Reviewed: March 24, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
The Adventure Company

Developer
House of Tales

Released: February 25, 2005
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

7
8
9
7
8.3

System Requirements

As Peter begins to dig deeper into the disappearance of his neighbor he uncovers a dark and sinister conspiracy that reaches far into a corrupt government. You’ll need all your puzzle-solving skills and some people skills as you engage in conversations with dozens of colorful characters learning important clues and advancing this intriguing story.

Despite this preferred visual perspective (at least for true adventure games) The Moment Of Silence often devolves into a pixel hunt at times. You’ll typically walk onto a new screen and systematically pass the mouse over every square-inch of your screen looking for “hot spots” to interact with including any possible exits that will take you to a new screen.

Controls are very simple, consisting of right and left mouse clicks, and the M key to open your PDA/cell phone. There is also an optional hint system that you can invoke by pressing the H key. This will show you any exits from the current scene and if you hold it down a bit longer it will reveal any available hot spots or conversation points.

Easy as it all sounds, one of my main complaints is with the control system, not in the input, but in the execution. You have no direct movement control over Peter. To move you left click (or double click to run) on the background and Peter will go there. The only problem is that the programmers have not always included a path between all possible hot spots so Peter will often have to backtrack to a previous “node” to get to an area that you’d think would be a short straight walk away.

Your options in The Moment of Silence are a bit limited. You can generally move to new locations and interact with objects, perhaps examine them more closely if a magnifying icon appears, and finally, you can talk to people. The structure of the game is very much like a flowchart where certain things have to happen before you can do certain other things or go somewhere.

For instance, at the very beginning, you want to talk to the wife of the abducted neighbor but Peter won’t knock on the door until he is invited to come over. To get invited you have to call her on your PDA, but to call her on your PDA you have to get her number from “information”, but to get her number you have to know her name, so hopefully you were thorough enough to look at the nameplate outside her apartment door and pick up the teddy bear so you have a "reason" to visit other than just being a nosy neighbor.

It’s clunky things like these that force gameplay upon you when logic dictates you would simply knock on the door to check on your neighbor, but instead you must jump through numerous hoops to reach the same destination. To that end, it is in your best interest (as any adventure gamer already knows) to look at everything and take anything that isn’t nailed down.

Conversations are equal in part with the rest of the gameplay and are handled exceptionally well with a great script and quality voice acting. There are multi-branching conversation trees, some of which get very verbose. If you read faster than you listen and don’t mind missing out on the quality acting you can read the subtitles and advance through the conversations a bit more quickly. And as you might expect, new topics become available to previous characters forcing you to revisit acquaintances as you dig deeper into the story.

The puzzles are not only smart; they are integrated into the environments and even the story, so there is a reason for doing what you are doing, most of the time. Puzzles include the traditional item combination and manipulation; fetch quests, and ultimately a few pixel hunts. There were only two puzzles in the entire game that sent me on my own personal quest to find and consult a walkthrough.

Pacing is a bit slow, even for an investigative adventure game that plays out like an episode of the X-Files. Most of this is due to the sheer size of the game, and even though you can take cabs to get around the city you will have to walk/run a lot and even Peter’s run speed is just too slow for all the backtracking that is required of him. To the designers’ credit, just about the time you start to get irritated with the pacing, something in the story will unfold that will renew your interest.

The interface is excellent with a pop-up inventory bar and great icons that easily show the items you currently carry. The pop-up icons on the screen show you what actions can be taken whether you discover them with the mouse or use the ingenious hint system. Of particular note is the lip-synching technology that matches the characters’ faces to the words they are saying in real-time no matter what language dub you have. Normally, this wouldn’t be a huge issue, but in a game with this much dialogue, it’s actually pretty noticeable.

However, in some areas the graphics are admittedly a bit dated, especially in the character design and animation department. Peter is a bit stiff when he walks or trots. There are plenty of technical glitches that somehow slipped into the final game, but most are more amusing than anything else. These include numerous clipping and pathfinding issues that are as harmless as visual glitches or as potentially hazardous as getting stuck in the environment so bad you have to reload a save game.

Another slightly annoying bit is the standard animations that play out for certain actions, especially those you repeat a lot like riding your elevator to exit your building or use a taxi. Simple acts like these trigger sequences that only take seconds but you do them so much it adds up and you cannot skip them. I can only assume (and hope) these are being used to mask load times.

As previously mentioned, the opening movie is outstanding and there are additional cutscenes scattered throughout the game that rival any of the best movies you can find in AAA console or PC titles. These are definite treats and real rewards for progressing through the game.

The music fits the period and the mood of the game with a wonderful cinematic score composed of electronic tunes, some techno and synth tracks that give the game some more of that Blade Runner meets X-Files flavor.

I was slightly disappointed in the overall lack of environmental sounds. Sure, all of the obvious noises are in place like rain, city noises, and anything visually apparent, but the game seemed to rely more on the music to set the tone. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that, but some of the scenes just seemed a bit too quiet at times.

The game is linear by design with no branching paths or alternate endings. Assuming you exhaust all possible conversation paths the first time you play this game is a one-shot affair. But so are most adventure games, so that isn’t a fault, and any game that can deliver more than 12 hours of quality gameplay these days is a good deal.

The Adventure Company has a lot more great games headed our way in 2005, and if they can all be at least this good it will be a great year for adventure games and the people who play them.