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Sentinel: Descendants in Time

Have you ever had one of those dreams? You know, the one where you’re running away from a brand new copy of Myst? No? Well, there are nights where I wake up screaming from just such a dream. No matter how fast I run or how many turns I take, Myst and its pretty prerendered environments are always directly behind me. I eventually find myself trapped in a dead-end alley, with the still shrink-wrapped box slowly creeping up on me…until…CLICK CLICK. There’s seemingly no escape from that point-and-click fate. The same holds true during my waking hours, apparently, as I continuously find myself playing games cast firmly in the Myst mold. Sentinel: Descendants in Time is one such a title and falls prey to the usual host of problems inherent in this particular category of adventure gaming.

The only real difference between Sentinel and the original Myst lies in the presentation. Using the Jupiter graphics engine, introduced with the seminal No One Lives Forever 2, Sentinel’s environments are rendered in real-time 3D and allows for movement that’s far less robotic and more in line with a first-person shooter (including the useless ability to jump). Indeed, navigating the environments is entirely effortless, allowing you to concentrate on puzzles and the unique visuals that comprise the game’s different domains (see also: Myst’s Ages). The graphics are hardly amazing, but they accomplish what they set out to do, namely crafting unusual scenery to surround the plethora of puzzles.

An adventure game built upon poorly constructed puzzles is like a soccer match where the ball has been cunningly replaced with a disgruntled walrus – there might be some vague entertainment value, but there’s ultimately not much point to it and someone’s bound to lose a limb. Luckily, you’ll survive Sentinel’s trials and tribulations with bodily parts intact, as the majority of challenges tend to provide just the right amount of head scratching and stop just short of the point where your nails dig into the scalp and start wrenching out clumps of hair… Myst IV, I’m looking at you. The puzzles run the gamut of pattern recognition, symbol deciphering and sound memorization, in addition to the understanding and manipulation of strange machinery – essentially, the usual stuff that litters exotic fantasy landscapes. Should a particular enigma pose too much of a cerebral challenge, a handy hint system can be employed via the the options menu with no attached feelings of shame and worthlessness.

There are, however, several puzzles which bring about the distinct feeling of tedium. These are the kind that you’ve figured out exactly how to solve, but the actual process of completing them involves running back and forth across the landscape pushing buttons, turning knobs, pulling levers and performing other, similarly exotic tasks. With no ability to warp between areas, overcoming these obstacles soon feels like a chore. The majority of the puzzles luckily avoid this situation, but the few that don’t are enough to provide plenty of boredom. A problem that’s far more widespread in terms of puzzles, and this is a problem with all Myst imitators, is that they’re only tenuously linked with the storyline and the sole motivation for completing them is so you can progress further in the game. You’ll often find yourself tinkering with weird contraptions and then wondering what exactly it is that you hope to accomplish.

Not that it matters as much with Sentinel, since the storyline collapses almost immediately anyway. Told through clumsy cutscenes, pretentious dialogue and terrible voice acting, the narrative places you in the role of Beni, a naive explorer who find himself forced into plundering an ancient tomb by his sister’s kidnappers. He constantly converses with the tomb’s holographic guardian, Dormeuse, who haphazardly appears to taunt him throughout the adventure. Most of their exchanges make pitiful attempts at being poetic and philosophical, but they really just come off as being extremely laborious and painful. I was thoroughly surprised that their topics of conversation didn’t revolve around more relevant issues, such as solving that swinging bridge puzzle or why Dormeuse’s hair unnervingly clips through her face as she speaks. That alone is far creepier than her subtle death threats.

Now, an adventure game that lacks a good story…well, that’s like a soccer match too. Only now there’s no ball and all the players are dead – eaten by the walrus. It’s just an empty field with two abandoned goalposts. Sentinel: Descendants in Time features some interesting puzzles and visually intriguing worlds, to be sure, but there’s no central narrative or a cast of interesting characters to tie those two together, and the end result is a rather hollow experience. It’s strange – games like Sentinel seem to recreate every aspect of Myst perfectly, except for one of the most important ones – the story.

Next week: Why role-playing games are like polo matches!

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Posted by Ludwig on Apr 25th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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