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Sentinel: Descendants in Time

Score: 89%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: The Adventure Company
Developer: detalion
Media: CD/2
Players: 1
Genre: Adventure

Graphics & Sound:

Sentinel: Descendants in Time is an adventure game reminiscent of the early Myst games, where you start off at a hub world and travel to various other radically-different environments. The worlds in Sentinel are rather big in size, and the textures and environments have enough details to keep you interested in your surroundings. The colors and lighting from the dark caverns of the Tastans tombs to the bright plant-filled areas of the other worlds are always a pleasure to explore.

The sound and music of Descendants in Time is fair. They typically did the job and set the right atmosphere, but for some reason it just wasn’t enough to pull me in completely. The voice acting was at about the same pace. The actors were clear and easy to understand, but seemed forced at times.


Gameplay:

Like I said earlier, Sentinel: Descendants in Time reminds me a lot of the original Myst games, but with a few differences. One of the major differences is the fact that you aren’t viewing the world one frame at a time. Instead, you have full control over your character’s movements in the 3D space. Because of this, the gameplay feel is more like a First Person Shooter than a standard adventure game. But it is still jam-packed with unique puzzles that will keep any problem-solver busy for hours on end.

Sentinel takes place more than 1,900 years in the future. In that time, civilizations have risen and fallen. One such society is the Tastans. These advanced people are but a memory, and they have left tombs all over the world. Each tomb contains portals to places the inhabitant liked to visit when he/she/it was alive. The tomb you will explore in this game is Tomb 35 -- the most feared because its guardian A.I. is ruthless and doesn’t like to be disturbed.

So why are you trekking through this sacred chamber? You are Beni, a local who has learned which tombs are safe and which ones people don’t come back out of. But you find out that some mafia-like people are holding your sister until you get whatever riches are in the burial chamber and bring them back.

As you explore the different worlds that Dormeuse (the resident A.I.) allows you to go into, you learn more and more about these people and who they were before they died out. But Dormeuse has a dark plan. She doesn’t want anybody getting to the inhabitant’s remains (no matter what the grave-robber’s motives may be).

The puzzles you will find are a mix between the classic tasks you see in most games and a good number of unique ones to keep the challenge alive. Though I liked the new puzzles, a lot of the time their solutions made no sense. For example, early in the game you are given a control panel and need to use it to maneuver a lighthouse so that it hits five or six giant flowers. When you first go into it, you have no idea why you want to do this -- there aren’t any clues as to what will happen when you do, but you do it because there is nothing else to do. I found this to be the case somewhat frequently. This pulled me out of the game at times because I couldn’t see ahead to know what I would do after I finally got past whatever puzzle was ahead of me.


Difficulty:

Sentinel: Descendants in Time has a fair amount of difficulty in it. Most of the time, you’ll be able to go through the smaller, simpler puzzles without much problem. Though, you will find your progress slowing more and more as you advance in the game. You’ll encounter a lot of puzzles that aren’t necessarily hard, just time-consuming as you try to work out the patterns and find exactly the right combination of buttons to push or levers to pull. Most of the puzzles that slow your progress aren’t hard -- they are just tedious in that you will find yourself staring at the same puzzle for a long while as you attempt to activate objects in just the right order.

Game Mechanics:

Sentinel: Descendants in Time’s control scheme felt a lot like a First Person Shooter (without the shooting, that is). You use the mouse to look around and the W, S, A, and D keys to walk. You can press the space bar to jump (though you don’t jump very high), and you interact with the world using your cursor (positioned at the center of your screen).

Like most adventure titles, when you hover over an object-of-interest, the cursor changes. Thankfully, Descendants in Time doesn’t require you to be pixel perfect and keeps you from having to hunt around on the screen for that particular sweet spot.

Sentinel: Descendants in Time is a good, problem-solving game that will give any adventure gamer several hours of enjoyment (and a few hours of frustration).


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer

Minimum System Requirements:



Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 1.0 GHz Pentium III or equivalent, 128 MB RAM, 1.6 GB available HD space, 24x CD-ROM Drive, 64 MB DirectX Compatible 3D Video Card, DirectX compatible sound card and speakers, keyboard and mouse, DirectX 8.1, Subtitle Option Available
 

Test System:



Windows XP Professional Ed., AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 2GHz, 2 GB RAM, DVD-RW, Radeon 9800 Pro, DirectX 9.B.

Windows Hearts of Iron II Nintendo GameBoy Advance The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated