Timeless Titanic Sails A Digital Atlantic

A Review of Titanic: Adventure Out of Time

by Grace Smith

Playing Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is as close as you'll ever get to the real event. With stunning high-res sets, plenty of interactive characters who speak and remember prior conversations, and a thriller of a plot, you'll feel absolutely compelled to complete the game. Digitally re-created from drawings, actual blueprints, and period photographs, CyberFlix's Titanic successfully captures the beauty, elegance, and ambiance of the doomed luxury liner that sailed and sank nearly 85 years ago.

Titanic's two CD-ROM package contains more than the mystery-adventure. Along with playing the interactive game, you also have the opportunity to take a guided tour of the ship without distraction. Doing so lets you examine lush environments such as the exquisitely rendered Grand Staircase or Turkish Bath, as you freely navigate and move between levels, climb stairs, and learn interesting facts about the vessel. (For behind-the-scenes information about the adventure-drama, read the interview with writer/producer, Andrew Nelson in Pulse.)

The sheer beauty of Titanic's sets and its haunting music propel you to plunge immediately into the game. As you immerse more deeply into the play-through, you grow to appreciate the combination of elements that sets Titanic apart from other adventure productions, allowing it to be unequaled in scope, mystery, and splendor. The description of these elements -- Design Features, Ease of Use, Content/StoryLine, Replayability, and Fun Factor -- follows.

Design Features
Titanic: An Adventure Out of Time has been designed to maximize your immersion into the Edwardian era. Through a 3D environment that is a scale replica of the actual ship, the software features detailed maps of the ship's levels, help keys, readable textual information, and visually interesting screens with superb color, graphics, animated cyberactors, and extraordinary sound.

Titanic's character animation is smooth, lifelike, and sophisticated. Its characters, portrayed by human actors in Edwardian-age costume, were digitally photographed and cyberscanned. As a result, the characters have a full range of dialogue, facial expressions, and body movements. To enhance your experience in the game's fascinating setting, American and British voice actors provide the characters' speaking voices.

Painstakingly researched, the digital Titanic is a faithful reconstruction of the 1912 luxury liner. CyberFlix's digital images were selected by Discovery Channel Online to illustrate what life was like aboard the 1912 Titanic for a recent documentary that attempted to solve the mystery of the sinking. CyberFlix's images were chosen because they are "the most historically accurate digital model of the Titanic available." The tremendous amount of detail that went into the reconstruction of the liner and many of the plot elements that link with actual historical events required two years of intensive research. Mentally engaging and visually stimulating, the game is a precise portrait of the opulent Edwardian era that valued luxury, wealth, status, and beauty.

Ease of Use
Titanic, easily installed and navigated, contains tourguides for pre-learning facts and trivia about the major areas of the ship and a few of its characters prior to play. More than 50 detailed exterior and interior environments are available to tour at leisure. Additional characters and tour components are available for downloading at CyberFlix's website CyberFlix, Inc.

The game's helper applications, keyboard commands, and jump features permit you to seamlessly navigate the ship in fluid 360-degree movement. When playing Titanic, you use the keyboard as your feet for walking and turning, and the mouse as your hands for moving objects, looking at things, and getting characters' attention. Clicking on Titanic's life preserver takes you to the menu where you can load and save games, get help, adjust options, and quit the game.

Content/StoryLine
Titanic presents meaningful, historically accurate information that is intended to both inform and entertain. Graphics, photos, and artifacts effectively contribute to the Edwardian theme in which you race against time to complete a mission that may alter history.

The drama opens in your London flat during an air raid in 1942. A down-at-the-heels former agent of the British Secret Service, you are propelled back in time to the Titanic on the night of the sinking, thirty years earlier. Your mission is to retrieve a purloined copy of Persian poetry and exchange it for British naval documents. While searching for information and solving puzzles to accomplish the mission, you interact with onboard characters, make choices, and sort through clues to finish the game by leaving on a lifeboat by 2:20 a.m., when the Titanic disappears forever. The game's epilogue takes you back to 1942 London where you realize the results of your efforts.

Replayability
Titanic contains several major and minor plot branches, puzzles, and character interactions, offering multiple endings and a large number of game paths. Succeeding in all aspects of your mission requires multiple playings. Each outcome depends on the choices you make during a game as you explore, interpret meanings, and match wits with interactive characters. Each complete play-through provides 20-30 hours of real-time, interactive adventuring.

Fun Factor
Playing Titanic is fun for a number of reasons. Based on 1912 materials and technology such as electricity and steam engines, Titanic's game puzzles integrate logically with the storyline. You get to defuse bombs, send and receive Morse Code on a functioning wireless telegraph, regulate the Titanic's massive engines, and interact with onboard characters who may lie or tell the truth. The game's twisting plots are both a challenge to solve and entertaining to play.

Summary
Without a doubt, Titanic fully demonstrates all magic we've come to expect from CyberFlix. In short, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time is a showstopper -- dazzling, extraordinary edutainment at its very best.

Read Interview with Andrew Nelson, Creator of Titanic

Windows 96, Windows 3.1, or Windows NT 3.51
486/66 or faster processor
8 MB RAM, double-speed or faster CD-ROM drive
Super VGA monitor with 256 colors
100% Windows compatible sound card
External speakers

or

Macintosh with operating system 7.1 or later
68040 or faster processor recommended
8 MB RAM, double speed or faster CD-ROM drive
RGB color display monitor with 256 colors
External speakers

Overall Score:

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