t terribly hard – once you’ve figured everything out, you can beat the game and get the best ending in a few hours – but there’s some added value from side-quests and multiple solutions to your missions (including, I shit you not, an opportunity to get into an insult match with a coal shoveler). If FedEx quests and listening to people drone on about their problems aren’t your can of coke, Titanic probably isn’t the game for you. But if you want to play a fun little adventure game with an interesting plot, you should definitely check this one out.
All screenshots are taken from here. I would have taken my own, but the Print Screen button’s shots have screwed up colors, and I don’t feel like searching half of the Internet for a way to fix this just for a blog post. Also, here’s the official trailer for the game:
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Seriously, I thought I was the only person who had this game. Of course, I won it in some contest but still, I did have it.
lol. hahahah. so many horirble gamez made in gaming history.
Spoony is kind of a mangina (he used to be cooler), but still pretty funny.
{ 1 trackback }