by Edmond Meinfelder

Let us get the standard Myst comparison out of the way. Timelapse is a lot like Myst. Though 4 years passed since Myst first appeared, we have seen no innovation since. More often than not, we get tiny steps backward. To me, Timelapse is a step in the wrong direction.

The story is average in a pulpy way. Your friend, a famed, though often ridiculed archaeologist, is searching for Atlantis. In his last message, he thinks he found his “missing link” and begs to meet him on Easter Island. When you arrive, however, the archeology camp is empty and everyone is missing. Things are looking up, apparently. You get to rescue your best friend from certain doom and discover the secret of Atlantis.

The world is laid out in deplorable fashion. Any junior-grade world-building apprentice knows to build for entertainment, not tedium. The world is merely a stage upon which the story takes place. Novice world-builders fall prey to the trap of completeness, thinking this is entertainment. These designers recreate castles down to the bathrooms off the dungeon. The reality is too broad and the scope is tedious, not fun. Timelapse bores in this manner. When roaming from place to place, you step from one empty scene to the next. This is especially evident on Easter Island. Someone mistakenly thought simulating a long journey on PC with photo-realistic scenes is entertainment – it’s not. I can do the real thing when I want. Let’s use the PC for doing things I cannot, like taking part in an epic story.

Boring walks aside, the puzzles are standard to awful. The low, for me, was the sliding puzzle in the Mayan temple. Sliding puzzles are all the rage in bad adventure games this year. Take a picture, cut it up into sections, remove one section, so the other pieces can move and you have a sliding puzzle. I hate sliding puzzles. I can purchase sliding puzzles for a lot less than Timelapse retails. Sliding puzzles are tedious filler, like mazes. Vapid game designers resort to puzzles when creative wells runs dry.

The remaining puzzles fair better and often have the “keys” in nearby locations for convenience. However, the inclusion of a camera to take pictures of immobile clues (stone carvings, instructions, so on) is nice, but limited to 36 exposures. Why not remove the convenience from the restrictions of reality and game context, making the game easy to use? Simulating reality, though attractive, brings tedium. Tedium is a recurrent theme in Timelapse.

In spots, the game’s artwork impresses. What awe the graphics inspire is quickly washed out with the oppressive sense of tedium. Many of the puzzles require you to seek out inscriptions and figure out what these engravings mean. This involves a lot of foot work and, as mentioned earlier, a lot of empty areas exist to roam about in.

The sound effects, 8-bit mono, when present, manage a nice sense of “being there.” Many areas, however, have no sounds, leaving me with a sense of “being at my computer.” Some digital music occurs, infrequently, and manages pleasant sounds, but does nothing for gameplay.

Timelapse tries to be Myst, but never studied its subject matter and, as a result, barely passes. The game is, at best mediocre and at worst tedious. With fun games like Gabriel Knight 2, Pandora Directive, Spycraft and Star Control 3 on shelves now, why bother with Timelapse?