The Missing Link
It's been roughly four days since Wes and I finished a little PC game called; Missing: Since January. Heard of it? Yeah, I thought not. That's a shame to because it's probably one of the single most original and immersive games I've ever played. Now I don't want to get to bogged down trying to sell you on it, because there are hundreds of gaming websites out there that serve as buying guides, but I would like to explain it a little and see if any of you see the deeper artistic implications of this game.
The plot of the game revolves around the kidnapping of two people, Jack Lorski and Karen Gijman, by a sadistic occultist serial killer who calls himself "The Phoenix." The 'game' itself is a CD sent to Lorski's employer the "SKL Network" filled with esoteric puzzles and reflex mini-games that once completed unlock clues to the fate of Jack and Karen. In an effort to solve the case as quickly as possible, the SKL Network mass-produced the CDs and distributed them around the world so that people (like you and me) could buy them and help in the investigation.
I first heard about the game when a friend of mine's older brother pitched it to me with the skill of a trained salesman. By the end of his explanation (which was essentially like the one I gave to you), I was both intrigued and a little confused. I wanted to ask so many questions, but I held back because the prospect of such an interesting game being presented well seemed more like a grand illusion than a realistic scenario. I'd been hurt so many times before in my 'career' as a gamer by interesting concepts that weren't executed well or to even a fraction of their potential, that I had already condemned the game in my mind; it'd either be buggy, or boring, or the acting wouldn't be good enough to maintain the illusion, etc.
I was proven wrong so thoroughly that this game alone injected me with new hope that games of the future could be more than formulaic genre-enslaved cash runs. They could be art.
We played it as a group (me, my friend, his brother, and another guy) and to try and further 'enhance' the experience we were each assigned 'roles' in the investigation. I ended up being something like the 'deductive logic' specialist. I took the title and ran with it. If a tobacco pipe and one of those Sherlock Holmes hats had been within reach, I'd have donned both of them with pride.
When we finally booted up the game everyone's expectations were sky-high. In the room was probably 40 years worth of gaming experience, each and every one of us veterans of the hobby from atleast the 8-bit generation on. We were hard to impress and easy to disappoint lot. Yet after five minutes we were all hooked, and it wasn't due to the graphics or the 'gameplay' in the traditional sense. It was completely due to the presentation.
You see, the game plays out in little puzzles that "The Phoenix" gives to you. Some of them are simple, some of them require hardened point-and-click reflexes, and some of them require you to use the internet to research. This, I think, is where Missing's 'gameplay' shines. Hidden in the world wide web are websites for the 'game' that have the specific information needed to solve a puzzle or atleast advance it, but these are so excellently crafted that they're indistinguishable from real websites. More importantly, some of these websites offer more than just solutions, they often contain tidbits that expand the overall plot. I must have ranted to Wes for days about this.
Don't think there isn't any reward for completing the puzzles, upon their completion "The Phoenix" often gives you something; either a clue about Jack and Karen, or even better, one of Jack's film archives. The films, presented as FMVs, are the second great highlight of the game. Each one is elegantly directed and filled with actors who're doing something seen so rarely in the world of videogames that I was actually shocked; acting. Very few games can convince you to invest any sort of emotion into its characters, but the Missing for me was one of those games. As I watched those FMVs and found myself drawn deeper into the lives of Jack and Karen, I felt an urgent need to save them from the killer's vile clutches.
The group and I weren't able to finish the game in that one marathon sitting (much to my complete dismay) and after that first night it seemed like a horrid mixture of cruel fate and apathy prevented us from going back to it. I had no choice, I abandoned the group and pitched the story to Wes. When he showed the same sort of enthusiasm for it I had, it was a welcome relief. I had begun to dismay that I'd be the lone supporter of this artwork, a Cassandra of sorts, doomed to be forever unheard as I told people of the future of our entertainment medium.
Almost immediately Wes and I ventured forth to obtain a copy of the game. Being the cynic I am, I was convinced that trying to find it would be a task, that its obscurity and lack of a genre pedigree would have relegated it to being available only in the most seedy of specialty boutiques and the distant amorphous internet. Luckily, Wes's keen eye proved me wrong as we browsed the PC section of the local Best Buy. There it was, a thing of beauty. Not even on the packaging was it acceptable to break character; the simple white box had Jack and Karen's pictures pasted to it with the heading in bold red type - MISSING: Since January.
Twenty-dollars and a car ride later and we were back at my house. I know we both wanted badly to play it, but neither of us had the time available that this game deserved. We had to wait. It was an agonizingly long time before we were able to come back to it, but when we did everything was perfect; we had time, drinks, and a dark room. As the sun set on the horizon, I inserted the CD and began the journey anew. This time I had the unique opportunity to watch Wes's reactions to the parts of the game I'd already played, to gauge what he saw and whether the effect it had on me was replicated on him. Most of the time, it was. He showered the game with compliments for its originality, its presentation, every high mark I'd given it he added his enthusiastic second.
I can't begin to imagine how many hours we spent staring into my computer screen; locked in to every puzzle, every haunting message from "The Phoenix," every film detailing the investigation leading up to the kidnapping. When we finally decided to take a genuine 'break' the sun had long-since risen and shone down upon us as we shared a cigarette on my front porch. We would have continued, but exhaustion had made it impossible. Our solutions to the increasingly difficult puzzles had become disjointed and nonsensical. Hard as it was, we agreed to stop.
Then, for nearly six months, we didn't pick up the game again. We certainly talked about it every chance we met, we made plans every now and again to delve back into it and solve the mystery, but time just went on and nothing happened. I had school, he had work. In that time, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed in us. We'd let Jack and Karen down. Where once we'd delved headlong into their rescue, now it was just an afterthought. I was alternatively depressed by this and ashamed that a game could have such an effect on me.
In the back of my mind though, there was always that lingering hope. The hope that one day Wes and I would cast all excuses aside and go back to our investigation, we'd come back to the Missing and finish what we started, and not just for us, but for Jack and Karen too. Tuesday of this week was that day.
The plan had been just a brief visit, maybe stick in the game and try to finish up a puzzle or two. After all, we both had lives to go back to the next morning. The game archives all the FMVs you've unlocked and allows you to view them at any time. This proved essential to us when we sat back down at it. Within 20 minutes we were back to where we were in the middle of August '04 as if nary a day had passed since. What started as 'one or two puzzles' turned into a desire for completion. The hours again flew by, and became increasingly unimportant as the game built toward its climax. We were on the verge of saving Jack and Karen from a madman's schemes. When the final puzzle was unlocked, both us waited in silence for the revelation to come.
What we got as a small light on the screen that once clicked on led to a website. On the site was enabled a game, a 'showdown' of sorts between us and our elusive foe "The Phoenix." He told us that Jack and Karen were being held somewhere wired with explosives. If we beat him in his little game he'd stop the timer, if we failed, they died. The game itself was difficult, and seemed slightly unfair as "The Phoenix" never made a mistake. I was outwardly cursing at one point as the score became steadily in Phoenix's favor. How could this happen? Would all our time and effort be cast to the rocks because I wasn't able to put some stupid little moon-shape into a hole? Were the lives of two people going to be lost because of something so trivial? The answer was 'no', of course, but at that point I was so deeply into the game that I could have easily believed otherwise.
Regardless of my bad performance we still emerged victorious! In the middle of the night, Wes and I were celebrating in my computer room like we'd just won the lottery. Now all we could do was wait for the authorities to converge on Jack and Karen's position..
We waited...and waited...and waited..but no e-mail from our contacts on the scene in Italy came. It was a major blow to longtime gamers like Wes and I. Where was the neatly packaged cutscene to wrap everything up and give us that much eluded feeling of accomplishment? Where were the credits? For that moment, I'd forgotten that this was a different type of game, one that wouldn't sacrifice its artistic integrity to fall into the mold gamers have been conditioned to.
After checking my Yahoo account again and again, Wes and I once more reluctantly decided to part ways. Both of us were visibly disappointed. We wanted that instant gratification that our very culture had raised us to demand, and when it was absent we felt as if we'd been cheated. I went to bed that night actually questioning whether or not Missing was everything I'd built it up to be in my mind.
The next morning I dashed back to my computer to check my mail like a kid scrambling for the Christmas tree, and like that kid, what I found in my Inbox was a bounty of gifts. More than 13 e-mails from our contact and Italy and others were present. Each e-mail detailed another tidbit about how the events of the night had played out in our absence. The Italian cops had raided the warehouse where Jack and Karen were held and rescued them safely. A few pictures of them fresh from their ordeal were available, along with a short video of Karen talking to the Italian detectives about their captivity.
The last letter was from Jack himself, a heartfelt thank you to Wes and I for our help in saving their lives. There was no mention of the six months we left them to their fate, no blame for all that time they spent surrounded by darkness. I was almost brought to tears by it all. As I took the time to forward all the letters to Wes's e-mail account, I couldn't help but think to myself that this was the most satisfying ending a videogame has ever given me. It wasn't like finishing a book or a movie, it was like coming to the end of something important, something I had actually been a part of. For the rest of my life, I'll never forget about the time I helped foil the plot of a serial killer and saved the lives of two people.
This was more than a game, it was a life experience.
- Will
The plot of the game revolves around the kidnapping of two people, Jack Lorski and Karen Gijman, by a sadistic occultist serial killer who calls himself "The Phoenix." The 'game' itself is a CD sent to Lorski's employer the "SKL Network" filled with esoteric puzzles and reflex mini-games that once completed unlock clues to the fate of Jack and Karen. In an effort to solve the case as quickly as possible, the SKL Network mass-produced the CDs and distributed them around the world so that people (like you and me) could buy them and help in the investigation.
I first heard about the game when a friend of mine's older brother pitched it to me with the skill of a trained salesman. By the end of his explanation (which was essentially like the one I gave to you), I was both intrigued and a little confused. I wanted to ask so many questions, but I held back because the prospect of such an interesting game being presented well seemed more like a grand illusion than a realistic scenario. I'd been hurt so many times before in my 'career' as a gamer by interesting concepts that weren't executed well or to even a fraction of their potential, that I had already condemned the game in my mind; it'd either be buggy, or boring, or the acting wouldn't be good enough to maintain the illusion, etc.
I was proven wrong so thoroughly that this game alone injected me with new hope that games of the future could be more than formulaic genre-enslaved cash runs. They could be art.
We played it as a group (me, my friend, his brother, and another guy) and to try and further 'enhance' the experience we were each assigned 'roles' in the investigation. I ended up being something like the 'deductive logic' specialist. I took the title and ran with it. If a tobacco pipe and one of those Sherlock Holmes hats had been within reach, I'd have donned both of them with pride.
When we finally booted up the game everyone's expectations were sky-high. In the room was probably 40 years worth of gaming experience, each and every one of us veterans of the hobby from atleast the 8-bit generation on. We were hard to impress and easy to disappoint lot. Yet after five minutes we were all hooked, and it wasn't due to the graphics or the 'gameplay' in the traditional sense. It was completely due to the presentation.
You see, the game plays out in little puzzles that "The Phoenix" gives to you. Some of them are simple, some of them require hardened point-and-click reflexes, and some of them require you to use the internet to research. This, I think, is where Missing's 'gameplay' shines. Hidden in the world wide web are websites for the 'game' that have the specific information needed to solve a puzzle or atleast advance it, but these are so excellently crafted that they're indistinguishable from real websites. More importantly, some of these websites offer more than just solutions, they often contain tidbits that expand the overall plot. I must have ranted to Wes for days about this.
Don't think there isn't any reward for completing the puzzles, upon their completion "The Phoenix" often gives you something; either a clue about Jack and Karen, or even better, one of Jack's film archives. The films, presented as FMVs, are the second great highlight of the game. Each one is elegantly directed and filled with actors who're doing something seen so rarely in the world of videogames that I was actually shocked; acting. Very few games can convince you to invest any sort of emotion into its characters, but the Missing for me was one of those games. As I watched those FMVs and found myself drawn deeper into the lives of Jack and Karen, I felt an urgent need to save them from the killer's vile clutches.
The group and I weren't able to finish the game in that one marathon sitting (much to my complete dismay) and after that first night it seemed like a horrid mixture of cruel fate and apathy prevented us from going back to it. I had no choice, I abandoned the group and pitched the story to Wes. When he showed the same sort of enthusiasm for it I had, it was a welcome relief. I had begun to dismay that I'd be the lone supporter of this artwork, a Cassandra of sorts, doomed to be forever unheard as I told people of the future of our entertainment medium.
Almost immediately Wes and I ventured forth to obtain a copy of the game. Being the cynic I am, I was convinced that trying to find it would be a task, that its obscurity and lack of a genre pedigree would have relegated it to being available only in the most seedy of specialty boutiques and the distant amorphous internet. Luckily, Wes's keen eye proved me wrong as we browsed the PC section of the local Best Buy. There it was, a thing of beauty. Not even on the packaging was it acceptable to break character; the simple white box had Jack and Karen's pictures pasted to it with the heading in bold red type - MISSING: Since January.
Twenty-dollars and a car ride later and we were back at my house. I know we both wanted badly to play it, but neither of us had the time available that this game deserved. We had to wait. It was an agonizingly long time before we were able to come back to it, but when we did everything was perfect; we had time, drinks, and a dark room. As the sun set on the horizon, I inserted the CD and began the journey anew. This time I had the unique opportunity to watch Wes's reactions to the parts of the game I'd already played, to gauge what he saw and whether the effect it had on me was replicated on him. Most of the time, it was. He showered the game with compliments for its originality, its presentation, every high mark I'd given it he added his enthusiastic second.
I can't begin to imagine how many hours we spent staring into my computer screen; locked in to every puzzle, every haunting message from "The Phoenix," every film detailing the investigation leading up to the kidnapping. When we finally decided to take a genuine 'break' the sun had long-since risen and shone down upon us as we shared a cigarette on my front porch. We would have continued, but exhaustion had made it impossible. Our solutions to the increasingly difficult puzzles had become disjointed and nonsensical. Hard as it was, we agreed to stop.
Then, for nearly six months, we didn't pick up the game again. We certainly talked about it every chance we met, we made plans every now and again to delve back into it and solve the mystery, but time just went on and nothing happened. I had school, he had work. In that time, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed in us. We'd let Jack and Karen down. Where once we'd delved headlong into their rescue, now it was just an afterthought. I was alternatively depressed by this and ashamed that a game could have such an effect on me.
In the back of my mind though, there was always that lingering hope. The hope that one day Wes and I would cast all excuses aside and go back to our investigation, we'd come back to the Missing and finish what we started, and not just for us, but for Jack and Karen too. Tuesday of this week was that day.
The plan had been just a brief visit, maybe stick in the game and try to finish up a puzzle or two. After all, we both had lives to go back to the next morning. The game archives all the FMVs you've unlocked and allows you to view them at any time. This proved essential to us when we sat back down at it. Within 20 minutes we were back to where we were in the middle of August '04 as if nary a day had passed since. What started as 'one or two puzzles' turned into a desire for completion. The hours again flew by, and became increasingly unimportant as the game built toward its climax. We were on the verge of saving Jack and Karen from a madman's schemes. When the final puzzle was unlocked, both us waited in silence for the revelation to come.
What we got as a small light on the screen that once clicked on led to a website. On the site was enabled a game, a 'showdown' of sorts between us and our elusive foe "The Phoenix." He told us that Jack and Karen were being held somewhere wired with explosives. If we beat him in his little game he'd stop the timer, if we failed, they died. The game itself was difficult, and seemed slightly unfair as "The Phoenix" never made a mistake. I was outwardly cursing at one point as the score became steadily in Phoenix's favor. How could this happen? Would all our time and effort be cast to the rocks because I wasn't able to put some stupid little moon-shape into a hole? Were the lives of two people going to be lost because of something so trivial? The answer was 'no', of course, but at that point I was so deeply into the game that I could have easily believed otherwise.
Regardless of my bad performance we still emerged victorious! In the middle of the night, Wes and I were celebrating in my computer room like we'd just won the lottery. Now all we could do was wait for the authorities to converge on Jack and Karen's position..
We waited...and waited...and waited..but no e-mail from our contacts on the scene in Italy came. It was a major blow to longtime gamers like Wes and I. Where was the neatly packaged cutscene to wrap everything up and give us that much eluded feeling of accomplishment? Where were the credits? For that moment, I'd forgotten that this was a different type of game, one that wouldn't sacrifice its artistic integrity to fall into the mold gamers have been conditioned to.
After checking my Yahoo account again and again, Wes and I once more reluctantly decided to part ways. Both of us were visibly disappointed. We wanted that instant gratification that our very culture had raised us to demand, and when it was absent we felt as if we'd been cheated. I went to bed that night actually questioning whether or not Missing was everything I'd built it up to be in my mind.
The next morning I dashed back to my computer to check my mail like a kid scrambling for the Christmas tree, and like that kid, what I found in my Inbox was a bounty of gifts. More than 13 e-mails from our contact and Italy and others were present. Each e-mail detailed another tidbit about how the events of the night had played out in our absence. The Italian cops had raided the warehouse where Jack and Karen were held and rescued them safely. A few pictures of them fresh from their ordeal were available, along with a short video of Karen talking to the Italian detectives about their captivity.
The last letter was from Jack himself, a heartfelt thank you to Wes and I for our help in saving their lives. There was no mention of the six months we left them to their fate, no blame for all that time they spent surrounded by darkness. I was almost brought to tears by it all. As I took the time to forward all the letters to Wes's e-mail account, I couldn't help but think to myself that this was the most satisfying ending a videogame has ever given me. It wasn't like finishing a book or a movie, it was like coming to the end of something important, something I had actually been a part of. For the rest of my life, I'll never forget about the time I helped foil the plot of a serial killer and saved the lives of two people.
This was more than a game, it was a life experience.
- Will
posted by idlehours at 4:06 PM
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