Reviewed: February 27, 2008
Reviewed by: Jason Flick

Publisher
The Adventure Company

Developer
Lexis Numérique

Released: February 5, 2008
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1

8
8
8
8
8.0

System Requirements:

In “The Experiment” you play as an unknown person, whose identity is discovered much later in the adventure. You wake up in the locked operations room of a five level supertanker. In front of you is an array of electronic panels and computer terminals. While you search the ship via cameras you happen across Lea Nichols, a survivor of the steel mammoth. It is up to you the player to help her escape the ship and to free you, another unwillingly trapped soul.

At the beginning of the adventure, you only have access to Lea’s session, but you will gain access to others. By entering their User Name and Password, you can gain access to files, clues and even codes that you previously didn’t have before. The most important of all this data being the codes, these will be used to unlock doors, activate robots, or other various objectives. The Intranet is the ship’s mail system, which not only gives you insight about what’s been going on before the wreck, but also valuable information needed to progress.

The Application maintenance is your means of changing your game options, as well as saving, loading and exiting your current game. I really like how you have a choice of how many camera windows you have open(up to three) as well as what your background looks like. This is nice considering you will be staring at the same background the entire time.

While all of the above is very cool, the true gem of this title is the Surveillance system, which the opening screen gives you every indication, when you boot up the game. The Surveillance system is broken up into two parts: the area map and the camera options. The camera options are what allow you to things like zoom in/out, brightness (or night vision), rotation of the cameras and much more. While the rotation feature is the only option available in the beginning, the rest are found via Lea throughout the adventure. You can even resize the windows via the icons at the top of each window. The only downside to going real big on the window sizes and having three open at a time is that you will experience some mouse lag.

The Area Map is you best friend in The Experiment. You will spend the majority of your time watching this screen with a passion. The area map is a 2D representation of the ship in all it eerie glory. I must admit I was blown away at the simplicity of the navigation system. First off you , must realize that you do not control Lea directly. You must lead her by turning lights on and off, or using the ships sound system to attract her attention. If you want Lea to enter a room you must first get her near the door via activating the door. Most doors are unlocked but many require codes, which you have to search the ship for. Usually the codes are never that far away and require you to put the cameras to use to find them. One thing I noticed while playing is that Lea moves like she is in no real hurry to leave the ship. For someone really wanting to get out of there, she moves like Yoda. I know if I was stuck on that ship I would be high-tailing it. Oh wait.. I am. Blast you locked door.

One of my favorite parts about The Experiment is that nothing about this tile seems staged. It feels completely natural in its approach. Sure there are “puzzles” of a sort but they are not obvious. I particular liked one part where a spotlight on the upper deck allowed me to search the room below the damaged deck below it. I thought this was a real neat trick. And this isn’t the only instance of these camera tricks. I won’t spoil these for you so happy hunting. Also there are a few robot parts in the adventure where you not only have to use the ship’s cameras but the robots camera as well to manually steer the robot. That’s right you actually get to do something other than direct Lea around.

The atmospheric lighting gives you a foreboding sense of some unknown evil. The nicely done shadows on the wall as you walk past a window letting in light is actually good. The numerous corpses littering the ship are all done with that a certain quality reminiscent of Resident Evil. Only these corpses don’t get up and try to eat you.

The cameras are still by far my favorite thing about The Experiment. The freedom to look around the ship at any given moment in any given place is a change in gameplay that I seldom see. Lexis Numérique really did a number on this title, and they did it in diamonds. The cool thing about the cameras is that they are not all crystal clear. You may have one that is fogged over or out of focus. My favorites are the ones where the images twitch , due to a damaged signal or box.

You almost constantly hear the sounds of the ocean crashing against the side of the ship and different birds flying in the air. Here you also meet some of the weird animals, complete with sound as you must find your way around them. You also at random and not so random time will hear nicely performed music pieces. There are no words of course but the effect is pretty cool.