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Historically, licensed games, based off of television shows and movies, don’t necessarily translate well to the video game format. ABC’s show “Lost,” tells the story of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 and their misadventures trying to get off of a mysterious island. One sentence outlining the show doesn’t come close to a sufficient summary of the show, deep with plot twists. Ubisoft’s Lost: Via Domus, acknowledges the complexity that is the Lost canon and tries to offer an experience outside of the main story, but in doing so, misses the mark as a compelling game for both diehard fans and general gamers alike.
Instead of tying directly into the events of the show, and putting you in the boots of Jack, Sawyer, Kate or other established characters, Via Domus follows a different passenger of Flight 815. After crashing, you wake up in the jungle, suffering from amnesia. Not knowing who you are, or anything about your past, your adventure entails uncovering bits about your past by exploring the island for familiar objects to jog your memory. Yet, that’s where discussion about the story must end, because even discovering your name is a main objective of the game.
What Via Domus tries to do is dip into the events that occur through the first several seasons with adventure gameplay, while keeping far enough from it to tell its own side-story. Throughout the short experience, fans of the series will find themselves in familiar locales like Black Rock, the Swan Station hatch and, of course, the beach; also, you’ll take part in Lost-specific events such as being responsible for resetting the hatch timer with those infamous numbers: 4 8 15 16 23 42.
Unfortunately, while trying to juggle between offering a new survivor story and staying away from the show’s plot, the game misses an opportunity to offer anything substantial for diehard fans, and will leave non-fans uninterested from short, weak gameplay elements.
Like the show, the game is dissected into episodes, with a similar formula: recap of earlier events, opening events, title, remember something new, cliffhanger, ending title; the game is actually broken up into episodes with an edited recap of what you just did in-game. While trying to uncover who you are, you’ll have the opportunity to interact with main characters through one-lined dialogue. However, unlike RPGs with deep, rich dialogue trees, Via Domus uses interaction to point out where to go next with simple responses that don’t have any impact on relationships or future events.
The episodic nature of the game, complete with recaps, would have been an interesting element, if the game wasn’t a purely linear experience. The game itself is a short experience, and only lasts a couple of hours, but without the ability to deviate from the scripted events, or switch things up through dialogue, there’s little reason to play through a second time. Thus, the game recaps previous events regardless whether or not you actually participated in them. The dialogue and action, then, does little to make the game an immersive experience.
A scripted experience would be forgivable, especially for the uninitiated to the Lost lore, if there was compelling gameplay, but such is not the case. In-between running around locations on the island, the game is broken up into flashbacks, cave challenges and puzzle challenges. Just like characters on the show, you’ll experience flashbacks which uncover a little bit about your past and the story in general. Instead of simply watching the flashback, it is up to you capture a photo representing the memory. With an unlimited amount of chances to snap the right shot, the only challenge is figuring out how tight to make the picture, and how focused the camera needs to be.
Once you get the picture just right, you’re treated to a cutscene, followed by an opportunity to find a few additional story-based extras. Trying to match up the photo is actually fairly enjoyable, and works well in delivering the story. However, as the story stands alone for the game and offers little to the show, it feels too compressed and oversimplified with convoluted twists that aren’t fully fleshed out.
Other gameplay elements include cave challenges and puzzle challenges. Certain areas require navigating a cave where, if you’re in the dark for too long, you are consumed by the black smoke (the island’s mysterious, ravenous inhabitant). To make it through, you can take advantage of the game’s bartering system, as different commodities are worth a certain value in trade. By trading away water, coconuts and beer for a lantern or torch, you ensure safe passage through the caves. In execution, these areas are little more than time-wasters with waterfalls and bats trying to extinguish your light, and are an excuse for the arbitrary bartering mechanic—though, it makes sense as Sawyer is a fairly opportunistic individual.
However, the game does include fairly challenging mini-games, which seem to act merely as a way to extend play time. There are two types of puzzles, both of which require logic and calculation to complete: fuse box challenges, and aptitude tests. Both can take a good amount of time to complete, and invoke an extremely rewarding feeling for completing these logical puzzles. They may act mostly as fillers for a short game, but at least they’re actual challenges in a game for once.
Between collecting fuses and uncovering your past, Via Domus is an extremely limited experience that shows off the hardware for the current-gen but fails to utilize the license for the show. The game has some nice lighting and environment effects, and overall does well in recreating the island’s landscape, but also includes some not-so-great renders of the show’s personalities.
Finally, only hurting the immersive experience, is the failure to grab all of the show’s actors for voiceovers. While the game has a handful of the actors contributing their voices to their characters (Desmond, Clair, Sun, Mikhail and Ben) the failure to have a full cast defeats the purpose of a licensed project. Luckily, the same eerie soundtrack accompanies sections of the game that add some emotion to the experience.
For the show’s faithful—those engrossed in both the show and alternate reality game—Via Domus won’t explain any interesting details of the main plot or deliver an engaging side story. Similarly, for those outside of the Lost fanaticism, the gameplay and story offers a short, hollow experience with little reason to replay once it’s completed. The only worthwhile exception for both is a confusingly-intriguing ending sequence which, in the Lost spirit, only leaves more questions than answers. For a game that had the potential to expand on the canon and involve a deep story, limited casting and boring gameplay make for a functional-but-less-than-exciting experience.
Gameplay: 6.0
Graphics: 7.0
Audio: 4.0
Lasting Appeal: 3.0
Overall: 5.0
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