Canadian team Zandel Media takes you on a new adventure in Missing: An Interactive Thriller's first "episode".
Escape from prison in Missing
Missing is the first chapter in an FMV adventure involving a kidnapped man trying to escape from a strange prison and a cop trying to find him. The quality of the shooting is pretty good. The developers used decent actors. The indie game doesn't look cheap, but has decent graphics.
The riddles
That adventure games brings with it some puzzles. Your character tries to escape from a filthy industrial building filled with his kidnapper's purposely made up riddles. The photo of the prisoner's family tells you that the situation is serious. Then switching to the grumpy old cop trying to find him before time runs out adds a dose of variety and fleshes out the narrative.
default puzzle
The first puzzle is sliding tiles. In the second, you piece together a torn piece of paper. The game even has a bloody word search. Despite the presentation, this is about as drably mundane as adventure games can get. You find yourself in a room with nothing but some pipes that are missing their valves and four valves that you need to find. A piece of paper with a chart showing what pressure each pipe should have.
key codes
Of course, there's a key code for a door, a bunch of pipes to recover, and levers to pull. Despite the abundance of options, there is not a single original idea here. In fact, the only mystery that offers anything is right at the start, giving false hope for what's to come.
Conclusion
The chapter is extremely short. You'll be done in about 45 minutes. The game has some potential but doesn't use it. Unfortunately, the game is nothing special. It shows that FMV can look great and even be a rewarding pursuit to play. However, it does not stand out among many other games.
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