I've encountered my first hurdle in this new gaming lifestyle. It's January 9th and I've played 4 hours of eXperience 112/The Experiment.
I think I should explain the circumstances of the 2008 adventure game, eXperience 112, before I discuss my own personal challenges; every person I've talked with has not heard of this game before.
eXperience 112 is a point-and-click style adventure game in which you take on the role of an anonymous actor accessing an abandoned tanker's security and surveillance systems. You encounter Lea, who wakes up in the ship's medical bay, with very few memories and it is your task to help guide her through the ship to uncover what disaster took place and escape(? maybe?).
You see, this tanker ship isn't any ordinary tanker, it's actually a secret research base in which multiple researchers (Lea being one of them) attempt to study individuals with the sixth-sense, and also researching chemical compounds, and the effects of those compounds on local flora and fauna. You're informed of this information through Lea's lonely monologues, as well as strange supernatural flashbacks that, both you the player, and Lea experience simultaneously. To be honest, I found it very dull and uninteresting.
The gameplay of eXperience 112 takes the form of operating the desktop space connected to the tanker's security system, you have access to all security cameras (in various states of disrepair) and lights in the facility, alongside some other technologies that pop up occasionally. It's extremely impressive and cool to see Lea move independent of you fiddling with cameras and light switches; the tanker is being simulated in real time and you access different moments of it through the mock-OS provided by the game. One of the problems is that Lea is actually incredibly stagnant as an individual in space. She will only walk towards the lights you flick on within her view. she slowly trudges over to the light, and if there's anything of interest nearby she might remark on it or even pick it up. She will not move whatsoever if you aren't leading her like a horse through the dark halls of this abandoned ship. In some ways I have to shrug my shoulders; fair enough, after all I am supposed to be guiding her but simultaneously this is her stomping grounds and not mine, so why is she so tenative in her actions. The rate at which she waddles through the long halls, while I slowly click lights off and one for her, is not really doing a lot for me. The simulated OS is also a moment of joy and sorrow: Clicking around is extremely satisfying, but, as me and Lea recover login credentials for missing and/or dead researchers, I'm finding logging out and in to each researcher's profile extremely tedious. Again this is justifiable, in that it lends to the sense of reality for this simulated computer I'm sitting at, on the other hand it eats up soooo much time.
The reason why I'm putting eXperience 112 pre-maturely is fairly simple. I got softlocked by a bug in which one of the necessary items (there's no inventory system, Lea just picks things up and you assume they don't disappear into thin air) is no longer in my companion's posession. I do not feel the urge to replay the 25+ minutes of thermal camera puzzles to right this ship, in fact I feel the urge to stop completely. This is a frustrating feeling for me, because I've been stopped so shortly after my journey's begun, at a fairly small moment of friction; but also I'm supposed to be having fun and experiencing interesting games, and I'm getting the feeling that eXperience 112 has used up all the gas in the tank in that regard. To give myself some credit, I've played more hours of this game than you have; I'd be willing to bet on that. eXperience 112 will remain on the wheel, and I'll come back to it someday, surely, but for now I'll be putting this game to rest. I apologize to all of my fans.
As for what's next, I have some work that needs to be done in the coming week, so I'll be taking a 1 week recess and then return on January 23rd with some early thoughts on Perfect Tides: Station to Station; a game I'm very much looking forward to playing. xoxo.
