Secret Files: Tunguska makes me feel nostalgic. Playing it reminds me of the good old adventure games from yesteryear, in a time before the shooter took dominance, when computer game designers went to efforts to differentiate their titles from what could be found at the local arcade. From Infocom's text-based adventures to the later more advanced titles from Sierra Entertainment, the adventure game was once king. Especially with Sierra. Who can forget flying around the universe as janitor-turned-hero, Roger Wilco in the Space Quest series, hunting criminals in the Police Quest and Manhunter games and trying to get the original 40-year-old virgin Larry Laffer some action in Leisure Suit Larry? Ah, it was a better time.
Back then, despite the lack of high-end graphics and cutscenes, story took precedence. Sure the storylines were often not very good and filled with numerous bad puns and cheesy jokes. But they were elaborate. And to make any headway in a game you had use illogical relations and understand double meanings to solve its numerous puzzles.
Much of the same can be said about The Adventure Company's Secret Files: Tunguska. The game begins with Nina Kalenkov, a young woman from Berlin, who goes to visit her father at work, only to discover that his office has been ransacked, and he's nowhere to be found. As Nina, you engage in a lengthy search for her father, the renowned scientist, Vladimir Kolenkov. Aiding Nina in her search is Max Gruber, a museum colleague of Vladimir's who's almost at once enamoured with the able heroine's nimble physique. (You also play parts of the game as Max.)
Nina soon discovers that her father's disappearance may have something to do with his 1976 research paper on an expedition he took to the region of Tunguska, where an unexplained real life explosion occurred in 1908.
A point-and-click adventure, Secret Files: Tunguska has a rather relaxed pace to it. There is no time limit and no real danger of Nina or Max dying. Essentially, you just use the mouse to find all the things in a room and use them as you need to. And it's very linear in this respect. Most of the items you pick up you'll have to use at some point. And you'll often have to do things in a specific order before the game will allow you to move onto the next stage.
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For example, when Nina wants to find out if the guy across the hall from her father's office heard or saw anything, she has to figure how to turn down his music so he'll hear her knocking. You'll have to get her to look at the Max Gruber's nameplate on the wall and then look at the list of employees on the wall in the exhibit room to find what fuse to pull to turn off his power. It won't work the other way around. It can be a little annoying but at the same time it's good because you never have to worry about getting stuck. Playing the old adventure games, I more than once would get stranded because either I lost, failed to pick up or accidentally gave away something vital to completing the game. Things such as apples or junk mail which on the face of it seem utterly useless. With Secret Files: Tunguska, you just have to worry about power outages or your PC spontaneously restarting.
Granted it's hard to imagine you could get through this game without using a walkthrough as many things don't lend themselves to common sense. Perhaps there's nothing quite as zany as, say, using dehydrated water to blow up a robotic spider as in the first Space Quest. But as Nina you do use butter from a sandwich to loosen up a rusted carjack under an abandoned vehicle in Moscow.
In perhaps my favourite ridiculous sequence in the game, as Nina you go to Oleg Kambursky's house, a man who has had recent contact with her father. When he slams the door in your face after saying he's never heard of Vladimir Kalenkov, you'll decide to do some more investigating. You'll see Oleg on the phone from the side window and will want to listen in on the conversation. Returning to the front door, you'll run into Oleg's cat. You then have to put leftover pizza you found at Vladimir's house into the cat's food dish. While the cat's busy eating, tape your cellphone to its back. Then sprinkle salt on the pizza to make the cat thirsty and go inside.
Then you call the cell from a phone booth. This spooks the cat and it runs back outside and up a tree. To get the phone back, you have to combine a bucket handle to a plastic bag to reinforce it and then a broomstick to make it long enough to reach the branches. Then you listen to Oleg's phone conversation which has been recorded through your cell phone. (It reminded me of the point in the text-based adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where you have to use almost everything you've picked up so far, including your mail and the gown you're wearing, to get the Babel Fish in the Vogon Constructor ship without it disappearing into a hole in the floor or wall or wherever when it shoots out of the dispenser.)
These are only a couple of examples. There are quite a number of points in Secret Files: Tunguska where Nina or Max has to perform seemingly unrelated tasks to achieve their goals. This makes the game harder to play as it's not intuitive but the absurdity is partially what makes it fun.
And the story's intriguing. Following the adventures of Nina and Max as they attempt to uncover the mystery of Tunguska and what happened to her father is intriguing, even if the game feels a little short. And the graphics are sold too. Unfortunately, the dialogue is rather brutal, especially when these two main characters attempt to flirt with one another. But that's largely forgivable.
It's just nice to see that at least one gaming company is still interested in exploring this older type of computer game, especially since even Sierra, with the exception of the most recent Leisure Suit Larry game, seems more concerned with releasing titles that fall into more popular genres, such as F.E.A.R., FreeStyle Street Basketball and Eragon.
WHAM! Rating: |
7 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
T (Teen) |
Official Web Site: |
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